James Ohlen was lead designer on Baldur’s Gate 2 and worked at role-playing game powerhouse BioWare for over 22 years. He left in 2018 to cofound his own studio, Archetype Entertainment, and work on a new sci-fi RPG Exodus that people can’t help but keep comparing to Mass Effect. But he left his new studio before the game shipped under mysterious circumstances last year. He now says the experience “nearly killed me.”
“As a creative you care about everything so much, and then as the head of the studio, you have to be cutting the baby in half all the time, and having people attack your vision constantly,” he said in a new wide-ranging interview with PC Gamer. “I definitely wouldn’t put myself in that situation again; that’s not a healthy place to be.”
Exodus is an ambitious RPG shooter where time dilation effects let you see the consequences of your actions play out across different worlds over the course of centuries. It also involves Matthew McConaughey, for some reason. Wizards of the Coast is funding the project, and would seemingly love to use its deep lore and vast world-building as a springboard for new tabletop RPGs, trading card games, and potential movie or TV spin-offs. The game is set to ship in 2027, making it a project that will have spanned a pandemic, three presidential administrations, and potentially multiple console generations.
Ohlen detailed difficult contract negotiations with Peter Hamilton and challenging bureaucratic hoops at Wizards. It also sounds like heading up an entire new studio alongside being the creative lead on an entire new IP took its toll. “All the people I know that have headed up studios because they love it, and I hate it,” he said, adding that he struggled without a “hotshot executive producer” to help shield the creative side of Exodus‘ production from the higher-ups.
The game industry veteran is now working on a series of RPG adventure books with former BioWare creative director Jesse Sky instead. It doesn’t sound like he’ll be diving back into the world of video game startups anytime soon.