One of the most headline-grabbing things about science-fiction role-playing game Exodus, beyond it looking a lot like Mass Effect, is that it stars Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey in his first video game role. He plays the role of C.C. Orlev in the game, a character still shrouded in some mystery, and you can hear his voice narrating the new trailer for the games.

But McConaughey recently made headlines by signing a deal that will allow his voice to be AI-generated in certain situations by the company Elevenlabs, which he also invested in. Which begs the question: is it really McConaughey in Exodus or has his voice been AI-generated?

“No, no. Everything that’s in Exodus – 100 percent of what’s in Exodus – is bespoke VO recording just for us,” Chad Robertson, co-founder of Exodus developer Archetype, told me in an interview. “He has a completely separate deal of his own design that he’s worked out with Elevenlabs, which happens to be one of the most prominent, AI voice-generation tools, that is being used by other video game companies. Such that people could leverage his voice in non-bespoke VO sessions in a different way. He has a bunch of really strict rules around how it could be used.

“The reason I mentioned it more is that even stuff like that catches us off guard, because our engagement with Matthew is very specific. But my point in this is there’s a lot more stuff that’s going to evolve that way. So if we ask what our long-term studio stance [on AI] is, we want to be smart technologists, and we want to make great games. And if for cost reasons or quality reasons, that becomes something that becomes more acceptable and becomes more commonplace, I think we’re gonna have to be smart and intelligent about how we adopt it ourselves. But currently we don’t have plans.”

“We don’t have plans to use generative AI for any elements of it, but we reserve the right to change that”

Incidentally, I asked Robertson specifically whether generative AI was used in Exodus’ development at all and it’s not. “With respect to the game, we don’t have plans to use generative AI for any elements of it,” he said, “but we reserve the right to change that if things require it to get the game at the quality that we need it, or the timeline or budget that we need. But currently that’s not our plan.

“We, as creators, have a ton of respect for art in general. And don’t you know it’s a hot topic with our team when it’s come up – it consumes some of our team meetings every Friday. So our team is super passionate about it. But there’s an evolution happening in the industry where I think it’s going to become more prevalent and become something that everybody’s facing.”

Archetype unveiled a new trailer for Exodus during The Game Awards, giving us another montaged look at the sci-fi adventure in which we’ll try to escape a tech-related plague by assembling a ship and crew of our own. In the game, we’ll play as hero Jun Aslan, a seemingly regular person who happens to be compatible with ancient and powerful tech they’ll find through the game.

Exodus is a game that looks and sounds like Mass Effect, including in how it has some “thirsty” companion romances, and it’s made by many former BioWare developers, including the lead writer of Mass Effect 1 and 2, Drew Karpyshyn. Chad Robertson also hails from BioWare.

Despite the similarities, however, there are some key differences, including most notably time dilation. The nearer to the speed of light you travel at, the more time will pass, allowing you to see first-hand the long-term consequences of your actions. I’ll write more about this next week.