This hyper-intelligent pig named Charlotte is all I needed to get me completely locked into this Mass Effect veteran’s new space RPG
Exodus, the new time-bending space RPG from former Mass Effect devs, will have a wide array of companions to meet and alien species to encounter – but it’ll also have this adorable, hyper-intelligent pig called Charlotte.
In a recent Q&A, BioWare veterans James Ohlen and Chad Robertson, the co-founders of Exodus developer Archetype Entertainment, answered fan questions about the game. One of those enquired as to what other sentient alien species might occupy the galaxy in addition to the mysterious Celestials – an ancient race that disappeared long ago, leaving its hyper-advanced technology behind.
The Exodus trailers have revealed a little bit about what those other species might look like, and it seems as though your companions are also not guaranteed to be human, but Ohlen offers a little more context in the new video. “You usually refer to an alien as something that evolved on a planet other than Earth.” That’s not really the case in Exodus, as “everything in the universe has a terrestrial origin, but they’ve evolved over tens of thousands of years, so some of them have evolved into incredibly strange, wondrous, and weird creatures.” Those creatures are, apparently, “often much weirder than the classic aliens you might see in some other science-fiction franchise,” but I’ve seen Admiral Ackbar, so I’ll hold judgement on that front for now.
A little closer to home than those aliens, however, are The Awakened. These are intelligent Earth animals, and while Ohlen doesn’t go into much detail about them, his words are accompanied by footage of one of these Awakened – a pig named Charlotte. From that video, we can see that Charlotte’s very good at an obstacle course, but also has a 10,000-word vocabulary, and the ability to communicate via ‘datalink’ with her human partner. That datalink seems to be a little device wrapped around Charlotte’s ear, and implies that the communication is more telepathic than spoken.
Truth be told, I was already pretty locked into Exodus. With some serious sci-fi RPG pedigree bolstered by talent from the likes of Halo and The Last of Us, it was already going to be hard to ignore. But with news of Charlotte’s involvement, I’m now fully locked in. Sadly, there’s still no word on a release date, but Exodus is set to launch on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.