EXODUS Q&A: You Can’t Max Your Character in One Playthrough, and Your Final

What the report says

Following my hour-long playthrough of EXODUS's Khonsu mission at gamescom 2026, I had the chance to speak with not one but three of the key developers from Archetype Entertainment: VP and General Manager Chad Robertson, Game Director Chris King, and Lead Writer Drew Karpyshyn. What followed was a wide-ranging conversation covering the studio's seven years of work on their debut IP, the shape of the universe it has built, and a great deal of detail about systems the demo only hinted at.Some highlights: the studio is a bit over 100 people in Austin, though with several hundred more contributing through development partners worldwide.

There will be at least six combat companions, and depending on your choices, the team you finish the game with might not be the same as anyone else's. Romances are open regardless of gender but have to be earned, and juggling more than one may well blow up in your face.The morality system splits into a Paladin path and an Immortal one, which, according to Archetype, is less about good and evil than about whether humanity should hold on to what makes it human or embrace Celestial evolution. And because Time Dilation means your decisions play out across decades, major choices come with a breakpoint system that previews the possible futures branching off them.

Below is our full conversation with Archetype Entertainment about EXODUS, lightly edited for clarity. As a reminder, the game launches on April 7, 2027 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.Can we start with the studio? Archetype was founded seven years ago, right before COVID. Did that beginning disrupt things?Chad Robertson: It's been seven years, and I think we probably anticipated being a little bit sooner to release the game, but COVID definitely... We slowed down hiring a bit and really tried to invest in making sure we had the IP and the world set up right in those early years.

Key details

Then, once we got used to COVID and things went back to normal, we went through a few pretty good stretches.Chris King: My favorite memory is that we had two rented offices, and then we moved to this new building. We were there two weeks before we all got sent home for COVID, and we never went back. Chad Robertson: We used it for about a month. Paid rent on it for about a year.Are you now mostly working from the office?Chad Robertson: The nucleus of the team is in Austin, Texas, and we're a bit over 100 people.

Most of those folks are based in Austin. And then we lean on several development partners across the country, or across the world, actually. So there are several hundred people who have been contributing to the game.I know you've been setting up the universe for a long time.Drew Karpyshyn: We've been building the IP. We started very early with a very small team, three of us and a few other key people. We wanted to focus on making sure we had our core values and the core themes we were going to explore.

So, of course, Time Dilation. It's a very big part of our universe, and it's one of the things that helps set us apart. Then we started to build onto that, brought other people in. The Awakened became a very big part of the universe.As we started to get a handle on what we were building, we started to bring in other people like Peter Hamilton, the novelist, to help us flesh things out and make sure we had a very rich, deep universe we could explore for not just the game we're trying to tell, but the books, the Secret Level episode, and hopefully many other games in the future.

More from the announcement

And the tabletop game.Right. I know the handbook is out already. Do you plan to do more on that transmedia front?Chad Robertson: We're still in contact with Peter. There may be some other stuff that comes. The intention with the IP has always been to make a franchise out of it with as many products as possible. Being part of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro makes that a lot easier, so we can reach into a bunch of different areas, whether it's the tabletop game, movies and media, toys, or whatever.When it comes to the novels, was the plan always to make two?Drew Karpyshyn: I think when you work with somebody like Peter Hamilton, you have to trust him to tell the story he wants to tell.

One of the big things we believe in is giving creative freedom as much as we can within the framework of the universe.