When it was first revealed earlier this year, we said that The Expanse: Osiris Reborn “looks a lot like a new Mass Effect.” Now, after having watched almost an hour of it in action at gamescom 2025, developer Owlcat Games has done nothing to change my mind. That is, of course, a very welcome thing – it’s been eight years since the last Mass Effect (13 since the last good one), and the upcoming, undated sequel is both far away and has a lot to prove following BioWare’s recent chain of underwhelming releases. Owlcat stepping up with its own 3D, space-faring adventure is something of a relief, then – finally, after so many years of waiting, we’re getting a “new” Mass Effect from a studio that’s really proven its RPG talents with the likes of Pathfinder and Rogue Trader. But while Osiris Reborn is certainly comfortingly familiar, the hard sci-fi nature of The Expanse is new territory for this format, as opposed to BioWare’s Star Wars and Trek influences. That allows it to neatly circumnavigate any “we have Mass Effect at home” jokes, but does run the risk of being a colder cousin to Commander Shepard’s so easily likable odyssey.
Osiris Reborn takes place in parallel to The Expanse’s core story – the first two books, if you’re a reader, and the early TV seasons if you’re a watcher. You’ll feel the impact of important events ripple through your adventure; the mission I watched creative director Alexander Mishulin play took place in the wake of the Eros Incident, and several minutes in the news of the Canterbury being attacked was spreading among a panicked space station. If all that means nothing to you, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about – I’m only a casual fan of The Expanse myself, with a fading memory of those early episodes, and everything seemed to slot into place. I imagine Owlcat is making efforts for this original story to be a gateway into the universe.
While familiar faces will eventually turn up, Osiris Reborn charts the journey of a player-created protagonist and a team of original characters. Among your crew of Pinkwater Security mercenaries is J, our companion for this demo mission as well as your sibling (they’re modelled after your custom character to ensure family resemblance, a nice touch that means everyone will get their own version of them.) Owlcat aims to make every companion feel present and alive, and as we explore the mercenary station J wanders off to chat with NPCs, providing the sense that he’s his own person and not just a pawn to direct in battle.
As we push on and gossip with a vendor and a technician, I find that the writing doesn’t hit the highs of either Mass Effect or Owlcat’s own isometric RPGs. It’s somewhat flat and lacking in character-defining flourishes, and as a result I’m not yet convinced these companions will be as charming or engaging as those in the series Osiris Rising is so clearly built upon. But don’t take that as me writing them off – The Expanse has some excellent, complex characters that reward a slow burn, and so there’s every chance your crew will get where they need to be over the course of the 30-ish hour campaign.
The siblings previously escaped the disastrous Eros Incident by stealing a spaceship from the shadowy Protogen corporation, and the repercussions of that are where the demo kicks into action: Protogen has followed us back home to demand justice. It’s here we’re presented with a classic RPG choice: we can ask our Pinkwater Security colleagues to resist and cover our escape, or simply try to slip away unaided. One persuasion check later, the station’s senior officer has agreed to have his mercenaries hold the line while we make our exit. Mishulin promises there will be repercussions for this, both immediate and delayed. As we crawl through the station’s vents, the roar of battle echoes as our allies hold the line against Protogen. Later, we see the cost of that choice: dead bodies strewn through the corridors. After unlocking the station’s armoury in search of new equipment, we find it completely stripped of guns – every rifle taken in an attempt to secure our safety. These are perhaps somewhat surface-level consequences, and I suspect the alternative route wouldn’t have been significantly different (Protogen later announced that they would have dealt with us reasonably peacefully, so certainly there’d be fewer bodies.) The real question is how our choices ripple across the campaign. Perhaps by resisting and losing so many mercenaries, we’ve set ourselves up for more significant failure later on down the road.
While the station’s staff were doing plenty to fight off Protogen, there were multiple opportunities for us to deal out our own punishment. Like Mass Effect, combat is a core part of The Expanse, and is similarly a cover-based shooting affair augmented by abilities. The rocket grenades are perhaps the most fun – thrown explosives with their own guidance thrusters that zoom across the arena like fireworks. There’s a lore reason for such extravagant properties: thrown explosives don’t tend to go where you want when there’s little-to-no gravity, and half the battle sequences shown in the demo were in such spaces. Anchored to the side of the station by mag-lock boots, these fights didn’t seem significantly different to those waged inside, despite a bespoke system that adjusts the way movement feels and handles, but were made striking by the way bodies and debris float across the arena. Destructible environments splinter and shatter under heavy gunfire, which does occasionally eliminate the enemy’s cover, but mostly seems there to score cool points rather than be a significant tactical advantage. And it really does look cool, especially when explosions tear entire wall panels apart.
My main concern when it comes to combat is the threat that there will be few options beyond guns. The Expanse’s hard sci-fi nature means there’s not really the opportunity for space wizards or aliens with bizarre abilities, and so it may be that the entire combat experience is delivered via the muzzle of a gun. Mishulin assures me there’s a wide variety of firearms that provide a range of experiences even within weapon classifications (there are three assault rifles and all of them have significantly different properties, he explains), plus the distinction between a sniper-focused marksman and the more typical run-and-gun class. But that’s all very Call of Duty, and my hope is that Owlcat has a smart, more RPG-style approach beyond that. With any luck, there will be technical characters such as hackers that provide a more specialised, ability-driven approach.
I can’t say I’ve instantly fallen in love with any one single part of Osiris Reborn, and I’ll need to see at least a few more hours to know if I’ll truly connect with its characters – arguably the most important part of an RPG. But what I have seen appears to be exactly the kind of foundations I’ve been looking for since I took Shepard on their final mission. It’s combat-forward, but conversation-heavy. It’s about the team, but with none of the micromanagement of more traditional computer RPGs. And The Expanse itself is a promising ore vein to be mined – it may be a colder, more grounded universe that puts hard restrictions on several RPG staples, but it’s also a world rife with complex politics that hopefully will lead to conflicts that are deeper and more nuanced than the typical bleeding heart leftie vs tyrannical fascist scenarios so common in this genre.
This isn’t exactly the first time Owlcat has “done a BioWare.” As the demo came to a close, Mishulin compared the studio’s Pathfinder games to Baldur’s Gate 2. This project sees the developer take inspiration from a later era of BioWare – and so Owlcat must also tread the same path as its muse, shifting from isometric to cinematic. But it knows it can’t just follow in those exact footsteps. “We are building on that legacy and expanding what players anticipate from this experience,” said game design producer Yuliya Chernenko when The Expanse: Osiris Reborn was announced. I wouldn’t say I saw much evidence of that expansion in this demo, but I hope that it exists and will be revealed in time. But even if it falls short of those ambitions and is simply a hard sci-fi version of Mass Effect, I think I’d still happily settle for that.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.
