If you’ve played Battle Brothers, you’ll know that Overhype Studios have a way of making you care for an underling, no more so than when you inadvertently send them onto the wrong end of a sharp blade. Menace, their upcoming turn-based tactical RPG, will also put the wellbeing of your chosen fighters at the forefront of your mind – along with a dramatic shift from 2D medieval sprites to the fully 3D battlefields of a unruly space frontier.
During last year’s Game Awards, Archetype Entertainment unveiled its upcoming AAA RPG, Exodus. Crafted by a team of industry veterans, including former Mass Effect staff from BioWare and more recruits from 343, Naughty Dog, and other leading studios, Exodus promises to deliver a “next-generation, story-driven RPG” that blends cinematic storytelling with modern AAA gameplay.
Collaborating on the project is renowned sci-fi author Peter F. Hamilton. Acclaimed for his expansive Commonwealth Saga and The Night’s Dawn Trilogy, Hamilton has lent his world-building expertise to shape Exodus and its broader universe. Alongside consulting on the game, Hamilton is also penning a duology of books set in its universe. The first novel, Exodus: The Archimedes Engine, will be released on September 19, with preorders now available on Amazon in the UK and the US.
We had the pleasure of interviewing the author, discussing The Archimedes Engine, his assistance in constructing the Exodus universe, and how his signature storytelling style brings depth and complexity to this expansive new sci-fi franchise.
The team at Archetype Entertainment has praised you for helping make the Exodus universe more scientifically accurate. What were some key areas where your expertise made a significant difference?
PFH: The best example was my contribution to the method used by Celestial starships to travel between stars at just below lightspeed. They’d got the basic requirements worked out, I just suggested a more practical method of doing what they wanted, especially in terms of the energy requirement of accelerating the huge mass of a starship up to those speeds.
What were the biggest challenges in writing within a universe that’s being built for multiple platforms? Did any aspect of the world or characters evolve based on feedback from the game developers?
PFH: The whole experience of working with others on this kind of huge-scale project was extremely satisfying. The Archetype team had already drawn up their basic guidelines, what they wanted to achieve, for the Exodus universe by the time I came on board. Being able to apply my take on those objectives was something very new for me.
Sometimes I’d have to come up with whole new technologies, which is relatively easy for a sci-fi writer; then again sometimes I’d have to find a very different societal structure for a Dominion, which means a lot of backstory as to why certain Celestials behave the strange way they do.
I’d send these in and get feedback, which would often necessitate tweaking the concepts to make them a better fit. I think we managed to get most ideas polished after a couple of revisions. It was a very positive time for me.
The Exodus universe is populated by great houses and expansive star systems. How much freedom do you have to invent and flesh out these factions, and do any of them play a key role in The Archimedes Engine?
PFH: I wouldn’t describe it as having a freedom, given that I was one of the consultants that helped shape the nature of the Exodus universe. What that opportunity gave me was knowledge of what could and could not be out there. So when I needed to add a new Celestial species, society, or star system to the story, I knew what would fit into the universe and how to shape it accordingly. And yes, the Celestials play a huge part in the Archimedes Engine. They are not benign, which makes this a dangerous universe to explore, especially for humans.
What challenges did you face in balancing scientific realism with the imaginative demands of world-building in Exodus?
PFH: This is always a challenge for sci-fi. You want to push the envelope of what can be achieved, yet at the same time make it reasonably believable. In this case, the Archetype team had some good ground rules established for what they would and wouldn’t have in the Exodus universe. So in many respects it was like my usual worldbuilding, I always plot the parameters for what can be done before I start concentrating on the individual details. In other words: the team knew what they were doing.
The Archetype Entertainment team has mentioned how much they admire your work. How did their familiarity with your novels influence the creative process during collaboration?
PFH: That’s very kind of them. Given the type of novels and themes I usually write, that is: big stories set in the far future, I think they saw me as someone who could contribute to the kind of Space Opera setting they were building for Exodus. From my point of view, it was a great fit. I had a terrific time working with them.
The collaboration between novelists and game developers can be tricky. How do you ensure that the story and gameplay align while still retaining the unique strengths of each medium?
PFH: The simple answer to this is that The Archimedes Engine is not a novelisation of the game. It takes place in the Exodus universe, but over a century after the game, and in a different solar system. The characters featured in the Archimedes Engine don’t appear in the game, although they do provide a few glimpses and comments on some of the worlds you’ll encounter in the game. So what the reader will take from this is an understanding of how the Exodus universe works in terms of its history and the people who live in it.
Can you talk about the alien species or civilizations beyond the Celestials? How do they differ culturally or technologically from the human factions, and what roles do they play?
PFH: There are no aliens in the Exodus universe in a biological sense. That was one of the more interesting draws for me when I was asked to join the project. All the life you encounter in the Exodus universe has a terrestrial origin — that doesn’t mean that humans don’t find very alien worlds and behaviours in the Centauri Cluster. The original humans have spent forty thousand years developing themselves in some very odd directions.
You’ve mentioned time dilation as a key concept. How does it affect relationships, politics, or even warfare within this universe?
PFH: It was one of the major themes that the game developers wanted to explore, as it allows the player to have a real understanding about the consequences of their decisions. This is all due to keeping interstellar travel limited to .999 lightspeed; so there is no faster than light travel. Which (quick explanation) thanks to Einstein’s relativity: if you travel a couple of light years to a new star at a fraction below the speed of light, it will seem like a week to those on board the starship, while years pass to those you’ve left behind.
Same principal applies for The Archimedes Engine, some choices taken by characters only become apparent to them decades later when they return home after such a flight. As to the warfare / conflict part, anyone undertaking a revolution or invasion has to plot out their moves at a grandmaster level. Some actions won’t produce results for decades, if not longer. That means you have to be very certain the effect will play out as you expect before you launch it.
In Exodus: The Archimedes Engine, Finn’s decision to become a Traveler seems pivotal to the plot. What makes the role of a Traveler unique within this universe, and how does it shape Finn’s journey?
PFH: Travelers are unique in that they are a super-minority of the human population who do exactly that: travel. They are the ones who have the strength and determination to defy the Celestial Dominions, and try to carve out something for themselves, which requires a level of freedom most humans in the Centauri Cluster simply don’t have.
They see themselves as noble rebels and visionaries whose actions will one day lead their fellow humans out from under the oppression of the Dominions — and also make a decent profit on the side. Whether those fellow humans see them in that light is another matter.
The Exodus universe clearly draws on themes of power dynamics, exploration, and the search for freedom. How do these themes manifest in The Archimedes Engine, and how central are they to the broader narrative of the franchise?
PFH: Those three themes are innate human qualities, so for me writing them was simply a reflection of past, current, and future life. Despite being set in 40,000 years’ time, and featuring hundreds of Celestial (post-human) societies in their Dominions, the Archimedes Engine couldn’t not deal with such topics.
In many respects these issues are what unifies us — the ‘us’ being what humans have evolved into in Exodus; despite all their differences and advanced physical and mental attributes, the Celestials can still be understood in purely human terms. However much they try to push their evolution they cannot throw off their heritage. In some cases, their technology and power even amplify those original biological traits. All of which makes what we are and what we can become absolutely central to the story here.
In The Archimedes Engine, how do the Celestials’ advanced evolution and technology impact their interactions with humanity? Are there moral or philosophical conflicts that arise due to these differences?
PFH: All the time. It is a constant worry for humans, especially travelling to a Dominion about which they know very little. Sometimes they can be completely ignored, or despised, or told to “Get out!” in no uncertain terms. Travelers have to be so much more than just starship crews, explorers, and mercenary scavengers, they have to be diplomats of the highest order every time they emerge into a new star system. Many human Traveler starships simply don’t return home, and their families don’t know why.
The relationship between the Celestials and human settlers seems to mirror historical patterns of colonization and empire-building. Was this parallel intentional, and how do you explore these dynamics in the story?
PFH: Some aspects can be drawn from and are reflected in history, some have more modern parallels. In the Exodus universe, the Celestial Dominions have a considerable technological and economic superiority over the newcomers (humans) who are still arriving in their ancient ark ships.
Celestials regard humans as completely inferior, which makes it hard for them to fit into the existing Dominions. A development which feeds directly into the earlier question about freedom, and how powerful that desire features in what it is to be human. In effect, it becomes a mirror held up to the age-old question: how much freedom do you give up to live in an ordered society?
What aspect of The Archimedes Engine are you most excited for readers to experience?
PFH: I’m going to go with finding out what the Archimedes Engine itself actually does.
Exodus is expanding to more than just novels, and will be part of the upcoming Secret Level animated series revealed at gamescom 2024. Prime Video’s Secret Level is an anthology series by the creators of Love, Death + Robots. Each episode is basically a short film inspired by the characters and worlds of iconic video games like God of War, Mega Man, Unreal Tournament, and Pac-Man.
Last year, also speaking with IGN, James Ohlen, whose resume includes serving as a designer on Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins at BioWare, shed additional light on the long-awaited RPG, which was first teased back in 2020. They talked about how the time dilation element works, how Exodus will also take inspiration from Indiana Jones, how combat will flow, and more.
Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.
To survive in looter-booter Pacific Drive you have to keep the paranormal station wagon you drive around in good nick. You’re constantly repairing corroded doors and swapping out busted engine parts with cobbled-together technology. But maybe this tinkering was a little too much. Our review praised the game for its “trunk loads of atmosphere” but called the constant need to craft stuff “laborious”. If you also felt this, then good news. An update now lets you fiddle the difficulty options a generous amount, say developers Ironwood Studios, making the game easier and bringing crafting needs right down.
Buuut… if you thought the opposite – that the game wasn’t hard enough – you can now tick a box that makes hitting yourself with the trunk door kill you stone dead.
Yep, even more.
Hot on the heels of last week’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder bundle in Australia, Nintendo has announced two new Switch bundles which include Mario Kart 8: Deluxe and 12 months of Nintendo Switch Online Individual Membership.
Due out early this fall — so probably sometime next month — the bundles will include a digital download code for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the aforementioned 12 Months of NSO, and either an OLED or a regular Switch model. It’s not confirmed whether the DLC is included
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
As the New York Liberty charts a course to the 2024 WNBA Playoffs, Xbox and Sea of Thieves are landing on the shores of Brooklyn to add their fearless seafaring energy to the fandom. We’ll spread fun and pirate shenanigans across the five boroughs, finally coming together at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on International Talk Like a Pirate Day – Thursday, September 19 – to celebrate the New York Liberty’s final home game of the regular season. The Liberty are marauding their way into the playoffs, and the Sea of Thieves crew will bring all the trappings of a proper pirate send-off as the team pursues their first championship.
The Liberty’s mascot, Ellie the Elephant, will serve as “Pirate Queen” for the week, leading the Sea of Thieves’ pirate crew as they make landfall across New York City today, sharing their signature swashbuckling excitement with fans. Once the pirates land, from September 16-18, Ellie will send her crew out to the five boroughs to hide various pirate treasure such as New York Liberty VIP tickets and one, three and six-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscription token codes (in the form of Gold Doubloons) around the city. Follow Ellie the Elephant on social media for clues on where to find the treasure!
The adventure continues September 19 at the Liberty’s Fan Appreciation Game, where Ellie and her pirate crew will host more Xbox giveaways and help fans perfect their “arrrgh”s and “aye matey”s—just in time for International Talk Like a Pirate Day. For the ultimate nautical flair, this game will feature a custom Xbox and Sea of Thieves-themed court at Barclays Center.
The continuation of the Liberty and Xbox’s award-winning and innovative partnership allows both brands to reach and engage with new fans in unique ways, while also creating synergy between the WNBA and gaming communities.
This collaboration continues Xbox’s commitment to women’s sports. In past seasons, we have teamed up with the Liberty to bring the excitement of Roblox and Starfield to the team’s loyal fanbase, and now the adventure continues with Sea of Thieves, marking yet another innovative partnership.
In Sea of Thieves, the fun of International Talk Like a Pirate Day lasts all week long! Check out discounts in a Pirate Emporium sale beginning September 19, stream your adventures on Twitch and give out Twitch Drops to your viewers, and set course for a Community Weekend full of login bonuses and boosted rewards. Check out the Sea of Thieves website and social channels for all the dates and details!
The post Sea of Thieves & Xbox in NYC to Kick Off New York Liberty’s Push to Playoffs appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Nintendo has announced two new Nintendo Switch bundles for release this fall: Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch – OLED Model, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online membership.
These bundles, Nintendo hopes, will prove popular among shoppers hoping to get a jump on the holiday rush.
The $349.99 Nintendo Switch – OLED Model: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle includes the Nintendo Switch – OLED Model system with white Joy-Con controllers, a download code for the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe game, and a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online individual membership.
The $299.99 Nintendo Switch: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle includes a Nintendo Switch system with Neon Red and Neon Blue Joy-Con controllers, a download code for the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe game ($59.99) and a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online individual membership ($19.99).
Nintendo said both bundles offer a combined saving of $79.98 each, and will be available online, in the My Nintendo store, and in select retail stores by October, while supplies last.
As the Switch nears the end of its life cycle and Nintendo readies its long-awaited announcement of the Switch 2, there are still a number of Switch exclusive games due out. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (which has just leaked) comes out September 26, Super Mario Party Jamboree launches October 17, Mario & Luigi: Brothership has a November 7 release date, and Donkey Kong Country Returns HD hits Switch on January 16, 2025.
With Nintendo Switch now in its eighth year since launch, unit sales of both hardware and software have decreased significantly year-on-year. Nintendo now faces a difficult job boosting sales of the Switch, which is now up to an incredible 140 million sold, while the world awaits its next-gen console.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Tiny Glade has been a constant presence on TikTok for the last year or so. It’s never far away. In between burrito recipes and hymns to the Fujifilm X100v, this gorgeous toylike art tool’s gamely turning stretches of balmy meadow into semi-ruined castles, semi-ruined villages and semi-ruined citadels.
Dreamy and slightly haunted, it’s conjured words like “bewitching” and “spellbinding” in the comments sections, too. It makes sense, really. Tiny Glade’s a game about making rustic dioramas and then photographing them. It’s not hard to imagine some exiled magical person might live in here among the rocks and reeds and wild heather.
A Stardew Valley fan has recreated the entire Pelican Town using LEGO in a 75,000 piece build that even brought out developer ConcernedApe.
The build premiered at BrickCon 2024 and includes every iconic building such as the Wizard’s Tower, Community Center, JojaMart, and, of course, the player’s farm. An enormous version of the Stardew Valley title screen was built from LEGO and placed behind the model too.
Creator Steve Jensen told PC Gamer the build took around two years to complete, and his favorite elements include the Hat Shop, “because I was able to make [it] almost entirely hollow, so you can look through the cracks and broken parts and see through to more such openings on the other side, just as a rundown, abandoned structure would be,” Jensen said.
@beyondthebrick Huge LEGO Stardew Valley by Steve Jensen #lego #stardewvalley ♬ original sound – Beyond the Brick
“Another fave is the Wizard’s Tower. I was able to get the shape I wanted, including a peaked door, and vines growing up the sides, the cone-shaped roof in blue, everything.”
The effort certainly impressed the LEGO community as the Stardew Valley build earned the People’s Choice award at BrickCon, and it even attracted the game’s creator. Eric Barone, the one man developer behind ConcernedApe, turned up to admire the recreation of his own work, something Jensen said was “even bigger news than an award.”
Stardew Valley is a beloved farming simulator blended with role-playing game elements that was dubbed a masterpiece in IGN’s updated 10/10 review for 2024. “More than just a cozy farming sim, eight years of updates have grown Stardew Valley into a modern classic with an endless list of enticing activities to complete and a deeply satisfying time management challenge to take on,” we said.
These updates have slowed down progress on ConcernedApe’s next game Haunted Chocolatier though, as Barone said in August he hasn’t worked on it “in a long time” due to the grandiose version 1.6 update.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Alruna And The Necro-Industrialists opens with paired quotes from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and Mad Max: Fury Road – a blend of influences that would typically get you kicked out of the Creative Writing Club for being simultaneously too fancy and too obvious, but the game beyond the epigraph looks pretty swish.
It’s “a compact and high-density Metroidvania, with a focus on sequence-breaking and playing things out of order”. It uses a square aspect display ratio calibrated to give wizened Game Boy enthusiasts the shakes, and is made up of 200 single-screen rooms that “slot into the larger puzzle-box of the world”. Also, you play a thorn witch who looks a bit like 1950s Tinkerbell, with a touch of Betty Boop. Here’s a trailer.
A former Bungie lawyer has commented on upcoming improvements to embattled live service looter shooter Destiny 2, saying the role of parent company Sony in “forcing” through these changes is very much a good thing.
Last week, Bungie unveiled what it called “major changes” to Destiny 2 that it hopes will win back players. Bungie has reportedly struggled to meet key financial targets, with Destiny 2 significantly underperforming last year. The Final Shape expansion reportedly sold less at launch than last year’s critically panned Lightfall.
Destiny 2 will now adopt a new model that includes the release of two medium-sized expansions and four major free content updates annually.
“This evolution aims to enhance the player experience through a new multi-year saga, introducing a non-linear story, more systemic innovation, and significant improvements to core game activities and rewards,” Bungie said.
One of the problems with Destiny 2 that Bungie has now identified is that it’s nigh on impenetrable to newcomers. Speaking in a blog post, game director Tyson Green admitted Destiny is “too complex.” “With literally hundreds of activities, you practically need a PhD to decide what to play and how to get rewards you’re looking for, Green added, before revealing plans to modernizing Destiny 2’s user interface “to make it easier for everyone to find and launch into great activities.”
In a LinkedIn post, Don McGowan, the former general counsel at Bungie, reacted to a Kotaku article rounding up the Destiny 2 changes to say he was pleased with Sony’s apparent influence here, which, he said, means the studio is finally “running the game like a business.”
“Much though it pains me to say this, it appears that Sony’s inflicting some discipline on my former colleagues may have forced them to fix the things that were wrong with their game,” McGowan said.
“To be clear: I’m not talking about the layoffs, I’m talking about forcing them to get their heads out of their asses and focus on things like: implementing a method of new player acquisition; not just doing fan service for the fans in the Bungie C-suite; and running the game like a business. Good. I still have friends in that environment and I’d like them to keep jobs.
“This is the future I thought the company should embrace after the Sony acquisition: a studio, not an ‘independent company.’ But there were a lot of egos for whom it was important to pretend that ‘nothing would change.’
“I remember sitting there during the deal saying ‘do you think Sony describes this as them getting to pay $3.6 billion for the right to have no input into what Bungie does?’ That was exactly what a lot of people thought. I guess they’ve been given cause to understand that that’s not how things work. Good. The changes described in this article are the things you do to run a franchise, not to keep making the game you and your friends have mastered, or to chase trends.”
IGN has asked Sony for comment.
Bungie’s Destiny 2 changes come amid a period of speculation and unrest within the Destiny community about the franchise’s future. Uncertainty grew when Bungie announced plans to cut 220 staff in late July, with an additional 155 workers planned to move from Bungie into Sony Interactive Entertainment in the coming months. That left the developer with around 850 employees.
“I realize all of this is hard news, especially following the success we have seen with The Final Shape,” controversial studio head Pete Parsons said in a statement. “But as we’ve navigated the broader economic realities over the last year, and after exhausting all other mitigation options, this has become a necessary decision to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials.”
Bungie reportedly has no plans for Destiny 3 and has canceled a Destiny spinoff project known as Payback. Development on its Marathon revival is said to still be ongoing.
In December, IGN reported on an apparent scramble by Bungie studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover. Then, in March, IGN reported on a leadership shakeup on Marathon, which included the removal of long-time Bungie designer Christopher Barrett from the game director role.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
