Is Exalted with a different system still Exalted?

Our RPG group plays a lot of Exalted. We have recorded over 120 episodes of our podcast on Exalted, many of which were 4+ hours long. That being said, a lot of Exalted we play these days does not use the Exalted system, so is it fair to still call it Exalted? At least that's a question someone brought up in regards to our content.

Exalted is a game started by White Wolf in 2001, at the tail end of the Old World of Darkness. It was a game of mythological-scale hero adventurers in a world that's a mix between sword-and-sandal and wuxia stories. The world is vast and colourful, the mythology of the world is compelling, and the player's heroes themselves are larger than life. Where D&D games would end, whether it is dealing with gods or forming empires, Exalted starts you off.

We have done Exalted using Exalted 2nd and 3rd edition rules (Princes of the Universe), Exalted using Godbound rules (Princes of the Universe, again), Exalted using Broken Worlds (Skeleton Keys and Gangs of New Gloam), Exalted using Exalted vs World of Darkness (Heaven for Everyone), and are planning on doing Exalted using Fellowship. Each of these had a different focus - Broken Worlds focuses on the wuxia genre (where every conflict and conversation is an excuse to start throwing punches), Godbound focuses on exerting your will on large swaths of the world, while Fellowship is focused on saving communities from a big bad overlord. Each game has a different sorts of mechanics, and those mechanics inform a different style of gameplay. What stays the same in our games though is the core of Exalted - you are the mythic heroes of legend, destined to face off against impossible odds and larger-than-life challenges, in a world filled with threats that need a hero like that.

But is it Exalted though? It depends on what metric you're using. To compare, let's talk about Star Wars. The original trilogy definitely is Star Wars. Are Star Wars novels still Star Wars? They aren't theatrically released movies shot on film. Are Star Wars video games, animated shows, tabletop roleplay games, comics, card games, etc. Star Wars? Is the Christmas Special Star Wars? It is easy to debate what is canon and what is not, but you can't really deny that all of these things are Star Wars. They might be on different media, they might tell different stories, they may contradict one another, but they are still facets of the same franchise, telling the stories of the Jedi and Sith, Empire and Rebellion, and the various people of that universe.

So all in all, Exalted in a different system can still be Exalted. It might be quite far from the original game, it might have different themes and mechanics, it might even be so far removed you personally won't enjoy it, but it's still Exalted nonetheless. And hey, if the original Exalted could also be Battlestar Galactica but in fantasy space as Gunstar Autochtonia, you can probably suffer someone using a different rules to make the space combat more fun ;).