The Summer of Gaming kind of came and went, didn’t it? There were some pretty noteworthy reveals like Resident Evil Requiem and MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, crushing disappointments (Hollow Knight: Silksong at Gamescom for sure), and a whole bunch of missing games. Fable, Contraband, Gears of War: E-Day, whatever else Naughty Dog has going on, etc. Nintendo is pretty much doing its own thing after the Switch 2’s launch.
Yet there were a few relative unknowns that none of us saw coming, which were both visually striking and full of potential, least of all from Owlcat Games. You’ve probably heard of them from Pathfinder: Kingmaker – two relatively acclaimed computer RPGs. Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader is their latest title, and while it’s returning to the 40K universe with another RPG entry, it revealed something completely different at the Future Games Show: Osiris Reborn.
More specifically, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. It’s based on Alcon Entertainment’s critically acclaimed television series, itself based on the acclaimed novels by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. The reveal trailer saw a frigate, the Gemini, venturing through an asteroid belt on a rescue mission for someone who “stuck their neck” out for this crew.
It has that cliched line about a man with a hammer and nails, but there’s a gusto about engaging in this mission. “Time to say oh ye with our hammer,” as the frigate barrel rolls into the asteroid, firing all the way. From there, it’s a traipse through this space station, battling enemies in zero gravity and employing drones and shields in a tight situation before eventually reaching their quarry. The problem is they’re infected by some mysterious substance perpetuating throughout the room.
Talk is cheap, of course, and that’s doubly so for cinematic trailers. Owlcat Games also provided some pre-alpha gameplay at the tail-end of the player walking around in space complexes and seedy markets. It then cut to some action and cover movement, alongside a gunship tearing apart enemies from the outside. The Mass Effect comparisons are fairly strong, but you’re not a Specter who goes on to become a legend.
Instead, you play as a mercenary for Pinkwater Security. As GamesRadar notes, you’re involved in a mission on the space station Eros (the asteroid in question), but things suddenly turn bad when the Protomolecule (the blue substance) infects everything and everyone. Your job is to escape, and that’s how the game begins. However, the ramifications of the infestation are felt throughout, given the event’s significance in its source material.
Space exploration has advanced significantly, allowing humanity to build colonies on Earth, Mars or the Belt, an asteroid belt located near Mars and Jupiter. To say they’re on bad terms would be an understatement – humans born in the Belt, known as Belters, though some resistance is building due to the Outer Planets Alliance. While the Protomolecule is doubtless a major part of the story, your crew is caught in a “system-wide conspiracy” and, to put it kindly “everything around you begins to fall apart.”
While there isn’t too much about the challenges that your crew will face, The Expanse’s setting is pretty intricate, with all kinds of conflicts and notable events. You can choose from the three main planets – Mars, Earth and the Belt – for your origin, and recruit companions to your cause. Two allies can join on a single mission with different abilities that you have command over, but even cooler is that the rest of the crew provides other assistance. Hacking systems is one example, and the gunship seen in the trailer is another.
Everyone is packed together in the Frigate, and your decisions will determine not only how these relationships pan out but also have long-term consequences on the story. This extends even to the NPCs encountered on planets as you learn their secrets and either manipulate or uncover new routes forward.
As stated earlier, however, talk is cheap. The Expanse as a setting is exciting, no doubt, and the initial set-up has the potential for a great story, but we need to see more of, well, everything before passing any judgment. However, one thing is relatively certain: Osiris Reborn could very well fill the Mass Effect-shaped void that’s existed since the original trilogy ended.
It has all the ingredients in place – and some new ones that could evolve encounters beyond the third-person cover-based shooting seen in BioWare’s series. More importantly, it’s Owlcat Games at the helm who have proven their skills time and again. The Pathfinder series offers some of the most in-depth character-building, which is almost as overwhelming as it is enticing. While it’s not going to bring that same ruleset over (because it doesn’t own it), you can bet that the progression and classes will be distinct and offer unique abilities.
It’s known for delivering some incredible companions alongside top-tier writing where your decisions matter. Granted, a third-person action RPG is new ground for the studio, and its releases are known to suffer from extensive bugs. Nevertheless, all its titles have received extensive post-launch support and patches to smoothen things out and even add new features.
On top of all this is the fact that we may not see a new Mass Effect any time this decade. BioWare has been in shambles ever since releasing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and even much before that, with Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem. The Mass Effect team is still relatively small – announced as being in the “early stages” of development back in November 2020, it hadn’t scaled into full production as of January 2025. The studio has since been restructured, but at this point, your guess is as good as ours on when the next Mass Effect could launch. And after everything that the studio has put out over the years – with Electronic Arts also doing its part to royally screw over the teams – it’s a miracle if it turns out good.
There are still many unknowns at this point about The Expanse: Osiris Reborn and more than a fair bit of expectations. The quality of combat, the companions, the settings and levels that players will explore, how the story pans out, the extent of one’s choices – even the voice acting is something that could make or break the game. In this era of high-quality role-playing games, it’s not easy to create a sci-fi action RPG, much less one based on an established property.
However, there’s a growing desire among role-playing games for the same, especially one that offers memorable companions and squad-based gameplay a la Mass Effect. Presenting a unique spin will also be important. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is still holding its cards close, but if it can capture a hint of the magic that the original Mass Effect had to offer, it could very well mean a brave new era for similar titles. When we’ll see more is a different question entirely, but the fact that it’s not in the realm of improbability is already a lesson that BioWare and EA could learn from.
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