Archetype hint at the narrative implications of relativistic effects
Image credit: Wizards of the Coast
News by
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell News Editor
Published on Dec. 13, 2023
Revealed during last week's
Geoffening, Exodus is the first game from Archetype Entertainment, a new studio that includes former members of BioWare and Naughty Dog. It's a sci-fi odyssey with third-person shooting that looks and sounds a lot like
Mass Effect, but it has one differentiating Big Idea (aside from Matthew McConaughey): time dilation, whereby time passes different in different places, depending on relative velocity and local gravity.
As I wrote in
a very reachy piece about Starfield's universal and local clocks, way back in August, time dilation is a fascinating concept that poses all sorts of challenges for game designers, extending from questions of plotting to the practicalities of quests and resourcing. For example: if time dilation is a factor, flying back to a solar system in a faster-than-light vessel to polish off sidequests might see thousands of years passing on the planets in question. I am a very indecisive and absent-minded player: am I going to relegate generations of NPCs to the ashes, because I can't remember which world has the store that sells that weapon attachment I've been saving up for?
Most sci-fi games sidestep such issues by introducing made-up magic technologies, or just throwing up their hands and pretending that time dilation isn't real. So how much will Exodus really lean into it? Will the effects be carefully stage-managed at the level of chapters and cutscenes, with specific choices advancing the clock in predetermined ways, or will the game try its hand at something like a full-blown relativistic simulation? It's hard to say, this close to announcement, but the developers have dropped a few hints in between the grander promises.
According to Archetype co-founder and studio head James Ohlen, whose previous credits include design lead for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the "gameplay setting and story" are "built around the impact of Time Dilation, a concept I've been fascinated with since I was 12 years old."
In a comment on
the official Exodus site, he added that "we use Time Dilation as a catalyst impacting the choices you make in-game that sets in motion events affecting your relationships with your loved ones, and your entire civilization, for generations."
The press release explains that "decades" will indeed pass while you're embarked on interstellar missions. It notes that "the sacrifices you make to protect your loved ones create unpredictable consequences that change your world - reshaping the future. Returning home, you confront the consequences of your choices. In Exodus, the outcome of those choices manifests at a massive level, compounding over generations."
Ohlen has
said a bit more to Polygon on the subject. "[Time dilation] essentially supersizes all of the choices that you make," he said. "Instead of seeing the consequences of a choice you make in conversation or in gameplay, you know, days later, or weeks or months later, years or even decades later, you'll see the impact. The choice you made with, say, bringing a remnant technology back with you, or how you decided to use that tech. You're going to have all sorts of twists and turns, and family dynamics that just get really weird. You have some children, and you go off, and it's been a month for you, but 30 years for them. And they're like, 'What the fuck, dad?'"
He added that certain side characters might reappear from generation to generation, presumably because they've also been gadding about on faster-than-light ships. "A favourite companion might show up, even though a game takes place 5,000 years in the future... It allows us to tell a coherent story with companions with [their own] arcs. It is a bit complex, but it's something that we've already struggled with, and we figured out what the plan is moving forward." The characters most affected by time dilation in Exodus are the Celestials, an enemy (or are they?) faction of former humans, who fled a dying Earth shortly before you did, and have evolved into different species over thousands of years while you've been catching up with them.
And that's your lot for the minute, unless there's a tell-all interview I've missed. One way in which Exodus could keep the effects of time dilation in hand is by limiting chapters to specific planets, with each intervening jump to lightspeed advancing the story by millennia, rather than doing a Mass Effect and letting you roam a whole galaxy as you please before triggering the next plot development. I can't see how this production would be practical, otherwise, though I'd love Archetype to incorporate a little of the madness of
Relative Hell. Also, can we expect a McConaughey crying scene? And why does everybody in the key art above look like such a dork?
