Following a surprise announcement last year, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn has quickly become one of the hottest upcoming space and sci-fi games on the horizon. Last year marked the 10th anniversary of The Expanse, and we're still thinking about it as one of the best outer space dramas ever, so it's no surprise to see a renowned RPG developer take on this universe.
If you love classic RPGs that you can sink tens (or hundreds) of hours into, you should be quite familiar with Owlcat Games by now. After two great Pathfinder games, it was 2023's Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader that really put the developer on the map. As they also prepare to unleash a follow-up of sorts with Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy, the studio has decided to make a different kind of RPG in The Expanse: Osiris Reborn.
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Some quotes have been editorialized and lightly trimmed for better flow.
So, what is The Expanse: Osiris Reborn?
"The core of the game is third-person cover shooter," Rastorguev confirmed. While we'd already seen very brief gameplay clips before in the trailers released so far, many players had been wondering about the balance between "chattier" sections with a narrative focus and breakneck action.
From what we were told, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn isn't a watered-down take on real-time third-person action; we can expect environmental destruction, tactical abilities à la Mass Effect, and even opportunities that pop up in the middle of combat.
Fans of the show will be happy to know that Osiris Reborn takes place within the same continuity, with events happening in parallel to the first two seasons of the show. For the most part, it'll be a self-contained story that anyone can enjoy, but Chernenko told us that "a lot of interesting things and events are happening. I can say that we will have some cameos in our game."
The BioWare DNA extends beyond the moment-to-moment gameplay, defining a lot of the game's structure, from the heavy narrative choices and exploration opportunities to the squad system that allows the player to take two companions with them when outside their ship.
"In the final game, you will have six companions with you. They will have different origins; some will be Belters, Martians, and Earthers, and it will affect their personality," Chernenko added. An important goal for Owlcat is to reinforce the idea of being with "a team of professionals" that does stuff on their own, even when you're away on a mission yourself.
When the talking stops, and the shooting starts, combat won't just happen inside space stations or on planetary surfaces, as some of the game's most striking setpieces take place in zero gravity. That introduces several huge challenges for the developers and the player, but Owlcat is striving to keep the "essence" of the combat consistent.
"Most of the weapons, abilities, and gadgets work the same in zero-G. We just designed them to be suitable for both the sections with gravity and without gravity," notes Rastorguev.
This doesn't mean there are no changes, as certain gadgets work and react differently based on physics. Grenades, for example, have "thrusters" while in zero-G that accelerate them towards the target instead of along traditional ballistic trajectories. "We change the effects, because obviously the flame is not something that can be present in the vacuum," explains Rastorguev. In practice, that means that Incendiary grenades become "termite charges" while fighting in space, and so on.
Like in other space games with similar sections, such as Dead Space, "the main difference is how you actually orient and move." We'll be able to walk on surfaces thanks to magnetic boots, but "there's no up direction or down direction," which adds another layer of challenge when things get hectic outside. "The speed you can run there is slightly different, the animations are different, so the feeling is different, but it's not like you will have to learn how to play the game from scratch."
The latest gameplay trailer also showed a quick tease of an outer space section where players must guide a drone through debris. We didn't get to see more of this at the preview, but Rastorguev did give us some exciting info. "It is a thing in The Expanse; you can probably remember that the pilot of the Rocinante, Alex Kamal, also had the drone... In the game, you can use your drone to explore various space environments and find what's behind different asteroids and pieces of broken ships."
Our preview and Q&A session with Owlcat Games yielded more answers and gave us a good sense of what to expect from a sci-fi RPG that seems to be taking cues from gaming classics while sporting a cutting-edge look. We'll be sharing more and discussing its big closed beta in depth later this month, so stay tuned.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is releasing on PC (Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S at some point in spring 2027. A day-one Game Pass Ultimate launch has been revealed, too. There is an open beta dropping on April 22, limited to those with Miller's Pack and Collector's Edition pre-orders.
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