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Fans of the sci-fi series The Expanse will be able to experience part of the upcoming game The Expanse: Osiris Reborn in a closed beta available now for those who pre-order. Although it’s just a short demo lasting about an hour, it gives a glimpse of what the full game has in store, and there’s nothing stopping you from trying it out a few times to see what you’ve been missing – which I did, and I highly recommend it.
Access to the beta isn’t cheap: although the base game costs $50, players will need to head to Owlcat Studios online store To purchase either the $80 Miller’s Pack or the $289 Collector’s Edition to experience the same demo I had to play. The demo covers a short portion of the game with some combat, some investigation, some lore, and great suspense. There will be a long wait to find out what happens, as the game won’t be released until Spring 2027.
And yes, Osiris Reborn looks a lot like Mass Effect – a third-person shooter with role-playing elements and plenty of characters for players to get to know. The glimpse I saw in the demo, assuming it represents what players will experience in the final release, will feel like a throwback to fans of the Mass Effect series. Fortunately, it’s set unambiguously in the world of The Expanse, with realistic science, interplanetary culture clashes, and plot twists like those found in the franchise’s “hard” sci-fi books and shows.
I’ll admit, as a fan of the series, I was impressed by the references I recognized, including a news report explaining the destruction of the merchant ship The Canterbury (the event that kicks off the series) and a mention of a video of hero James Holden, even though it doesn’t show that. This is in line with Owlcat developers’ assertion that the game will take place at the same time, but not largely overlap, with the events of the show and books.
The best part of the demo – which you’ll need to play twice to see – is how different decisions change the outcome of the story. What seems like a standard request from your character changes someone else’s fate and seems likely to have greater payoffs later in the full game (I’ll share what happens next in the next section).
News reports in the pilot refer to events in The Expanse books and show.
Owlcat game developer interviews
In the demo, you’ll play as an unnamed mercenary who’s signed up alongside his twin at the private company Pinkwater Security. The demo lets you play as one of four pre-made designs, such as a hardware damage-focused hacker or a weapons-savvy officer, with choices of origin from Earth or the asteroid belt beyond Mars (known as Belters).
The main character and their twins return from a mission (presumably the one that opens the game) as the only survivors of their mercenary fireteam on Eros, the space station overrun by an extraterrestrial protomolecule similar to the plague in the books and show. Relieved after their ordeal, they are free to wander around Pinkwater Station 4, and I recommend you do so to chat with the rambunctious saleswoman Luciana and the dismal ship’s dispatcher Harry. Talk to enough people and wander around the tablets and computer terminals, and you’ll uncover side quests. If your engineering skills are high enough, you can hack the door.
Your main character must then come forward to report, explaining to the station manager and Pinkwater Chief O’Connell what happened to your team on Eros. Unfortunately, something is tracking you from that cursed place, and you’ll have to shoot your way out of Pinkwater 4 to reach your stolen ship, piloted by your new crewmate Zafar.
Your brother J, whose gender depends on what you choose for your main character, accompanies you in the beta.
Osiris Reborn Demo: What’s been kept and ditched from Mass Effect
I’ll come back to the unexpectedly critical importance of the choice you made with O’Connell, but (now we get into spoilers), it’s the coolest thing about the demo and the most different from Mass Effect – or rather, the natural evolution of what BioWare’s game series has always promised. When a squad of armored enforcers from the mysterious Protogen corporation board the station in search of the main character, they can either tell O’Connel to stay out of the way or convince him to put Pinkwater’s security forces into action.
If you convince them of the latter option, you’ll get help during firefights as you blast through the station’s corridors and out to escape to your ship. Combat is very similar to Mass Effect as you run from cover to cover shooting your enemies and using abilities, including grenades or swarms of drones, to even the odds. You can also order your teammate (in the demo, your brother J) to perform strategic attacks that will disable enemies, such as exploding barrels or destroying enemy cover.
Some sections of the game will have players transported to exposed outer areas of space, where their magnetic shoes are all that keeps them from floating off into the unknown.
The best part of the combat in the demo was the zero-gravity segments that the Owlcat developers hinted at Our interview in March. As I wandered around the outside of Pinkwater Station to exchange gunfire with the Protogen guys, I stepped onto a platform at a different angle – and the camera bent down to adjust it so my magnetic boots kept me right side up, but my enemies were tilted down. It wasn’t quite shooting from the ceiling The Osiris Reborn trailer has been releasedbut it was a great re-creation of the way zero-gravity battles appear in The Expanse show.
One of the best deviations from Mass Effect is how you can mix and match your gear at any given time, freeing you from the “class” constraints of the BioWare series in favor of newbie rewards for your background (such as greater athletic skill than you were born in 1G Earth’s gravity). In the demo, you can mix and match your three tool slots, and I swapped out my incendiary rounds for an explosive missile I picked up. There are also four slots for armor subsystem equipment and other enhancements. You can also swap out your guns for any you pick up along the way, and upgrade all of the aforementioned intermediate missions with different scrap materials.
Since Osiris Reborn is an RPG, there is a skill tree system to put points into once you get enough experience to level up, but from what I saw in the demo it was adequate, but not very exciting. The Command Tree boosts your teammates’ stats and abilities when taking orders, and the Tool Tree boosts abilities like Drone Swarm, but the weapon-related tree only boosts damage. It’s essential, but not quite as new as the story and choices.
Players can choose how they respond during dialogue sections and make decisions that can have major consequences.
Speaking of which, there are mid-mission options that branch your path in fun ways, like choosing whether you want to wait for your teammate Zafar to distract the Protogen ship orbiting around you so you can get to the airlock you’re guarding, or take a different airlock through a gas-filled tunnel. Even more frightening is the realization that if you convinced Stationmaster O’Connell to rally Pinkwater to fight for you at the beginning of the demo, you’ll find the living quarters littered with many of their corpses by the time you arrive.
Fight your way back to the same hallway you safely entered at the beginning of the demo and you’ll encounter heavily armored Enforcers and the ferocious Protogen agent leading them, standing between you and your ship. Fortunately, Zafar is ready to help, and you can call in strikes from the battleship’s Vulcan defensive cannons (“PDCs” in Expanse parlance) that slice through the opposition, giving you a window to board and escape.
The Protogen Operator evades your ship’s guns, shooting armored enemies.
Now comes the promising part of the demo: If Pinkwater fights alongside you, a Protogen agent relentlessly shoots O’Connell, and when you fire a missile away at your ship, obliterates Pinkwater Station 4 with a nuclear blast. But if you ask O’Connell to stand down at the beginning of the demo, he and the station will live another day, albeit at gunpoint. To me, it’s a shocking duality that arises from a choice that might be harmless in another game but carries dire consequences in the world of The Expanse. It seemed like a brutal conclusion that fit the harsh world of the books and show.
At just over an hour per round, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn Demo offers insight into the game’s combat, abilities, and equipment. But we still have to wait and see how the story, characters, relationships and romances will play out – which are the promising elements to be discovered, for me (and I bet a lot of Mass Effect fans as well).
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn will release in spring 2027 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, starting at $50. Fans who pre-order the $80 Miller’s Pack or $289 Collector’s Edition can access the beta.