This article is based on a preview build of The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. This is not a full review, so please note that certain aspects may still change before release.
Owlcat Games announced The Expanse: Osiris Reborn last year, marking it as the studio’s first departure from the isometric-perspective RPGs it is known for. This isn’t the first time that The Expanse universe has expanded to the video games front though. Telltale tried their hand at an episodic adventure title, but Osiris Reborn is taking a different route, aiming to deliver a planet-spanning sci-fi role-playing game. The classic BioWare fan in me instantly locked into the original announcement, so imagine my surprise when the studio confirmed the Mass Effect trilogy as a big inspiration for the project, promising political intrigue, complex companions, and tactical combat.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is still at least a year away from launching, but Owlcat is following its usual release pattern of rolling out a closed beta to give a taste of what’s to come. If you’re not familiar with the setting, The Expanse is a series of award-winning science fiction novels (which also spawned a TV show) that follows a future where Mars, the asteroid belt, and moons of the outer planets are colonized. This story takes place at time where tensions between Earth, Mars, and the Belt are at an all-time high, making it the perfect time to insert a new crew into the mix to see how they fare in this universe.
Owlcat provided me with access to this vertical slice ahead of time to see what they are cooking up. It included a mission from early in the campaign, where I could select the background of the protagonist and their twin sibling before seeing what the game has to offer. This included exploring a small space station, early looks at the skills system, zero-G combat, and even a couple of the companions that will be in the full game.
While the full game is supposed to have a character creator, the beta offers a few presets. This meant my character could be someone born on Earth or the Belt, with their background being an engineer or a hacker. Unfortunately, the Martian-born origin, the one I wanted to play, wasn’t available here, so I went with the Earth origin. In all these options, we take the role of an employee of the private security firm Pinkwater.
Right out of the gate, I could see that the visual style and portrayal of the now space-faring humans’ technology are straight out of the television show. There are no sleek spaceships that look like sports cars or gravity generators. The grounded, industrial aesthetic of ships makes them look more like flying skyscrapers, where their massive main thrusters, as well as any weapons and armor points, are strikingly visible. Aerodynamic flight is not something to be worried about out here anyway.
The Pinkwater 4 space station is where the entire mission of the closed beta takes place. This gigantic structure spins to create gravity on the outer ring, letting residents have some normalcy. This isn’t a routine stop for my Earther protagonist and his twin brother though. They show up to this station on an unknown ship that had been ‘stolen’ during a catastrophic incident on the nearby Eros station, which fans of the series should be familiar with. Before going up to meet the big boss of Pinkwater 4 and explaining the situation, I spent my sweet time exploring the offices of the station and talking to whomever I could.
A few things immediately stood out to me in the intro. I mentioned before that the station is spinning to create artificial gravity. Impressively, this can be witnessed even while inside the station thanks to all the massive windows on the walls. It might sound like a small change compared to other sci-fi games that have static space stations, but seeing the light from the nearby sun travel across the station and periodically covering everything with shadows was incredibly immersive. Another important mention is the quality of lip syncing and facial animations. Considering this is Owlcat’s first foray into the fully 3D gaming space, I was not expecting this level of detail and expressions out of characters. The random NPCs in this beta build still have that default uninteresting look, but anyone with speaking lines looks remarkable. Everything from their eye movements to how they take time to look at both twins when speaking are nice touches.
The station itself is very detailed with the same industrial look across every surface and corridor. Especially thanks to the impressive lighting (the game is powered by Unreal Engine 5), the overall atmosphere is just right. There are news broadcasts on the screens about the Eros situation and another survivor group led by James Holden (a familiar name to fans) and large numbers of NPCs going about their day gossiping about co-workers. I was also a fan of the rugged clothing of characters, including my own. It looks like a modular system with multiple layers built out of cloth, armor pieces, and electronics. One of the tech pieces is a hand-mounted computer that allows for a quick look at things like the inventory, equipment, skill trees, or companion details. All of these were mostly barren in this early build.
Soon after I finished my exploration and received an earful from the boss, things went haywire. The trouble from Eros had followed the stolen ship all the way here. This demanded choices where I could ask for help from the station crew to deal with the trouble or try to keep them out of harm’s way. Choosing to keep the station crew out of it, I try the sneaky escape route, which quickly leads to my first combat encounter.
If you have played Mass Effect, it’s a pretty similar system here. There’s cover-to-cover, over-the-shoulder shooting, abilities like homing grenades with cooldowns, and even a tactical pause system to easily give out commands to my companion in the middle of combat. It’s a very old school and arcade-y shooting experience that has enemies streaming out and dying to my gunfire or abilities. It did feel a little dated, though this could be due to this being an early mission, and I noticed some cover animations could use smoothing to not be so abrupt. However, the combat gameplay soon moves outside, where the metal hull of the station acts as the latest battlefield, where gravity has also left the room.
The magnetic boots are the only way my character is not flying out into space uncontrollably. At the same time, there’s almost no sound coming through except for the vibrations that go through the hull and the boots on my feet. That, and the incoming tracer fire, are the only context I get about where enemies might be. Feeling the dull thumps of bullets hitting my cover or the footsteps of my companion’s magnetic boots was immensely satisfying. The rotating station also gives an unreal feeling to these fights. The sun keeps appearing and disappearing over the station horizon as everyone tries not to die and get blown off. Killing an enemy in this state sends them flying into space, and explosives makes that an even bigger spectacle, as you can imagine.
Even during this battle sequence, I could make certain choices and change how the mission plays out. At one point, I could dive back into the station from its surface to escape an incoming threat but depending on how much I trusted a certain co-worker, I could take a different door. Taking the worse choice put me in a different section of the same floor, where I had to solve an extra puzzle or two to get back to the correct area again. There were a handful of simple puzzles in the entire mission requiring exploration, hacking, or being a little inquisitive. Some of them were optional too, offering the chance to acquire powerful armaments and upgrades by going out of the way and searching for clues.
There were some rough points in this beta build too. I ran into performance issues on my RX 9070 XT, alongside slow loading textures, stutters, as well as a few hard crashes. I also noticed the dialog from the protagonist’s twin was a little off, making them feel too enthusiastic and hopeful at times. Perhaps this is a trait from character background or a twist that’s being set up for later. With over a year to go before release, I am not worried about these early issues for now.
After an explosive crescendo, the mission comes to an end with a small crew already forming around the commandeered ship. While the mission took about an hour to complete, when I finished it, I thought it had been only 15 minutes and was craving for more. I am hoping Owlcat can keep this level of detail and immersiveness for the entirety of the full game. I can’t wait to see how choices and consequences play out, the complexity of all the companions I can recruit, how traveling to other stations and planets work, dive into the skill trees, and so many other aspects that were missing from this beta mission. Considering that we will be able to select our Earth, Martian, and Belter origins alongside deeper background options, it will be interesting to see how these choices will affect the rest of the story and interactions with other factions.
The wait is a rather long one, but I am already biding my time to get more of Osiris Reborn. Despite the popularity of sci-fi, truly worthwhile role-playing games of the genre don’t appear too often, even from long-standing franchises. Owlcat has been building an impressive armada of isometric RPGs in recent years, like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, leaning on its writing prowess and tight, turn-based gameplay. For its first hop over to the third-person perspective, this project is already a pleasant surprise, considering just how well everything is looking and functioning despite a few rough edges.
If you want to play the early content yourself, Owlcat has now rolled out the closed beta for Miller’s Pack and Collector’s Edition owners via its own website across Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. This includes access to the entire mission that I went through for my own preview. The beta will be available until the full game’s release next year, though it doesn’t seem like there are any plans to add more content this version going forward. While that does make this sound more like a demo than a beta, the studio has said that it plans to gather feedback and bug reports from early players to apply their findings from here onto the main project.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn full game is coming out sometime in the first half of 2027 across PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store, and GOG), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. The game will also land on Xbox Game Pass on day one of release.
