Conspiracy X's Saurians are both the most sketchily developed aliens in the game and the most heavily used in the background (Eden is even planning a spinoff game based on them). Exodus is supposed to let the audience in on just what was so fascinating about them. After having read it, I can't say they're merely sketched out-- but I can't say they're as interesting as they ought to be either.
Now, Exodus isn't a bad book, exactly-- it's the biggest and most detailed of the alien trilogy-- but it still feels too by-the-numbers to be a good one. When I buy a sourcebook, I'm looking for originality; not every book is groundbreaking, but if there's at least one thing I wouldn't have thought of myself, I'm happy.
I'm not very happy with Exodus.
To give credit where it's due, the book is a very attractive package; George Vasilakos's layout skills improve every time he releases a sourcebook, and Christopher Shy's art is the best I've seen it. The presentation itself is worth a 4 Style (the content drags it down some, though).
As far as the writing goes, Dakan and Emmert avoid most of the missteps they made in the other two alien books (unlike the Greys and Atlanteans, there are several distinct cultures within the Saurian species, and they give us scads of information about what the Saurians believe, what they do on a daily basis, and their relationships with countries other than the US). Exodus is dense, and will give you your money's worth on sheer volume of information.
That said, I still have major problems with this book. The biggest is that the Saurians just don't feel alien, despite the writers' protests that they are. The Greys as presented in Nemesis made a decent try at being inhuman, and the Atlanteans are supposed to be humanlike, but the Saurians felt like Star Trek extras; if you changed all the mentions of "Saurian" to "human" their history would feel exactly the same.
Also, while there's a lot of information, none of it is terribly interesting. The material isn't illogical or glaringly stupid (with one huge exception-- the magic-using Dreamspeakers are both), but it also isn't very innovative; I don't think there's anything in here that any GM couldn't come up with on their own.
I also have a few format quibbles: we again have a HERMES download that says way too much (raising the question of how much Aegis Prime or the average group of PCs is supposed to know), most of the history of the Dreamspeakers is written in a cursive font that was a chore to read (and again, I felt like I'd wasted my time once I had read it), and for some reason there are rules for drowning, radar/radar jamming, poison, and revised equipment malfunction charts. I understand that if the material calls for it, the rules should be there, but these have a lot of use outside of a Saurian context, and there should be a note about it on the back cover at least.
And as usual with Con X products, I thought the adventure was uninspiring and a waste of space.
So overall, while this is the best of the alien trilogy on a technical level (superb art and layout and a wealth of information), I found it the least useful overall (Nemesis had more interesting concepts, even if they were poorly executed, and Atlantis Rising was better written and expanded the nanotechnology rules for PCs). I can't even bring myself to hate this book; it felt too bland to evoke any kind of response in me. If you plan on using Saurians extensively in your games, I recommend spending an afternoon and coming up with your own rules.
Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)
