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During the Xbox Partner Showcase, a new trailer debuted for the upcoming sci-fi title from studio Owlcat Games. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, set in the world of the beloved books and series. After chatting with the developers, I have a clearer idea of the story the game will tell. Best of all, players will be able to experience it next month.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is scheduled for release in spring 2027 It was first revealed at Summer Game Fest last year, with a cinematic sneak peek at the game, but the new trailer shows off gameplay footage to give players an idea of what awaits them in the full release. With its cover-based combat, team coordination, abilities and space sci-fi setting, the game feels like BioWare’s beloved Mass Effect trilogy from the 2000s – and is just one of the many games that inspired Osiris Reborn.
Fans of the franchise won’t have to wait long to get a taste of the game. The closed beta will arrive on April 22, 2026, offering a full mission for players to form a team of three to defeat enemies using their weapons and abilities. Players will be able to choose between pre-defined character configurations with different origins: an officer or a hacker, and either a man from Earth or a woman from the asteroid belt (called a Belter in in-universe parlance).
The playable demo will also provide insight into the game’s connection to the books and show. This occurs after the alien protomolecule first spreads across the Eros station and before the extrasolar ring is activated (for example, between the end of the first season and the middle of the third season of the TV show). Through the mission, players will collect materials to upgrade their equipment, improve their skills, and use magnetic shoes to walk up and down zero-gravity surfaces, crossing walls and ceilings.
It’s a small glimpse of what the final game will offer. Ahead of the Xbox Partner Showcase, Owlcat developers gave media a chance to ask their burning questions about the game in a group interview, from how it connects to the larger story told in The Expanse media to how it’s inspired by and different from Mass Effect.
What The Expanse: Osiris Reborn does differently than Mass Effect
Just looking at the new trailer for The Expanse: Osiris Reborn reminds me a lot of Mass Effect, and there are plenty of other similarities. Combat in the upcoming game relies heavily on cover shooting. There are six companions to recruit (and possibly romance), from which players will draw to fill out a three-person party on missions alongside their main character.
After listening to developers Owlcat Studios, this was no coincidence — when I asked them at the preview about it, they noted that many members of the team had played and loved those games. Game design producer Yulia Chernenko said that what they took away from it was “the feeling and impact that Mass Effect had on the player.”
Leonid Rastorguev, the game’s director, acknowledged Mass Effect’s influence on the team, but insisted that Osiris Reborn would stand out on its own from the beloved BioWare games.
“In many ways we do things differently, the ways we handle the development of the relationship between the comrades and the captain (the main character), is very similar to the way we do it in narrative-driven RPGs like Pathfinder,” Rastorguev said. Osiris Reborn isn’t class-based either, giving players more freedom to customize their weapons and tools.
Most importantly, Osiris Reborn is set in the world of The Expanse, a more realistic sci-fi space opera set within the planets closest to our solar system in the real world, where different cultures develop among Earth’s indigenous people, military Martians, and the working class on an asteroid station archipelago between Mars and Jupiter.
While the books and series follow hero James Holden and the crew of the battleship Rocinante, Osiris Reborn will focus on a new character from one of those three origins, and their interactions with companions and others will be colored by cultural clashes from different backgrounds. Since the game takes place during the first two seasons of the TV show (or the first two and a half books, as the developers say), there’s a lot of conflict between these three major nations.
“We aim to make this a welcome game for people who know nothing about The Expanse… to join as everything unfolds, to see the major events that happened in the series but from a different point of view,” Chernenko said. “It was a bit difficult to give the freedom of choice to a new character who has his own story, who has his own goals within the already established timeline of events.”
While beloved characters from the books and TV shows will appear in prominent roles, the team has remained tight-lipped about their identities.
Players will encounter creatures mutated by the alien protomolecule.
Create an action RPG in the gritty sci-fi setting of The Expanse
Also unlike Mass Effect (or any of BioWare’s games), players’ choices won’t change them up or down on the scale of good and evil. Instead of a moral alignment system, the player character’s decisions involving deeper involvement with the game’s factions (Earth, Mars, and Belt) affect their reputation. I found that reassuring. It reflects the shades of gray that permeate The Expanse as a setting, where backroom politics, risky deals, and betrayals make up much of the drama in the books and TV show.
Similar to Rocinante in The Expanse, players will have their own ship to call home between missions. The developers note that it will not have a customizable appearance. It’s just a space that changes as the story progresses, as more companions join it. Although there are some interactive components, it’s a place to chat with your teammates and rest, similar to a campsite in classic RPGs, Rastorguev said.
Many matches affected the team beyond the overall effect. For stealth combat, the team turned to The Division, Gears of War, and Uncharted series, Rastorguev told me; For guys, look to The Last of Us.
“If we listed all the references we had during the development cycle, it would be a huge list, including some very strange games like Dark Souls, the Persona series and others that you can’t really tell where we put the inspiration without knowing the inner kitchen of the development cycle,” Rastorguev said.
Chernenko noted that the team brings in a lot of influences from different books and films, making it difficult to get specific inspiration for specific things in Osiris Reborn, with one exception: snowboarding.
“We can share that the inspiration for figure skating was through the animation of running in the zero gravity section,” Rastorguev said.
The game’s zero gravity mechanics may also set Osiris Reborn apart from its effects. Guns and munitions would work the same way with or without gravity, though with some modifications: grenades would have small propellant jets, for example, and explosives that leave trails of fire would have an in-universe reason for not being instantly extinguished in a vacuum. But the action will be different, as the player’s party enters missions with magnetic boots that allow them to walk on walls and other surfaces – a signature element from the books and TV show.
In Osiris Reborn, companions are key
Another important feature of The Expanse and BioWare games is relationships — and yes, there will be some romances between the player character and his companions, Chernenko said. Developing relationships with companions is a big part of the game, as you help them solve problems and even undertake the famous so-called loyalty quests in BioWare games to gain their trust.
“Comrades play an important role,” Rastorguev said. “They have their opinions, their feedback, and even if they’re not in combat with you in your battle group, they’re still communicating with you, doing some important things or at least giving feedback on what’s going on during the mission.”
Finally, I asked if the game was drawn more from the books or the TV show, since there were some changes made when a lot of the original text was shortened in the TV series. Osiris Reborn takes more influence from the show, even though it includes things only mentioned in the books.
“We try to make sure that both worlds and points of view are taken into account,” Chernenko said. “But as far as the visual stuff, like the main characters and what happens story-wise, it’s the show, not the book.”