3 Upcoming Sci-Fi RPGs Better Than Waiting for a New Mass Effect

When EA closed BioWare and canceled the next Mass Effect game, it took away a future many of us had been looking forward to for a long, long time. Think: more squadmates to fall for, more ships that you slowly realize feel like home, more decisions that haunt you years later.

Despite Mass Effect’s cancelation, that future still exists, at least in some manner (even outside of any direct results from the ongoing #SaveMassEffect campaign). We just need to look ever so slightly outside of this franchise to see it. Two games with similar DNA to Mass Effect arrive next spring. There’s also a third very intriguing option, depending on how patient you are, coming from the director behind both Knights of the Old Republic and the Mass Effect trilogy. Tell the crew we’re taking off. There are galaxies to explore.

1

Exodus

Release date: April 7, 2027

Where to play: PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X

Calling Exodus a Mass Effect replacement might be underselling things. Polygon’s two hours with the game were full of the precise things we love about Commander Shepard’s adventures: cover-based shooting, two squadmates you command through a pause-and-aim ability wheel, dialogue that builds companion affinity and nudges a morality meter, and a ship of your own. It’s even coming from some of the same team members who worked on the original trilogy, including narrative director Drew Karpyshyn.

There’s a bigger story here, though. The lore of Exodus, as the true sci-fi sickos will know, starts with humans fleeing a desiccated Earth for the Centauri cluster, roughly 40,000 light-years away. Thanks to the effects of time dilation, some ships get there earlier than others. Like, a lot earlier — millennia. Those early arrivals rewrote their own genomes into the Celestials, transhumans who regard ordinary people as servants at best and pests at worst. Evolution took some Celestials to terrifying places: the scariest evolutionary line, the Mara-Yama, can be nine-foot-tall predators with fangs and claws or forms wrapped in exoskeletons (and, according to the tabletop companion guide, their bones and limbs degenerate on long voyages until little remains of them but organs and a head).

You play Jun Aslan, a Traveler (a human who braves the effects of time dilation on long-haul journeys) racing a technological virus called the Rot that’s eating away at life support on Lidon, the human stronghold planet. Along the way, you’ll tangle with Jun’s brother, Gideon, who exiled him and seized control of the planet. If this canon feels intriguing enough that you don’t want to wait until next spring, check out Peter F. Hamilton’s novel Exodus: The Archimedes Engine, the first book in a duology, or the short stories Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time) wrote for the game’s website.

2

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn

Image: OwlCat Games

Release date: Spring 2027

Where to play: PS5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X

Polygon played 90 minutes of The Expanse: Osiris Reborn at Gamescom and found a Mass Effect-style squad shooter with real snap: cover-based gunfights, two squadmates to direct, and a Ganymede mission that rewards stealth and paperwork as much as bullets. (You can’t jump, tragically, but hey, that’s also true of Mass Effect, and probably due to magnetized boots, so we’ll give that a pass.) You play a custom character alongside an identical twin and a BioWare-esque crew of misfits. The developers are quite upfront about the influence, here: Owlcat’s creative director told Polygon that Mass Effect is a key inspiration.

In the mission Polygon played, you’re sent through Ganymede’s dockyards to dig up dirt on the paramilitary group Protogen. Before you start your first fight, you’re given time to explore and at least one roadblock to overcome. Want to open that storage container you came for? First you meet a guard who needs a shipping officer’s sign-off. The officer wants an invoice. You don’t have an invoice. Hopefully you can figure out how to make or fake one from your surroundings, eh? Hint: It involves hacking a computer for a template, then scanning a serial number from a high perch. You’ll then find yourself in one of Ganymede’s giant agricultural domes, with a blue Protomolecule Hybrid chasing your crew and a choice about who protects the civilians and who hacks the escape.

The biggest challenge facing The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is that it’s a licensed game. It’s got to please viewers who have every scene from the show memorized while giving brand-new players a reason to care. While we wait to see how the game threads that needle, if you want in on the lore before next spring, pick up Leviathan Wakes, the first novel in James S.A. Corey’s series that started it all.

3

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic

Image: Arcanaut Studios/Lucasfilm Games

Release date: TBA

Where to play: PC and consoles

Casey Hudson directed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in 2003 and then went on to direct the Mass Effect trilogy, which puts Fate of the Old Republic on the straightest line back to BioWare’s golden age. His new studio, Arcanaut, revealed the upcoming game at The Game Awards in December 2025. According to that announcement, it’ll be a single-player, narrative-driven action RPG, in which you’ll play a Force-sensitive hero in a galaxy on the brink of rebirth. As you’d expect (and hope!) to see in a spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic, every decision you make in Fate will pull you toward the light side or the dark.

The catch here is clear: There’s no date. When speculation put the release at 2030 or later, Hudson promised it would land sooner, adding that he’s “not getting any younger.” (A remake of the original is still in development at Saber Interactive, also without a date.) We’re keeping our eyes on this release, but for now, you’ve got time — and an excuse — to replay the original game. Maybe it’s time to finally master Pazaak, the in-game card game. Or build a lightsaber in a color you’ve never tried.