Exodus gameplay preview shows off combat, companions, and morality system.

We took a look back at Exodus, a sci-fi RPG from former BioWare developers. At the Future Games Show, 20 minutes of new gameplay footage was revealed, giving us a look at everything from combat to dialogue.

However, there is one feature worth polishing up, as it sounds very familiar to Mass Effect veterans. In a preview ahead of today's showcase, the developers explained more about the Traveler Oath system. This is part of character creation and allows players to choose what kind of alignment their character follows. It's similar to Mass Effect's Renegade and Paragon systems, except you make choices from the start.

Exodus divides morality into two “oaths” that can be followed: Paladin and Immortal.

During the preview, the developers provided some details about how Traveller Oaths will work. There are two paths, Paladin and Immortal, and these paths determine how the player character, Jun Aslan, behaves – whether the ends justify the means, and how the ends seem to them. Since your mission is to find technology that can save the Earth, part of Traveler Oath is also how you use that technology.

“The Oath is a general philosophy about leadership, how you want to approach power, how you handle power, how you think about celestial technology, and what humans should eventually evolve into,” says Drew Karpyshyn, lead writer for Exodus. “It has a huge impact on the story and the companions.”

Like Mass Effect before it, you affect your Paladin and Immortal scores through decisions you make in the story or how you talk to people (like threatening or persuading them). However, the skills you choose from the skill tree also affect combat, as they reward you with Paladin and Immortal points. In that respect, it reminds me a bit of KOTOR, and I think he had light side, dark side, and all-purpose abilities.

Since I chose an oath in the character creator, I asked if this would lock me into a certain path early on. Developers say no.

“So we want you to be able to react to the situation moment by moment,” says Karpyshyn. “Sometimes that means some players will say they want to react in this moment specifically in this way, while other characters will say they want to embrace a philosophy, an archetype, and follow that path.”

Game director Chris King doubled down on this, saying he didn't want players to go down a certain path too early. “One of the things we’ve tried to do with these systems is to try them out a little bit so the user can get a feel for it without being punished,” he says. “For the moral system specifically, you get to make choices in the character creator from the start, but you can jump around here and there. You're not committed to it, and you're not punished if you want to go in a different direction.”

That means you will be rewarded for moving in one direction and sticking to it. This is pretty much how Mass Effect works. At least there will be some reward for each decision you make. This is something we didn't really get in Mass Effect. I'm sure many of us are haunted by the memory of not being able to get the optimal outcome from a situation because we weren't committed to either side.

Exodus is scheduled to be released in 2027.