There's a new Expanse game coming and it looks fantastic

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn looks like The Expanse crossed with Mass Effect

Image: Owlcat Games

The Expanse – both the book series and the TV show – might be over, but there's still been a lot of work to keep the franchise going in a whole bunch of ways. There was the video game from Tale Tell Games that was released in 2023, a pair of sequel comic books, and some action figures. Now, there's a new video game on the way from Owlcat Games: The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, described as an action RPG. The studio announced the game at this year's Future Games Show Summer Showcase, and while there isn't yet a release date, it'll be available for Xbox Series X, PS5 and PC.

The main character is a mercenary from Pinkwater Security who's on Eros when the asteroid is locked down and you get pulled into a much greater conspiracy. You'll play the character, and you'll have to take command of a ship and gather up a crew to survive.

Here's the announcement trailer:

Holy shit, inject this into my veins. It's always hard to tell what a game will look like off of early graphics, but this looks fantastic – I'm particularly enjoying the equipment designs: it looks like it's drawing from both the show and sort of doing its own thing.

The studio has a whole bunch of details about what to expect from the game: Combat is "tactical and built around smart decision-making under pressure, where every move has the potential to shift the balance of a fight." You'll control the captain and your two fellow crew members will help you out – they'll have their own backstories, and play different roles while out fighting: they can help from afar, hack systems, or distract enemies. It also looks like you'll get to explore quite a bit of the solar system and navigate through an immersive world.

Owlcat has a series of digital packs for people to support the game: Standard ($49.95; you get a digital copy and some early perks), Deluxe ($59.95; digital copy, perks, and some neat skins), and Miller's ($79.95; digital copy, early access, artbook, name in credits, and some other stuff.) There's also a collector's edition for $289, where you'll get a box, art book, assorted swag, and various digital goods. It doesn't sound like there'll be a physical copy of the game when it is released, unfortunately.

I'm trying to figure out where this fits in the larger story – or if it even does. The trailer shows off a team heading down to an asteroid (I'm guessing it's Eros), where they kill a bunch of Protogen dudes and discover a whole bunch of people infected by the protomolocule.

Eros, if you remember from the books, is where Protogen experimented with the protomolocule by releasing it and infecting the habitat's population – that's where James Holden and Josephus Miller meet up when their respective paths bring to the asteroid, and it's where Miller meets his end. Once the protomolecule infects the station, it takes over and ends up crashing (with Miller's help) into Venus, where it spends some time stewing and creates the gate that links up humanity to the rest of the gate network. The Osiris was also a ship from the TV show, but I don't know how or if that's connected.

If we want to get into the weeds with a super pedantic discussion about canon, it looks as though it's set in in parallel to that main story from the books and TV series. The studio said that we'll get to see some familiar characters – there's certainly plenty of folks to meet up with across the solar system.

What's exciting about this is that it's an RPG, and I've seen a bunch of places describe it as looking a lot like Mass Effect: you'll be able to customize your characters, and the decisions you make throughout the game will affect how your time as captain goes.

But what I really like about this bit of news is that it feels like it's really something that's coming full circle for the story as a whole: Ty Franck originally conceived of The Expanse as a pitch for an MMORPG game. When that didn't go anywhere, he ported the idea over to a post-to-play RPG, then teamed up with Daniel Abraham and the rest is history. Now, we're getting a video game that seems like it's close (ish) to the original idea. That's pretty neat.

I'm not much of a gamer these days (although I did pick up Split Fiction and have been digging that), but I do have the Tale Tell game, which I never got around to finishing. This is definitely something that I'll be picking up and checking out.