Exodus hands-on: a choice-driven space opera that's weirder and more ambitious than expected

Archetype Entertainment's Exodus got a proper hands-on showcase at gamescom 2026, and the early verdict is that this choice-based action-RPG is stranger and more ambitious than its genre roots suggest. The demo dropped players several hours into the game, sending protagonist Jun on a rescue mission to a space station crewed by hyper-intelligent, talking frogs — and that sentence alone tells you this isn't a straight Mass Effect clone.

Combat is built around Jun's Recycler, a single weapon that morphs between forms — burst-fire battle rifle, shield-stripping energy weapon, and more — while keeping a consistently satisfying feel across all of them. On top of that, Jun has access to crafted items like hovering drone grenades and a suite of Celestial powers that function as cooldown-based abilities: eruptions of energy launched across the arena, petrification effects that hand enemies over to your companions. Those companions — Suliman, a reserved and stealthy operator who can phase behind enemies for melee takedowns, and Elise, a rocket-happy mercenary in a combat exosuit — each bring distinct tactical flavors. Suliman is the pre-fight thinning tool; Elise is the panic button when a skirmish spirals. Both have standard abilities and screen-clearing ultimates that can genuinely swing a fight.

Exodus is drawing on a lineage of choice-heavy action-RPGs — think the morality systems and companion dynamics of games like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic — but it's clearly pushing the genre somewhere more eccentric. The setting blends hard sci-fi stakes with what the preview describes as science-indistinguishable-from-magic locations and celestial powers, and the tone swings freely between galactic-scale drama and full-on '70s cosmic weirdness. One moment involves a companion screaming negotiation attempts at a charging war-bear mid-combat, which is either a sign of great writing or a very confident design team — possibly both. With a confirmed roster of multiple companions, the tactical calculus of squad-building looks like it'll run deep alongside the more personal "I want to be their friend" pull that drives companion choices in the best games of this type.

The gamescom demo was deliberately action-heavy and set mid-game, so the full weight of Exodus's morality systems and narrative branching remains to be seen. But the combat held up well enough to suggest the RPG ambition isn't papering over weak fundamentals — and the sheer oddness of the universe has already done its job of making this one to watch.