Exodus will likely win the Mass Effect spiritual successor war, thanks partly to its Cool Octopus, but I think it has a boring hero problem

With The Expanse: Osiris Reborn proving lacklustre in the hands, I’d say Archetype’s time-dilating space RPG Exodus is currently closest to the much-coveted status of unofficial Mass Effect 5. The developers have dropped a release date – 7th April 2027 – alongside a new trailer which digs into the backstory of a super-intelligent octopus sniper, Salt, who fights in a mech.

I’m quite keen on Salt, partly because her mech is a nifty human-octopod hybrid, with segmented tentacle arms, and partly because she’s a selfish jerk. They’ve so far resisted the temptation to make the beautiful sea creature Wholesome. She’s not the only companion character Archetype are talking about right now – the below trailer also covers Emrys, a wiry Celestial who siphons energy away from opponents. They’re a member of a species with plural consciousness, which seems like it might complicate squad interactions. Again, quite interesting.

The drawback for these reveals is that they emphasise what I think is Exodus’s biggest issue – main character Jun Aslan is rather boring, a generic chosen one protagonist with Paragon/Renegade-style moral alignments, and some celebrity father issues. From what we’ve been told, Jun starts out as a backwater scavenger, but has greatness thrust upon them in the shape of the ability to activate ancient Celestial artefacts, precipitating a story about saving humankind from some weird interstellar disease.

It’s not a particularly generous or sophisticated analysis, but the default male Jun who features prominently in screens and trailers winds me up. He looks like how a lot of people want to look on Instagram: glossy parted hair; moist, bagless eyes; designer five-o-clock shadow. Exodus doesn’t appear to have a proper character editor – Archetype have said they’re going for a “more defined” look with “curated” options, so while I can add some flavour in the form of dramatic scars and so forth, I’ll always be playing a variation on that weirdly unappetising Adonis.

RPG protagonists should be more grotesque than this! Especially if the RPG is about time dilation, space viruses, and other plot variables liable to do terrible things to human flesh. ‘Charismatic’ and ‘ugly as sin’ aren’t mutually exclusive – just ask Commander Shepard. I think of Shepard’s pseudo blank-tablet ‘iconicity’ as a bizarre void formed by a bunch of mutually exclusive elements. You’ve got Chad Spaceman, BioWare’s glowering primary incarnation, with his battering ram forehead. You’ve got Femshep, the overshadowed ‘best’ default Shepard, celebrated for having red hair, being voiced by Jennifer Hale, and not being Chad Spaceman.

Both these, equally unconvincing Shepards form a repulsion field caught in the colossal digital shadow of all the custom Shepards generated by bullying the sliders in the character creator. When the first Mass Effect game out, I rolled with a platinum blonde pixie cut Femshep (I had a crush on Star Trek’s Tasha Yar). Over the course of the trilogy, the save import software appeared to steal essential nutrients from her skin, somehow shrinking her chin, even as plot shenanigans filled her flesh with cybernetic boondoggles.

It was as though she were being slowly pickled, and I wouldn’t say she was exactly hot stuff to begin with. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a hot Commander Shepard, really. I find Shepard appealing because I (alongside probably many others) cling to the dream of an ur-Shepard who is as magnificent and sexy as Commander Shepard is supposed to be. I do not get the same endlessly deferred gargoyle vibe from Jun Aslan, even though they are named after the Jesus lion from Narnia. Still, perhaps the world’s surviving machinima artists can do something once the game launches next year. Here’s a longer playthrough from a few months ago if you want to get a sense of the cover combat and dialogue direction.