It sounds like Exodus won’t be as adventurously kinky as Baldur’s Gate 3 when it comes to romances, while fans continue to wait for an update on the next Mass Effect.

While some fans of BioWare’s Mass Effect games aren’t convinced the promised sequel will ever arrive, following the recent changes at publisher EA, other studios such as Archetype Entertainment are picking up the slack.

The studio was founded by former BioWare staff and is busy working on a deliberately Mass Effect-esque role-playing game called Exodus, which was given an April 2027 release date at Gamescom last month.

One other blatant similarity Exodus shares with Mass Effect is that it will allow you to romance and have sex with party members, although you may be disappointed to learn that not all of them are romantically available, including the talking octopus.

This comes from an IGN interview with game director Chris King, narrative director Drew Karpyshyn, and general manager Chad Robertson, who were asked about how Exodus will be handling romance and sex scenes.

When questioned if Salt, an intelligent octopus who pilots a mechsuit, could be romanced, Karpyshyn said that she is ‘sadly’ unavailable, citing that this is because the character thinks ‘humans are gross.’

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So, anyone hoping for Baldur’s Gate 3 style engagements will likely be disappointed. That game not only let you do the horizontal tango with one octopus headed character, but also a bear (or technically a druid who had accidentally turned into one).

Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the only video games to handle sex scenes with a real sense of maturity, but from how King describes things, it sounds like Exodus will do the Mass Effect thing and just fade to black after a brief glimpse of side boob or a bare buttock.

‘I think we’re a bit closer to the reserved side, but certainly it’s clear what’s happening, but tasteful is a good way to describe it,’ said King.

As for actual Mass Effect, updates on the next game remain absent and it can be hard to feel much enthusiasm for it when BioWare has suffered numerous layoffs since the initial 2020 teaser.

Armando Troisi, who worked as a cinematic designer on the first two Mass Effect games, recently told FRVR that he has confidence the new game could turn out fantastic, since it still has experienced staff members who worked on the original games.

However, he argued that what is key is for the team at BioWare is to be just left alone without any interference: ‘If people get out of the way and let game creators just do their thing, you never know the magic that they can create.

‘I think, obviously, there’s a lot of different things that come to play in making a game of that scale. But trust your people and try to change the world with everything that you try to do. And I think that they can do it.’

So, the new Mass Effect is doomed, then, because EA is undoubtedly interfering with its development, especially since it branded BioWare’s last game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, as a sales flop.

Combined with how EA is in a lot of debt from its recent privatisation, the higher-ups will want the new Mass Effect to make as much money as possible, which could very well mean gross monetisation or even live service game elements.

There is precedent for this, as EA CEO Andrew Wilson previously suggested Dragon Age: The Veilguard would have performed better if it was a live service game.

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