It’s been clear since James Holden first stepped foot on the Rocinante: The Expanse would make for an incredible game. While the popular sci-fi series has previously been imagined as a game (a Telltale narrative, a tabletop RPG), developer Owlcat Games’ forthcoming The Expanse: Osiris Reborn seems like it’ll take it to a whole new level.
Planned for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X sometime in the near-ish future (it’s currently listed as “coming soon” on Steam), The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a third-person action-RPG in the vein of Mass Effect. Like Telltale’s 2023 narrative-driven RPG, The Expanse: A Telltale Series, Osiris Reborn features some familiar faces from The Expanse TV show, but the two games have some major differences. Although Telltale definitely nailed the general vibe of The Expanse universe, the game’s scope was limited, and like every Telltale title, its combat mainly consisted of QTEs. But unlike Telltale’s take on The Expanse, Osiris Reborn will feature both tough narrative choices and legit, real-time combat — including spaceship battles, traditional gunplay, and fights in zero-g.
In short, this game looks like every Expanse’s fan’s dream.
For Osiris Reborn, Owlcat Games’ dev team seems to have really zeroed in on the ingredients needed to tell a good Expanse story. They’ve embraced comparisons to Mass Effect, and they’re not going easy on the franchise’s frequent dips into the realm of cosmic horror, either. In fact, Owlcat Games creative director Alexander Mishulin told Polygon that on at least one occasion, players will come face-to-face with what is arguably the creepiest entity in the Expanse universe: the Hybrid.
In The Expanse TV show, the Hybrid is a horrifying creature that terrorizes Martian marine Bobby Draper (Frankie Adams), killing her entire team and leaving her as the sole survivor. True Expanse lore-heads will know the Hybrid is the result of Project Caliban, an experiment run by an Earth-based company called Protogen, which specializes in private security, but also has a massive research wing. Protogen exposes its unwitting test subjects (mainly children and teens) to the protomolecule, a mysterious alien substance that seems to corrupt all that it touches. Most of Project Caliban’s subjects do not survive the process. The unfortunate few who do make it become Hybrids: 50% human, 50% protomolecule, 110% terrifying.
Once Osiris Reborn launches, Expanse fans will get to see a Hybrid for the first time since Season 3 of the TV show aired in 2018. In fact, it sounds like players may be facing more than one of them.
“We can confirm that you will be facing Project Caliban, which means Hybrids,” Mishulin told Polygon in a recent interview. “They will be in the game. You will be facing off with them. You’re starting [the game] on Eros, and that means this horrific [Project Caliban] experiment. This means being close to [the] protomolecule.”
The last time Expanse fans got a look at a Hybrid, it had made its way into the cargo bay of the Rocinante, a ship that doubles as both the home and the base of operations for the show’s main characters. Given the fact that Osiris Reborn takes place during the first two-and-a-half seasons of the TV show, the game’s devs have made a point of ensuring that the actions of the Rocinante’s crew will be directly felt by players. Some of the Roci’s crew members may also be making an appearance.
“You will be exploring your own story, but time and again you will be meeting consequences — not only of your actions, but of [Rocinante captain James] Holden’s actions as well,” Mishulin explained. “One of the antagonists you will be facing is Protogen, but you have a different fight, and alongside your journey, you will be meeting familiar faces.”
As for which Expanse TV show characters players will encounter in Osiris Reborn? Mishulin and the rest of the dev team are keeping their lips zipped for now.
“We are not telling who, we are not telling how, but we can confirm that some of the actors from the series will be making [an] appearance in our game,” Mishulin told Polygon.
Zero-g combat is another crucial aspect of adapting the Expanse into a video game. In both the books and the show, characters spend hours in low- or no-gravity environments, with some characters even having to take special drugs to withstand regular gravity since their bodies are so acclimated to a lack of it. Obviously, leaving out zero-g combat wasn’t an option. But implementing it hasn’t exactly been a spacewalk for the developers.
“We are still doing it right now,” Mishulin said of Owlcat’s ongoing quest to perfect the game’s zero-g experience. “Because it’s an additional layer to the combat, and we would want our players to feel — on one hand — feel the dangers of the space, and understand that space is a hostile environment. But on the other hand, we want them to feel how cool it is.”
Mishulin said the “rule of cool” did occasionally win out over strict adherence to hard sci-fi. For example, in reality, you cannot hear anything in the open vacuum of space. But in Osiris Reborn, gunshots fired in space are still audible to the player, because watching people shoot at each other in dead silence isn’t exactly a thrilling experience. When it comes to player perception, Mishulin told Polygon, “We want you to have a visceral combat experience.”
“We want it to be flashy,” he said of Osiris Reborn‘s combat. “So, for example, you will be hearing shots in a vacuum. Not because we don’t know [that you can’t hear things in space], but because we want you to experience that [flashiness].”
This is great news for Expanse fans who have been craving a game set in The Expanse universe that focuses heavily on both combat mechanics (including ship combat and zero-g combat) and a compelling narrative in which player choices matter and the surrounding universe feels believably embroiled in its own political and humanitarian conflicts.
Despite its futuristic tech and far-flung setting, The Expanse is ultimately about telling very human stories, especially stories that revolve around the often-difficult choices its characters are forced to make (sometimes in the heat of battle).
Although Polygon hasn’t yet had a chance to try out the game, it’s clear that Osiris Reborn‘s developers are aiming to please The Expanse’s massive community of fans, who are aching to explore a universe of heart-pounding combat, interstellar romance, tough decision-making, Machievellian political intrigue — and, of course, creepy protomolecule monsters.
Source：https://www.polygon.com/gaming/611643/expanse-osiris-reborn-interview-preview-owlcat-games
