There is no doubt that The Expanse: Osiris Reborn will scratch that Mass Effect itch we’ve all had for so, so long. In many ways, outside of its shiny Unreal Engine 5 visuals and glorious destruction effects, there’s a clunkiness to Owlcat’s RPG that will make you feel like 2012 BioWare simply jumped through a dimensional rift to create a licensed property instead of its original IP.
In our rather small time with the upcoming sci-fi game, where we played on PC, it’s clear that Owlcat is looking at Mass Effect with a laser focus. It’s combat feels ripped straight from the series’ peak with its slightly-floaty third-person gunplay and the ability to command teammates to flank and take out foes with the use of cooldown abilities.
Its influences are worn on its sleeve with the more light-hearted, casual prose of its newest RPG feeling much more accessible than the swathes of gorgeous literature you’d experience in Pathfinder, Rogue Trader, or even the in-development Dark Heresy. Yes, this is undoubtedly an Owlcat game, but if you squint you could be fooled into thinking that this was actually made by someone else.
If you’ve pre-purchased The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, you’ll be able to play the exact same demo I ran through four times, although I wouldn’t recommend jumping in right now. This is clearly a playtest, one that will require a lot of feedback and polish prior to release, and it’s merely a vertical slice of what Owlcat is hoping to achieve when the RPG is fully featured.
In the demo, you and your twin arrive on Pinkwater 4, a space station where your characters grew up. You can play as either a male or female character with your twin taking on the same gender as you escape a mass terrorist attack on a stolen enemy ship. In this station, which is suitably impressive in its scale and detail, you’ll be able to chat with folk, learn more about the world, and find a bevvy of upgrade items to improve your gear later on.
It’s in this section where The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is at its weakest, largely due to the more simplistic writing compared to Owlcat’s impressive past. While Pathfinder often had weighty dialogue that felt like a novel, The Expanse often feels more like a TV show, which I guess is to be expected considering the source material. However, when the dialogue is also presented by some rather flat, largely atrocious voice acting by both of the main twins, it can feel even more bland and stilted than what’s actually being presented, and that’s across both genders right now.
What’s clear is that the characters you interact with outside of the twins are interesting. O’Connell, the boss of the space station, offers a fun gameplay choice as the location becomes invaded by the same enemies you were just escaping: do you allow the station to fight on your behalf, or do you sneak out and fight on your lonesome, hopefully saving people by doing so. These are the types of choices that make or break RPGs, and Owlcat has always excelled at making these choices matter compared to others in the genre. If choices like these are frequent and have actual consequence and benefits, then the RPG part of Owlcat’s shiny new title will likely exceed the Mass Effects its so clearly inspired by.
Nevertheless, when the action kicks off, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn shows great prowess and confidence in its design. Right now, with a year of development time to go, the game is in its roughest state so far—and judging by Owlcat’s past it will likely see significant improvements for years after that—but fighting through the space stations and zero-gravity space sections of the game is already fun enough.
As you continue to battle through mercenaries, taking cover behind crates, slow-mo headshotting your foes, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn clicks into a masterful third-person dance of destruction. Fighting in an area often leaves it decimated by your actions with explosives ripping apart gas pipes, smashing open walls. There’s a dynamism to the combat that other games simply don’t have, allowing you to strip cover away from your enemies, forcing them out into the open.
Enemies aren’t pushovers, either, especially when they start to use their own abilities against you. On the harder difficulties, fights can become quite stressful with snipers grazing you and your partner, and your cover being torn apart by concentrated machine gun fire, grenades, and flamethrowers.
At least in this demo, there’s also choice in the game’s combat. During a mostly spectacular spacewalk section which sees you gunning down enemies on the side of Pinkwater 4, you’ll have a choice to enter one part of the station or another as you avoid an enemy ship’s detection. Depending on where you enter, your path is largely different with different weapons to find and a minor puzzle to solve. It’s these clever additions—the type that make even the smallest choices matter—that shows that Owlcat is bringing some of its CRPG knowledge into its third-person RPG, and this is something I hope is kept as a focus for the rest of the game.
In all honesty, the most impressive part of The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, so far, is how the demo ends. As you team up with your soon-to-be navigator, you can command your ship to reign hell upon your enemies from outside the space station, grinding through the environment with pure destructive force as silo after silo pounds into the once-glossy environment. It’s in this moment that you realise Owlcat isn’t playing around—this is not just an RPG, it’s a blockbuster spectacle with the type of action you’d expect from an Uncharted, not a Pathfinder.
While the demo doesn’t let us play with some of the core RPG mechanics that will likely make up the bulk of the game, it’s a well-rounded experience so far. (In fact, you can even start a side mission with a friendly NPC which sadly can’t be completed at this point in the demo.) As the game expands and we get to see more of the sci-fi universe explored, it’s hard to know how well this all fits together, but what is here is pretty damn satisfying.
Yes, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn has a lot of jank, but it’s also far from finished, and it’s clear that Owlcat has a lot of confidence in the game that this is shaping up to be, and so do I. The foundations here are strong, and everything is pointing in the right direction, and (hopefully) by the time it’s ready for release in Spring 2027, it’ll be even better.
