Mass Effect veteran’s new sci-fi RPG Exodus introduces an alien race, and they’re so hardcore they put the Krogans to shame

Exodus has just unveiled a new alien species who sound hardcore enough to go toe-to-toe with Mass Effect’s Krogan.

If you’ve never heard of Exodus before, that comparison wasn’t just my attempt at pitting two unrelated sci-fi worlds against each other to appease the SEO Gods. Exodus is the debut game from Archetype Entertainment, which was co-founded by some senior Mass Effect talent and former BioWare higher-ups James Ohlen and Chad Robertson, and the similarities aren’t easy to ignore from there.

They’re both action-RPGs with a big emphasis on choice, though this time your decisions will ripple across the decades and even centuries thanks to some time-dilating weirdness. Exodus also has a Normandy-type hub area, this time in the form of an entire city. And both have their on take on a super gruff, super tragic, super bulky alien life form.

In a new blog post, Archetype Entertainment introduced the Arkavir, a hulking “bioengineered” race with sharp and scaley skin. They were apparently designed by galactic overseers called the Celestials to extract rare materials from normally uninhabitable planets “wreathed in toxic storms, scorched by radiation, and crushed under relentless gravity.” To that end, the Arkavir can withstand “acid rains that melt flesh, heat so searing it ignites air into fire, cold so deep it shatters bone.” I told you: hardcore. So, they’re just as frightening as they are tragic, also not unlike the Krogan.

The post features a few pieces of concept art of the Arkavir, who all vary in size and shape since all of those blistering winds and scorching deserts impact how they look. They’re still unmistakably terrifying, though.

While we wait for a release date, why not play some of the best RPG games available right now, instead?