Can the Upcoming ‘Expanse’ Game Avoid ‘Mass Effect’s’ Biggest Mistake?
Owlcat Games is developing 'The Expanse: Osiris Reborn,' a third-person shooter RPG set in the universe of the popular sci-fi series. While players praised the combat and visuals in the beta, the studio is working to address criticisms regarding story depth and voice acting before the 2027 release.
Why it matters
This reflects the challenges of adapting complex narrative-driven intellectual properties into interactive video game formats.
That’s the line the developer of the upcoming Expanse video game has adopted as its own slogan. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is set to release in spring 2027. It’s being developed by Owlcat Games, the Cyprus-based developer known for dense role-playing games like Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.
Osiris Reborn is a third-person shooter and role-playing game where the player slips into the boots of a spaceship captain leading a found-family crew of misfits across the far-future solar system. You fight bad guys and float around in zero-gravity environments in the hard-science setting of The Expanse books and show. Dialog options and choice trees baked into cutscenes let you shape the narrative and change the outcomes. As many people have pointed out, it sounds very much like the Mass Effect video game series.
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