The Expanse: Osiris Reborn preview – Owlcat’s eye for detail isn’t thrown off by a new perspective

Owlcat freely admits that The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is its most ambitious game yet, but from what I’ve seen of it at Gamescom 2025, the love and attention to detail poured into the RPG is no different from the developer’s previous, isometric projects, perspective change be damned.

Studio co-founder and creative director Alexander Mishulin ran us through one of the missions available in the game. The protagonist and his small group of companions – including his twin brother – have just escaped from Eros, where the proto-molecule has been unleashed. Having claimed a ship from the antagonists – legitimate salvage, of course – they’ve returned to their home station to change its transponder.

It’s a lively place with areas to loot, secrets to find, and lots of conversations to be had, which includes the opportunity to pick up some optional side quests. Though Osiris Reborn generally looks quite spectacular, some of the facial animations are definitely still a bit stiff. The same is true for the voicework and dialog I’ve seen so far. It’s a bit wooden, out of place at times. Both animations and voices didn’t really reflect the context of conversations very well.

Speaking of which: Naturally, the bad guys find the good guys, presenting us with a pretty major choice — we can persuade the station’s chief to fight the intruders on our behalf or simply try to hide without dragging them into our problems. In this case, we made it everyone’s problem and predictably got a majority of the station’s inhabitants killed. Another consequence was that there was less loot for us when we later came upon the station’s armory, since a lot of weapons were taken to facilitate the fight. Of course, it’s impossible to say how this would have influenced the campaign long term. Will Protogen’s higher losses on the space station be beneficial for us at some point, or will disillusioned survivors of the massacre perhaps cause issues for us?

This is Owlcat as we know and love it — no punches pulled. If you make a decision, you need to be prepared for it to have the worst consequences imaginable. I asked Mishulin whether we would be able to double-cross companions and the like – personal agendas and politics being a heavy feature of the source material – and he confirmed that you’ll be able to romance, betray, plot, and play double or triple-agent to your heart’s content. And the game won’t warn you about anything — no flashing screen asking you to rethink your decisions and spelling out potential consequences for you.

Owlcat went for a heavier sci-fi look than the show did, but a lot of the visuals immediately transport you into the series. On the station, we could even watch James Holden’s iconic broadcast after the destruction of the Canterbury. Many of the show’s actors, Mishulin said, have taken up their roles for appearances in the game, making Osiris Reborn into something like a bridge between the show and the novels. And while our group will cross paths with the crew around Holden – and certainly be affected by their deeds and decisions – Mishulin has emphasized that our journey will have its own high stakes and not be overshadowed by that overarching plot that’s going on.

Anyway, so heavily armed corporate troops are storming the space station and we get to the shooting bit, which features a cover system, consumables – Mishulin said that Owlcat wants players to use lots of those, so they’ll be very common to find – and lots of spraying. It might simply have been the presenter’s exhaustion (it was Friday evening at Gamescom, when the people working the event were basically dead on their feet), but the guns looked very hard to aim and control. Lots of shots went wide due to the heavy recoil, leading to a ton of reloading mid-fight. Since I didn’t get to take control myself, I can’t tell you how the gunplay feels.

Aside from throwing self-propelled grenades (they don’t really go anywhere without an engine in zero-gravity environments), there was very little in terms of ability use. Outside of combat, there are classic skill checks to be seen, but battles are very shooting-intensive. I hope there’s some variety to be found in that regard, even if the setting is straightforward like that.

Actively giving orders to your companion seemed to be a crucial part of combat, as our brother bailed us out of tricky situations several times with well-aimed shots or explosions we ordered. Speaking of: Lots of stuff is destructible, filling the rooms with debris and burn marks.

Also, physics. They’re a big thing. Owlcat tried to be as realistic as possible, at least where it didn’t actively interfere with gameplay. For example, the developers created special running animations for zero-gravity environments and even started making some unique ones for very special cases, but scrapped the latter because it began to make movement feel unintuitive — some people also got motion sickness. There are sound effects when fighting in the vacuum of space, although they are dampened to make them feel different from those in an atmosphere.

It’s a tool Owlcat uses well, though. As we flee towards our ship, there’s a section of the mission taking place on the external superstructure of the space station. Debris always flies precisely in the direction it should, depending on where exactly on the rotating modules we are — while it’s ironic to use the term in this context, it’s quite atmospheric.

I think that’s the key takeaway from this demonstration. There wasn’t much we could glean in regards to the role-playing capabilities of the game or how combat truly feels — you can’t really do that without going hands-on for a longer period of time yourself. But what this demo run has proven without a doubt is that Owlcat is pouring all of its experience and passion for making RPGs into this project — you can see it in the environments, the attention to detail, the way the developers are playing around with the physics. They are making the most of this setting.

Whether you’re waiting for a Mass Effect-esque game or are a massive fan of The Expanse, Osiris Reborn is the one to watch.

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