Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Mass Effect's Heir: Exodus Looks FANTASTIC! - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Thank you for watching!

If you want to get our shows ad-free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash kind of funny. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Thursday, July 2nd, 2026. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller alongside the Hispanic hardthrope, Texas Street, Latino heat, clicking heads and ripping them to shreds, globe trotting, head shot and rooting, rooting, two-point shooting, I keep you on your toes. I like the, you do the ball fake, the pump fake day, you know what I mean?

He's the nitro rifle from Twitch. dot TV. Andy Cortez. Stop ducking me, Ross. Boom. Stop duck. Why I think he's so scared to you? Because he knows you're better.

Um, I mean, I legitimately, we're trying to figure out ways how to make this three-point shooting competition even a little bit fair. And I was like, Roger, what if we did like,

every one of yours counts for like 10 of mine? Oh, damn. You know what I mean? Like, damn. What's the quickest way we could sort of even this out? I just don't, I don't know if there's, I mean, it really is the hydrogen bomb versus the coughing baby meme.

You know what I mean? Like there's just, there's not even a semblance of a competition here. Why did he think he could do better? Why did he make this decree? I don't know. I really don't. He moves like an old man as Nick has talked about. I think this was, I think this was maybe on the heels of last year's NBA finals or NBA playoffs where he was just like kind of in a basketball.

ball, maybe, you know, get ready for me in a year. Yeah. The thought was always, you know... Quite in the Western front now, though. Yeah, it's been really, really quiet. So, you know, initially we wanted to rent out a gym to have me go out there and see how fast it would take me to make 1,000 three-pointers as a lot of other content creators have done.

Sure. And, you know, I was like, man, I'm kind of worried about that. And I've seen, and apparently, like, some really shitty players took them, like, eight hours. I was like, oh, I could definitely do that in, like, four or something like that. Um, and then we talked to the people and they were like, was this for commercial use? And Mike's like, no. And it's like, no, it is.

And he was like, well, we're not filming a commercial. I was like, not what he meant by commercial use. I remember that story. I didn't know what was about this. Yeah. Hold that story. Yeah. I realized that's how far back we're.

Yeah. It's not, he was like, we're not big, you know, filming an ad for AT&T. I was like, it's not. That's not what they mean by commercial use. Mike, no, no. No. It's not. It's not mean.

Of course, everybody. But we're not here to talk about how bad Roger is at three-point shooting or walking to the bathroom at the movies. We're here to talk to you about video games because that's what we do each and every weekday on the games cast, reviews, previews, and the big topics we need to talk about. If you like that, usually be part of the show with a super chat on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. But today, we're actually pre-recording because schedules are getting hairier and hairier. So you can't do that. But luckily, people over on patreon.com slash kind of funny, use quip, which is their social media platform inside of Patreon to answer my question.

When I asked them, what do you want out of a mass effect clone? What do you know about Exodus? I got a whole bunch of responses. Thank you so much. And thank you so much to everyone who's a Patreon producer on patreon.com slash kind of funny. Like Carl Jacobs and Macabuster Delaney, the Psalm twining and lax nomad. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be. Topic of the show.

Dats. That's, not. Andy, let's talk about the air to the mass effect throne. Let's talk about it. Is it Exodus? Is it the Exodus? expanse. There's a lot to dive into. But we'll begin with the one and only

Exodus. As you know, Andy, we have just come off of SGF, as the kids call it. Old people call it summer game fest. Where there were a million different games, conferences, previews, all sorts of stuff happened. And right before SGF,

I got to go watch an Exodus demo behind closed doors on the internet. Then they just published the whole thing out there for everybody else. But I feel like he got buried in the insanity of SGF and the million other things going on. Do you agree? Yeah, for sure, because this was not even something I was aware that you did.

Yeah. Until I had watched the shorter trailers that they kind of break up. Sure. And then, you know, eventually we're about to see here. I was like, did you get a chance to check this out? And you're like, oh, yeah. It seemed like it was just one of those kind of passing things that didn't, but I was supremely blown away by what they're working.

here with Exodus. If you don't know, everybody, this is the steam description. Exodus is a sci-fi action adventure RPG where you become the traveler, leading humanities fight for survival against the Celestials. Face our evolution 40,000 years in the future, explore extraordinary worlds and confront time itself to shape the fate of generations. You step forward into the role of June Aslan, a salvager turned traveler, a renegade among the stars and hunter of ancient secrets. Embark on interstellar missions to recover celestial remnants. That may hold the key to humanity's survival. Return to a changed world where time dilation has amplified your choices and reshaped the future of humanity. This is targeting 2027. The developer is archetype

entertainment publisher Wizards of the Coast. You might remember this one as the Matthew McConaughey game. That is the deal. Of course, December 2023, it was the Game Awards. And all right, all right, all right. Matthew McConaughey himself came out on stage. Talk about this and show the game. And since then, that's what people knew it as, but I felt like it's been quiet, but then you turn out, you go to their YouTube page,

they've been putting stuff up all over the place. It's just so hard to get any mind share for what I lovingly call a double a game. This clearly, this is a archetype as a small developer. You might not know who they are. It's because they've never made anything. We go to Game Informer where Kyle over there wrote the following

paragraph. You probably know, Exodus as the Matthew McConaughey game as the actor's involvement was the pillar on which the game was promoted when it was revealed in 2023. McConaughey plays CC or Lev in Exodus, but his role seems ultimately minor in the larger universe and story. Parentheses, though we could be wrong, time will tell. The arguably more interesting and affecting involved party in the game is James Olin. Olin worked at BioWare for more than two decades, had his hand on every franchise BioWare worked on and created, and was the developer's senior creative director at the time when he left to lead archetype entertainment with Wizards of the Coast and help build the universe of Exodus.

We, of course, right now are watching that we just saw McConaughey on stage. Hey, hey, hey, hey, all right, all right. And then jumping into this trailer that, again, Andy, 2023, with the clip of news we get in 26, might have well have met a decade ago. And I remember people talking about Exodus here in, there over these past three years, but then trying to pin it down and you watch this trailer. It's a great trailer.

Setting up some interesting stuff here as we are in this protagonist, boots, he's a traveler, leaves this person behind, and then starts getting into time dilation and the fact that you know, hundreds of years are going to pass while he has to leave this woman who loves him behind. Miller's Planet. Millers Planet.

McConnell makes a reference to it when he's on the Game Ward stage if you don't remember. I'm not shocked that I don't remember. it better or I guess more because again at the clip in which games are being announced and released if you aren't giving me

a firm date or you know what I mean like your announced trailer can be hot as hell and I just forget about it and the long run kind of thing we've seen so many games at these showcases just get cancelled yes Jesus Christ just appear in nothing and then also the fact that I think sometimes they have that

look that can blend together and I think back to me talking about this being a double A mass effect is kind of what it's going for and maybe I'm Maybe we'll be far out strip those things, but I think those are the ambitions, and I like that about it, Andy. You know, I also think of the expanse of Cyrus Reborn, which we previewed back in April here on the Games cast when we got to play that beta that launched on the pre-order thing and dive into that. And I can understand for me and give myself some credit as to why it all kind of went out with the wash in terms of what we were doing. But again, all that said, three years later, hopefully knock on wood, you know how the industry goes a year or less than a year before the release of this.

I'm so impressed with what we are about to watch again and go through with the audience. Yeah, same, Greg. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that when the first time we saw it, like we just saw right there on the video, it was a cinematic. It was a pre-rendered cutscene cinematic.

Not in the game. This is just all, it's like when you hear Blur Studios, they made the trailer for something or whatever. And those always look a certain way. They're always super impressive. But then when we saw the first gameplay trailer of it, maybe, I don't know, a year or two ago or whatever, I was decidedly less excited for it. Yeah. Now, obviously, game development takes a while and things take time to develop and watching a lot of the animations in the first sort of glimpses of gameplay.

And obviously, you know, a game not being optimized, it was very, it was very framey, but it looked very stiff and very like, you know, you. you know, hey, we don't have the, the strongest animation team, right? Or, you know, whatever. You know, it looked very much lower budget. Yeah. And ever since then, I'm like, okay, this could be cool. However, I'm not going to expect the moon.

And I'm still telling myself, don't fucking expect the moon in. I don't expect the moon is the big thing about it. You know, I right now I'm on my double A tear coming off of that vampire game I played. You know what I mean? 6.5 had a great time. Okay game, but a great time. Enjoyed what it has.

looking at this, I'm getting, like, especially coming off the expanse, Osiris reborn. If you missed it, the expanse of Cyrus Reborn is a third person, action RPG, set in the expanse universe. You're no hero, just a murk caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to hold your crew together and keep your ship up and running. Your choices, shape your story. That's going to be developed and published by Alcat Games, Q227.

Like I said, we previewed in April. That one playing it, I, what you and me were like, oh, yeah, it's stiff, but it's got that feeling of mass effect. I like, and if they can pay off with choices, which you don't really see in the demo, but there is a choice in there or whatever, let's go. I'm interested in it.

Coming with that interpretation to then go and see Exodus, I was impressed how much better Exodus looks and seems to be doing what I want out of my mass effect clone, if that makes sense. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a lot more in the spirit of what we're used to. Yeah. with, you know, when I think of,

when I think of Mass Effect, I think of like an awesome world of Star Trek-style alien life forms. And here it seems to be these awakened creatures that are real-life animals that talk to you. Yeah, an elephant. Via who knows what sort of technology they're using. And that allows for a lot of, I think, cool characterizations. I think of any time I'm in Mass Effect and I'm at a vendor

and I see a Hanar and it's one of those big jelly jelly fish hook and they're yeah they you know hello shepherd I you know this grothold saw

yeah exactly and it's like wow what a cool way to kind of personify these alien life forms yeah and even in the trailer that we're about to see you get that cool glimpse of the elephant but yeah I with the expanse

played it was overwhelmed I was wellmed. Yeah. I was less disappointed than I thought I'd be with it. Now, it has, you know, a whole lot of AI stuff going on with, you know, you know, them using AI to kind of help concept how certain things might look, which was a bummer. But it still looked more impressive than I thought it'd be visually.

Just wasn't super stoked with some of the writing and some of the characters. Well, they were, they fired the voice actor. They sure did. Demo went out. They sure did. But I certainly liked it more than the first time we saw Exodus gameplay. Okay. Okay. Now with this more recent one, I'm like, ooh, Exodus is like higher on the charts. It is higher up the charts, right? And when we talk about like, yes, it is a double A version.

Well, so, you know, Mass Effect 1 was very much a small game. It just had so much heart with, it had so much, like, great, so many great writing moments that are memorable. and you just go, man, you don't, you don't need to sell me the, you don't need to give me the biggest budget video game. Give me great moments like when I think of all of the amazing times and I'm blown away by, by the writing and characters in Citizen Sleeper. Like if you could give me that on a third person shooter sort of realm, holy shit, we could be cooking here.

And hopefully with the help of Drew Carpician, Carpetian, Carpician, I never know, pronounce the last name. who is one of the writers of Exodus, who was also the senior writer for Cotor, Knights of the Old Republic, and was lead writer on the first two Mass Effect games. And that's like, that's the lineage you want to hear.

Whenever people get excited about, holy shit, Casey, Hudson's making a Star Wars game, it's like that's the type of stuff that the Mass Effect nerds go, oh my God, could we be back in some sort of way, you know? So yeah, if you are here with us, congratulations. I want to jump into this Exodus demo that we saw that they released after the fact.

We'll pause it. We'll talk during it. There's lots of talking during it as well. So if you're an audio listener, obviously you're not going to see the visuals, but I think you're going to get enough out of it and we will be stopping enough to make you sure you're enjoying it and rolling with it. As we talk about what we're seeing, go through it and then obviously talk about it after the fact. So you could skip ahead if you really wanted to. If you're that kind of person in your audio car.

But otherwise, bear it let's roll that. that beautiful bean footage. And right off the bat, it's like, that's so massive. It looks so much better, I think, then. Love these superpowers. Which I'm not trying to knock it, but bringing up your wheel, flipping around, having your UI. When we played Osiris Reborn, it was very much like,

okay, I see what you're working with. And granted, neither of these games are out yet, so anything could happen. But I was happy with the style of that case, and I didn't expect that. Leaning more towards the fantasy and the sci-fi. Can we get more audio out here? In Exodus, you play as a trend. Thank you, Bear. Venturing on dangerous missions deep into space

in search of powerful alien remnants that can save your dying homeworld. You'll journey to deadly planets, derelict ships, and the remains of lost worlds. Just those environment, all three of those environments we just saw look fucking awesome. And again, when we use AA,

some people want to get in their head that means it has to look cheap or bad or whatever, right? I just mean team size and budget size. It's usually independent third party stuff. The fact that I think that looks so good already. Things can still look amazing, but I in my mind go, all right, I'm not going to be able to interact with all of the stuff on a way that I don't even necessarily need for this type of game.

I'm okay with getting to a place. And yes, there may be invisible game dev walls, but if the people there that I'm there to meet have cool shit to say and things to talk about and relationships, like, oh, man, that's what I want. This is back to my conversation with you. you and obviously all of you on Greg away about in defensive AA and Bloodlines 2, Vampire the Mascarate Bloodlines

2 in particular where it was like that cast is so small but I got to know everybody I dealt with where it wasn't one of those things in fallout where I meet someone I'm like what was your who were you again? What am I doing like oh I know you I know you thank you you Barry using your wits and teamwork to survive the terrifying creatures

that try to stop you along the way you'll choose who to fight beside who to fall for and who leave behind you play you play ashley ashley aslan racist lowly salvager living on the outskirts of Leiden this is where his story begins alongside his awakened friend Houston the big fucking dog Houston big fox is it a foxesd wolf that's what it means my best very similar yeah yeah I think so

Big dire wolf. Guy, right? June was orphaned from a once powerful family. He has a unique and mysterious genetic trait that lets him interact with ancient celestial technology, and it's this trait which might be the key to saving your home planet. Shit.

It really works. Salvage of stream. You'll be able to customize you June as a male or female, with several options to adjust your appearance. Can you pause here, Bear? At the start of the game, you'll also...

because I have a good little breakdown here from the homie Shinobi, 6-02 on social, who I've hung out with twice, no big deal. So you know what he looks like? Met him in a real life. Yeah. Did you try to take a photo? The first time I did was at the Dragon Age Veilgard event, and it was me and Lucy James and Shinobi,

and I was like, hey, I'm here with the crew, but I cut off his face like before he was revealed as a little cute thing. You put me in the photo. You weren't there the next day. You left early. Remember that? Hey, you did stay over. Exodus, I had to say in that hotel.

You live 40 minutes. I had to experience the culture of Redwood, you know. Exodus, character customization will focus on curated options rather than the full slider-based character creator, which leaves some people disappointed. Naturally so. June will be a more, quote-unquote, defined character with an established look, says developer archetype. Customizable options include male-female, hair colors, and styles, facial hair, eye-color, makeup, tattoos. as long as we have a beard and a mustache that can be disconnected, then you'll be happy.

You won't hear any complaints from me. Okay. And I totally understand wanting to create your RPG character. Completely understand that. I think the fact that this character is still named June Azlin, and it's not just Captain Aslan, and you name the first name, whatever you want. Sure, sure, sure.

I named always like Andres Shepard or Andy Shepard or whatever the hell in Mass Effect. I think that totally makes sense that like, well, hey, we got a budget and we got time for what we can do. And you know, a lot of those things take

a lot more time to do, obviously. Would I love for them to drop the bag for Wizard of the Coast to say, hey, here's another two million. Give us an awesome. Of course I would. But I am happy knowing that everything else that we are about to see seems really well thought out.

And it's still, at its core, it's still June Aslan. It's just like it was God dang, freaking Star Wars Jedi. What's his name? Calcestis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You could give them hairstyles, but it's so Calcestis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is their story for June Asland. I agree 100%. I think the more and more I play RPGs, the more and more I get away now from doing myself for Taylor Swift or Jen, you know what I mean? I try to make, I've been using the name Vexus.

a lot. Kind of pulling like a Cid from Final Fantasy thing where I'm just playing it. So I'll make a Vex and who's a cool man. And who's the VIII? Thank you. I stole it from Laura Bailey, critical role. Oh, destiny. I was thinking Destiny to DeVex. No, no, no. I would never do that. I don't want to get sued by Bungie. Stupid. What's that? How many people work there anymore? Oh, no. The other thing I want to point out before

we jump back in is to listen to the narrator here is Chris King, game director. And he sounds, I mean this lovingly, like a huge fucking dork. And when I'm hearing about my RPG, that's the kind of guy I want talking to me. I don't need a, I don't want, I want, Chris, you sound like a fucking nerd like me. Tell me why I want to like this game.

Well, I mean, it's funny you bring that up because when I reacted to this. You get a fucking photo of Chris too? No, I was like, hey, this is a really, really limited reference. But if you get it, you get it. It reminds me of when Dwight Shrewd makes a call pretending to be Toby. And he goes, things are getting really bad around here. That's exactly what I thought of. he's like he's imitating every employee in the office on the phone and he calls as toby

things are getting really bad around here yeah that's exactly what he reminded of you hell yeah you're killing christie go for it so choose your character's initial alignment either a virtuous paladin or an ambitious immortal paragon renegades get on the ground left don't be stupid they've got a combat mac drop your weapons now these choices will shape your character and change how the world responds to you listen to your friend and let this go not gonna happen you're gonna have a third person shoot those guns sound good work and progress gameplay so you can get a feel how's a love a reputation of people talking different choices and characters that make up exodus

sticky grenades the first two companions you meet are alice and tom elise is an impatient mech pilot that loves to blow stuff up and leans into brute force tom is an experienced traveler who helps teach june the ropes he He tends to be more cautious and provides June with moral perspective. Let's join them as they start a new salvage mission. All loaded up. Uh-huh. Gears and storage.

I look at this suit. Good to go. Where's Tom? Last minute prep. We're drinking. Probably both. Drinking before a job? Great.

That's what I do every day here. Drinking right before a job. Man's got his vices, but he gets shit done, okay? Nothing else to say. Good. You made it? That's not fun. Throughout your journey, you'll team up with a diverse crew of companions, like salt and awakened octopus.

We got your back, June. You too, Salt. Not necessary. If you die, I leave. Contrast void. Wow. You don't mince words, do you? It's an octo thing.

You'll get used to it. All right. I want you to pay attention to... You also meet other interesting characters. The mouth sink. Okay. The mouth sink in a lot of these scenes are so awesome. Yeah.

And we usually, in big budget games, we see the cutscenes have perfect mouth sync because they are facial captured one to one. And obviously, anime is going there and clean things up. And then you'll get, I'm just talking to an NPC and we see the mouth sink look a little wonky because it's usually the, it's usually just like the automated mouth sink. where you tell an animation. It's following a syllable. You tell a face of just, yeah, here's all these mouth sounds. Try to just match that

and we'll try to clean some stuff up. But, and maybe all of these scenes are facial captured, but like the mouth sink seems so good in a lot of these and I'm like, damn, if I can accept this level of quality

or expect this level of quality for the most unimportant of... Just a moment. It's like, damn, you may have like just one of the best mouth sink, the automated mouth sinks ever. And how do you feel about the art style? Because that's, I think, I think what lends itself is they're not trying to be photo realistic.

Yes. You know what I mean? I think that also then lets them out, as we're talking about a double A game, you know what I mean? Because like even when she's very stiffly standing on the wall, when they cut to the wide of people walking around, like, it doesn't look real. But it doesn't need to because they're trying to give you an overall world vibe. Yeah. I think if you're a smaller team, you will only hurt yourself trying to go for ultra realism. Yeah.

Because your animations and your budgets will never match up to the quality of a real life looking human. and when a real life looking human moves and his mouth moves in a weird way there's a clear disconnect there. The only problem I have is I don't love the main, the look of the main character, the male June Aslan. And I always thought that I had an issue

with how all these characters look, but the characters we just saw in this sequence, after seeing them, I was like, you know what? I think it's only the main character I have an issue with. I like the way all these characters look, except there's something about the main dude, and it's maybe the hairstyles they're choosing,

I might just like go for a completely Shade look or something. I don't know. I just, I'm not... He looks like, who's the guy who played Elvis in the Elvis movie? Austin's somebody... Austin Butler? Yeah, he looks like that to me.

I don't know. Well, you're wrong. Okay. All right, let's go rejoin. The mysterious C.C. or Love, voiced by Matthew McConaughey. Howdy, friend? Strange times we find ourselves in. Name C.C. or Lev.

In this scene, C.C helps out June by giving. It's awful. Like, for real. I've watched this 19-minute demonstration twice. It's a worst part of the fucking thing. It is not even that it's Matthew McConaughey pulling you out. Matthew McConaughey's got a great voice.

It's whatever weird alien thing they're telling him to do, right? Like in one of the maybe Game Informer article, maybe it was something else. Maybe it was the Q&A I watched with the developers. They were talking, you know, like, C.C. Orlov, like, your mentor. in this, like, you know, he's going to be giving you guidance and something like that. So it's like, I'm kind of feeling maybe he's ghostly. Maybe he's only in your head. Maybe he's in, we, I don't know.

But it's like, I brought up, like, I love it. He's the game like Johnny Silverhand. Yeah, like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But whatever direction they gave McConaughey on this side is I bring him back in the booth and say, just read it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you? What? Just talk is Matthew McConaughey.

So I don't know why I was always under the assumption that Matthew McConaughey was helping fund this. Like, he was like an investor in the studio. I don't know why I got that in my head. him. And I guess, like, I always knew Matthew Becone was involved in this project. I just wasn't sure if he was actually in the game until this video. I was like, oh, shit, he actually is in it.

Yeah. And, yeah, it's what I mean, I immediately think of the rough voice acting for Bucky and what if. What if? Where sometimes, like, dude, as amazing as you could be, I mean, you're a fucking Oscar, not multi-nominated Oscar. you won an Oscar for acting and sometimes there's just that translation that doesn't quite work

into the vocal booth but yeah don't love that hopefully you know things improve we'll enjoy it having him a recycler upgrade with the new modification added let's see how we can put it to good use in combat

there's something about the UI that's so simple but not it's so clean cheap yeah I guess it's So clean is the way to do it. It reminds me of no man's sky. Yep. It's got a good style to it, good fonts. How you engage the enemy is up to you.

Readability. In this encounter, June has to deal with a deadly turret, along with lichen, the leader of the fire eaters. He's heavily protected and things could get out of hand quick. Let's use this new recycler mod to stealthily take out some enemies and make things a bit easier. Get me in there. Head shot. Next, let's use the scramble cloak to sneak up on some enemies. Oh, there was a shit leader.

No vision. No discipline. We're going to do with different now, that's charge. First step. I'm cutting out into our early arms. This turret is protected with heavy armor. Let's toss a thruster grenade to deal massive damage. Fuck yeah.

Let's do it, Chris. Chris can do it. Weird. Good audio. Good gun sound. Ha ha ha ha ha. This is why I was, this is why I went, oh, you could jump. Oh, you can slide.

So cool. I love that. The combat looks fun. Oh, yeah. Like, I want to do this. It looks like what we wanted from any sort of newer version of a mass effect style game. Yeah, when I put out, you know, tell me what you think about Exodus on the Patreon quick. Shiv wrote in, Exodus looks very good.

Gameplayed fluidity of it. Andromeda, friends see's huge compliment because it was great with the whole new world and cast of characters. We now catch up to the team having made it to the salvage. However, rival mercenaries have already staked their claim. Can you think that looks like Austin Butler? Never thought you pricks would make it this far. Too bad you reached the end of the road. Shove it up your ass up. Making it past your friends was a breeze. I hope you're more of a challenge. We've got control of the auto cannon. How's that for a challenge?

Okay, that is going to be difficult. June and team have managed to push through the enemy defenses to the control room and now face a pivotal choice. June, time to do your thing. Here we go, baby. The Soros return method. Stick your hand in the alien thing. She looks so fucking awesome in that suit. I hate the light on her.

No, the light looks great. Yeah. The suit looks weird. I like the suit. Oh, I like it. can't just vent the airlock. Oh shit, Craig. What are you got to choose?

Purple or red? I mean, pause. Like, they argued this in clerks, of course, when they blew up the second death star that there were plumbers and just contractors working on that. They know what they did. They know who they're working for. I purge the fucking airlock.

All right. You and the zealots can get the fuck out of here. Shouldn't have taken the job, Bob. Go ahead. Cowered. Paladin bullshit. Tom's right. You can't be reckless when lives are at stake. But you don't mind putting our lives at risk? Exactly, lady.

Elise. I'd rather die in a fair fight than risk killing a single innocent bystander. Never been a good lease. Whatever. I think that's true. I could use some more target practice anyway. Tom approves though. Look at this goody, too.

You're drinking before the job, Tom. Don't judge me. Why are you judging? As you travel across the cluster, you will hear stories of this. those who have been affected by time, like Tom's account of why he can never go home. You know the strangest part of being out here? Let the oven on. Not sure if I can make it back.

Years have already passed on Leiden. Exactly. Spend a few hours on this world, a few days, a few weeks. It's all the same for the people back home. In between missions, you'll journey back to Persepolis, your primary hub, and a major city on Leiden for both. humans and awakened. Good morning. Afternoon.

Look at this guy. Regardless. Nice to meet you. You forget. Ah, you're doing the thing. The elephant forgot something. Is it better or worse if I notice or not? Here, you'll embark on new missions.

That's cute. Experience how your choices shape the world around you and meet new companions like Fadra Napp. Be positive. This is one of the things I think is most exciting about it. where especially coming off of Adventures of Elliot before that when I was playing Dragon Quest 7 reimagined the beginning of the year.

The narrative behemoth adventures of alien. But the conversation of when you introduce time travel and you in this case time dilation and choice, I want to see my choices actually do something. Even in something like more akin like Vail Guard where there wasn't that many giant choices and then they'd be like lock you out of an area. Outer Worlds too crashing something into a city

if you didn't do the right thing. Like, I want to see I make this choice and then, yeah, a decade later, what does that do to the town we've been going to? And I think that, again, gets me excited for hopefully the replayability of a double A because I'm not expecting 150 hours if it's going to be a 30 hour campaign to run it back a different way and see what would happen here and there like that. I like seeing, if it makes sense, I like seeing instant time spanning choices. Right. Before we get any further, because we're having a good time here, I do want to remind you, we couldn't do this without your support. Of course, you can pick up a kind of funny membership on patreon.com. com slash kind of funny games, Apple, Spotify.

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Things have been bad in the industry. We're on games daily talking about bad stuff all the time. I also want to say thank you. Thank you for watching us. Thank you for listening to us. Thank you for sharing us with your friends or whatever it is. I'm not even asking you to do anything right now. I just want to say thank you.

Hope you having a great day. And if not, I hope this made it just a little bit better. I don't know. But thank you. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you.

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Of course, I gave you the soft pitch up top of why we're doing this, but I'm sure right now in the live chat and later on YouTube, there's comments. I want to point out, no, I know this is out of the ordinary for us. We're not sponsored by Exodus. It's just in the doggy dog video game world we exist in right now. When something cool comes around and doesn't get the juice it deserves, I think it's our duty to stand up. If you missed it, this is fucking awesome.

And it definitely is an Andy and Greg game. So I want to be there for it. I'm juiced about this shit. Yeah. Let's keep on going. Barrett, thank you for being on the ones and twos. Technician who's eager to help. Oh, I'm sorry.

The lights, you need them, don't you? And you don't? No, no. The eyes, they don't work. So I built my own. Spectrum's different. External light sources are irrelevant, but it's close enough to what you would call, you know,

sight. Give me a castling. She sees a drawing. Rhone. So cool. People call it radiation, decay, but it's so much more than that. The rot. I hate that. There's always a rot.

Adaptively, intelligently, intelligently, like it's alive. Your homeworld of Leiden is facing extinction due to a celestial virus called the rot. Always. You need to travel across the Centauri cluster. If you have two slurpy, you get a possible cure. Vader's grandfather was a legendary traveler. Told you that in confidence. He told me on the shows.

No, pause right here, Barrett. That looks like that Harry Potter guy. He looks like AI. Oh. My first time seeing this guy, I'm like, that just, that looks like, that looks generated. And again, there's complete just like out of the blue. I could just be completely wrong about this. He looks to me like the guy who plays, uh, the, the, Malfoy.

Yes, thank you. Oh my God. Just Malfoy. Holy shit, you're right. He looks like, Lou. Yeah, he looks too real. For this world. I agree with that.

It almost looks like Tom Cruise. It's funny if it's like all these like stylized people and then just like it's like, stoppark, it's a photo of Tom Cruise. It's your dad, is it? I don't remember him. Thank you, Barry. You travel with Fadra to a planet called Seng,

hoping to find some trace of his discoveries. I must thank you for this opportunity, June, for allowing me to be part of this. No point in waiting around. Next stop. Sang. Saying is a rocky exoplanet covered in a sulfurous atmosphere. You'll need to traverse across the deadly terrain to discover the ancient ruins where Elijah's ship crashed.

Oh, wow. Not a dead moon at all. Okay, there were celestials here once. Oh, remarkable. Along with Fadra, we've decided to bring salt. Her long-range sniper rifle and abilities that specialize in confusing enemies should come in here. handy. Salt is a sniper.

That's so cool. Friday Lister, Salt is a fucking octopus inside of a meck. And being awakened is a state of like, you know, I guess animals. They can talk to you. Yeah. Do things. Completely unideal for civilization. Even during the age of the detoner.

Your induction clearly shapes the Livestone itself. But what dictates the extent? oh so many questions and possibilities we are vibes you know salt or the the woman talking oh yeah yeah yeah the woman who sees with drugs i feel about his ass he's gonna fly of course there have always been rumors in soon ain't doing them anything you know maybe get some stitching down the middle yeah i don't know but i'd wager it's not Oh yeah, there's that sniper shot.

Oh, cool. Run up on a sword. Yeah, I love how you're in this focus mode that the audio kind of gets all like, intensified, I guess. And it was this combat sequence that I really popped up. Even though it shows the same move from the intro, the intro was just, it kind of went by really, really fast. And it was at this moment that we, we see just abilities mixing with awesome shooting.

Yeah. This is another thing, too. It's not meant to be that you look at this video and hear us talk about this today. It's not an us versus them thing with Exodus versus... No, no, no, no. But I do want to say this. After playing the expanse, I feel like they don't have the rest of the game built around it. You know what I mean?

That felt like a vertical slice and like that's what's polished. Whereas you look at this demo and how diverse they are, how far we are, all the different things. I believe I'm playing this early next year, like the trailers say. Whereas the expanse, I'm like, am I really playing that next year? Is that slip into spring 2028? When we see that early move of the ground pound quake move, get all the enemies up in a row, it's the coolest. Technologies that upgrade his gauntlet,

a powerful artifact passed down to him from his father. Once upgraded, it unlocks new possibilities for both traversal and combat. Any idea what this is? I can't decipher it, but clearly this artifact was held in great reverence. June, be careful. A celestial technology can affect human bodies in unexpected ways. Remember what happened to Shepard? Touch that thing?

Shit, man. Shit. Remember what happened to Samis? You touched that thing. Are you all right? I'm fine. Is Celine from Returnal? I took me by surprise.

And Rahul Kolin. Remember what happened to Michael Rosenbaum, a dark sector? Touch that thing. Here we see June acquiring glance, a powerful new gauntlet ability that can pierce and destroy Bramble, a byproduct of the rock. Bramble and rot. Bramble and rot, they do go together. Maybe this is in the cave of the bridge of spirits world. After pushing deep into saying, they learn a shocking truth.

Badra's grandfather is still alive. The earth is flat. for it. You were warned. I told you to turn back. I told you there was nothing here for you, but death. You've seen too much now. Stubborn children.

Elijah has unleashed a corrupted and extremely powerful war machine on the team. Bad ass, man. And he unleashed it in an area where there's places to get covered. A little dodge roll to get out of the way. God, the sound effects just sounds so good, man. Big room cover with the power school. Her little drone out there doing shit. He's a very lax throw.

He's like he's throwing beers to somebody on a boat. I don't mind it. He's like, I gotta give me a shit. Hey, Joe toss me one. How do you listen? He's shooting the big ghost kid. He's hitting the weak spots. Yeah, he's crushing it.

A whole baby. That was nice. Throw that spear now. Oh, you silly ass, you should have gotten out of the way. Yeah, that's how you know Chris King ain't played. Yeah, exactly. Oh, we're getting some power team ups right there. Man, for all fuck the haters.

Veilgard was awesome, man. Thank you. Just fuck the haters. You're always my ride. It's like, come on. I've never been more, like, disappointed by people. That's where you get to walk away from the camera. The construct defeated, June and Fedra must now confront Elijah.

hoping to persuade him to share the secrets contained in saying, Without this information, Liden will be destroyed by the rock. This warns you not to come here. Throw away your legacy. Elijah, please. Whatever you are afraid of, the answer isn't more bloodshed. Liding is awesome. A solemn mouth.

I cannot stop you from claiming the secrets of this world. But my dynasty will be no part of this. Elijah What are you doing The math Bloodline Ends here My child

With me And with you I will take our dynasty To the grave Rather than allow it To fall to the Sway of Orion's Yeah great facial capture

I don't want to kill you Drop your weapon And this doesn't have to end in bloodshed But my dynasty Ends here Oh baby Shoot him Dude is bitch at.

This has been a small piece. Goosey. Yeah. We don't show me. Select the other one. And we'll be sharing more details all the way. Barrett, if you rewind the video at that point,

it's like reloading a save and we can pick the other one. Platform now and become a traveler today. This shit looks fucking awesome. It looks awesome. And it's crazy that it's so crowded in our world. That this dropped 20 minutes. You know what I mean?

We talk about God of War, ending state of play. just play through. They drop 20 minutes of this narrated amazing stuff. There's all these trailers up and nobody's like, I feel like talking about it. And I shouldn't say nobody because I'm not putting down the audience. But it needed to be surfaced to more people.

And that's what we're here to do on kind of funny. Can you rewind just like 10 seconds in the past in the video? Like rewind just 10 seconds ago. What's a word I'm looking for? Just 10 seconds ago. You rewind it 10 seconds. Yeah. That's true.

I guess I could have said that. Just the way some of these abilities look just for, I mean, I just get so excited seeing the, this, there's a vortex a little bit, maybe here, maybe I should have said 15 seconds, my bad bear, but like, you see an ability of a vortex with stuff getting sucked towards it and that's like obviously to get enemies to get them in one spot, then you can hit him with the big AOE. We'll see it right here very, very soon. Here we go.

So it's not only that awesome one, but there's that vortex. I just like, it was Mass Effect that really made me realize like, like if your shooter has any sort of gravity or manipulating of objects or people and having Liaro with herbiotics makes somebody float from behind cover

then I'm shooting them and the way that they kind of evolve that formula and then linking up enemies for Dan like all that stuff just perfectly speaks to me and this this shot up way higher than I would have wanted to just because of my own expectations

for it but I I think it looks awesome so far. And I've had on my laptop here, I've been looking for the first gameplay trailers of it. I just haven't really been able to find the one that I'm thinking of where it looked way more rough around the edges because it was earlier in development. And it's just so awesome to see where it's at now. Holy God damn, they are putting in the work.

And things are looking really awesome. How do you feel about the time dilation? Does that excite you? You can Shiv, who I read earlier about the fluidity gameplay looks great, but then ended their comment with. I'm a little hesitant on how they'll make the time dilation stuff work story-wise, but overall it looks awesome. I think it's a cool variable, but I don't-

It's novel. It's not really why I like care about this game. You know, I think it could be a cool thing to play with repercussions and, holy shit, that character is, you know, dead now because of whatever happened. But I just want to meet characters that I fall in love with or hate and want to, you know, have a rivalry with. That's what I'm here for, you know. I asked again on a quip over on patreon.com slash kind of funny where you can sign up for a free account to see all my quips. And of course, uh, get the weekly schedule from Joey.

Paul, I said, you know, what do you want from a mass effect successor? What about Exodus? Yeah, he had a Paul says great writing and meaningful choices. I think that's a big part of it. Fun time. I want those interesting romance arcs. Also, I forgot Exodus was coming out. Early 2027, the trailers say, we'll see if they hit it. Yeah, when I, I, I posted on TikTok and Reels of me react to that video for the first time. And I think one of the first responses was, fuck yeah, dude, I love the expanse, can't wait for it. I'm like, hey, I totally easy to get them mixed up.

Because they are two Mass Effect style video games. They both start with EX. Yeah. And this is, you know, this is obviously Exodus is a different video game. But yeah, it's one of those that like, I want meaningful writing. I want, you know, I love being surprised by stuff.

I think that's one thing that the Witcher first and foremost has showed me that I care about the most. The things that wow me the most are the unexpected moments. You're doing a side quest and you're saving somebody and it turns out that person has been

holding a family hostage for months and you're like, what do I, I'm supposed to be, I'm supposed to be in the gray as the Witcher. I'm not supposed to favor either side, but shit, you shouldn't be doing this, but you have good reason because the woman and the family

that you're holding hostage killed your family. And so, and I just love that shit in games. And it's like, God damn, if I could just experience the Witcher a million times, I would be great. But give me stuff that makes me, give me the unexpected. You know, always find a way to surprise me

with your mission structure. Yeah, every, you know, signing off on what they want out of this one, of course, is choice is this, that the other, they want to be making choices that matter. And I really do feel, for me, as somebody's played so many of these games and I think lives in the genre of this kind of RPG,

the idea of time being dilated so you can come back and see what the choice you made actually pays off into, rather than what I get a lot in these kind of games and hate, where you roll credits and then you get the, just the single frame, slow pan on a drawing. And it's like, oh, because he,

did X, Y, and Z, these people are mad and they're on the run forever. It's like, all right, well, you know, I'd rather see them be on the run, which it seems like you'll get here if this pays off. It's also, it's also a bit scary because it's like, that's a variable that, you know, you might want to, that's a challenge you might want to take on with a massive AAA budget team. That could be a really tough thing to try to tackle and be satisfying. Well, that's the thing about it, right, where you really do think about, like, again, I'm rusty now, but Vail Guard, when we reviewed that, I remember talking and when I did

the spoiler cast, like, there was like three big choices, I want to say that like influenced the world you were in. And so you figure for a smaller double a game, when I'm going out and dilating time and coming back, you figure there's got to be maybe five of those. You know what I mean? Where you're getting ready to go and you go off and you come back to see what's happened. I feel like that's when it gets into, we'll replay it to do this to see that. Well, if I would have done that or maybe it leans up that way.

But again, if you're making a shorter RPG out of it, I think that works towards your favor. Tell me your, tell me your linear story, but give me all these different branch points to make it my own. Fair enough. Make your June Aslan.

I will make. With a mustache and a beard disconnected. That's Andy's only a mustache. Beard. No connection. Your mouth. No connection. To Matthew McCona Hayes' year.

Strange times we find ourselves in. Final one here is going to go to Mr. Hawks, okay? It's vague, but I want to feel like I'm hopping into a universe that existed before I got there with plenty of history there for me to find. Yeah. I think that they do in terms of teasing us with that ability, I think you look at this,

you go, okay. Like when he makes the walkway, she mentions like, oh, this is the whatever age of whatever. You're like, okay, so clearly there's something going on there. But then Mr. Hawk says, which one is Exodus? Is that the one based on the book series? I think I'm excited for it. And there you go.

Right back to it of this game is underneath a lot of people's radar right now, but I'm very excited for it, Andy. Yeah. hopefully get some more momentum. I'm sure they're doing the same thing. A lot of time. I mean, like, you know, I think right now this is kind of what you want. Probably you have a passionate audience who knows about it,

although small, that it'll spread the word. And then as we gear up to 27 where it's like, they're shooting a safe for early 27 in that one. Great. That came out before Fable picked that as well. Where who knows what's going on with the expanse. Of all three of these games come out next year,

who we were eating good. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Don't start with me. Don't start me. Don't start with Fable. You know what I mean? Don't start with me.

Don't do it. Don't go head to head with Fable because Fable. Don't you start. Don't start. I'll stop it. Everybody, this has been another episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every weekday, we come to talk to you about the biggest topics in video games. Whether they be reviews, previews are just things we need to talk about.

We do it on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Twitch. Dot TV slash Kind of Funny Games. Podcast services are on the globe. If you like that, pick up a membership. Patreon.com slash kind of funny. YouTube. com slash Kind of Funny games.

Apple, Spotify. Get all of our shows ad-free. Get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller, and of course, get good karma for supporting an 11-person, 11-year-old. Small business. We will keep our eye on Exodus as we keep our eyes on everybody getting laid off in the video game industry. But for now, we're done. So until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.