One of the best things about Telltale's take on The Expanse is that you don't really need to know what's going on to have fun with it. Being a prequel, it certainly would help to be at least somewhat familiar with the sci-fi TV show and its character of Camina Drummer, the deadpan chief of a large intergalactic space base known as Tycho Station, but the beauty of the game is its focus on player choice.
The Expanse benefits from Telltale's signature adventure-exploration gameplay, as seen in Guardians of the Galaxy's best choices, hinged on quick-time events and missable items that could have a lasting impact on later events. Its branching narratives offer a bespoke opportunity to build out Camina's backstory as you want to shape it, honing in on relationships between herself and fellow Artemis crew members as they stand at the precipice of an interplanetary mystery. Between cinematic cutscenes, drip-fed lore, space pirates, and the unique zero-gravity dynamics of operating a magsuit, it's a suitably disorienting experience that's big on immersion – no matter your familiarity with its source.
The lore of the thing
Some of the best single player games offer player-led choice and consequences.
The Expanse has a tight focus on character and lore exploration before you even think about your environment. The first episode is set largely in the confines of a giant metal spaceship, and after interacting with some intimidating pieces of equipment, your task is to track down the members of your crew to brief them on your mission. They are the nexus of your exploration, really, since it's through speaking to them or snooping through their bedrooms that you slowly uncover the dense lore underpinning the world of The Expanse.
With humanity having jumped ship to reside on other planets, there are Belters, Earthers, and Martians aboard the Artemis. Socio-political tensions are hinted at, too; Asteroid belt-born Belters are referred to by Earthers as Skinnies, a pejorative slang term referencing their thinner appearances from living in low gravity. Camina Drummer is herself a Belter, and as you explore the ship and talk to the crew, she frequently uses her own language to describe or punctuate her feelings on certain issues, people, or past events.
As someone who's only watched the first season of The Expanse, before Camina Drummer's entrance to the show, I found myself immediately drawn to learning as much contextual information as I could. Thankfully, the game makes it easy for you to pick and choose just how much of this you need a refresher on.
While exploring, you can communicate with crew members via radio transmissions for an explanation of certain items. They'll give you the facts in broad terms relevant to your mission, but then the dialogue moves to a timed quick-time event: you can either ask for more information on what you've just learned, or delve into the crewmate's own backstory.
This is one way that co-developers Deck Nine and Telltale Games do an excellent job of building a living world within The Expanse, establishing new characters and suggesting the connective tissue between them. It's something seen in the best video games stories, from Life is Strange to Detroit: Become Human, only this time it's framed by the ever-evolving origin story of Camina Drummer.
One of the most interesting nascent relationships hinted at in The Expanse is with Maya, a Martian crewmember. Camina and Maya's flirtatious sparring in the first episode introduces us to the game's quick-time event mechanics, but also suggests a mutual attraction between the two women.
They later have a lengthier discussion about their hometowns and the road so far, replete with meaningful glances when the other's back is turned, so it's refreshing to see Camina's canonic bisexuality hinted at in moments that feel weighty rather than performative.
My heart sank, however, when I recalled a warning given to me by game director Stephan Frost during our pre-session briefing: "all characters can die, bar one, and all characters can live, bar one." Remembering the heartbreaking moment I killed off my favorite character in Supermassive's flawed yet brilliant The Devil In Me, I'm reminded that the stakes in any decent choice-led game are dizzyingly high. Still, if I don't get my space Sapphics fantasy in The Expanse, I'm going to hurl my controller out the window. It's safe to say I'm invested already.
Ground control to Major Vom
As well as exploring Camina's relationships with the Artemis crew, another core component of The Expanse is its zero-gravity spacewalking. After briefing the crew on your scavenging mission, you lead an investigation aboard a trashed spacecraft. It's been laid to waste by a band of murdering space pirates, literally ripped to shreds in sections, and picking through the wreckage is a daunting task.
Kitted out in her magsuit, Camina and the crew are able to defy zero gravity by walking on ceilings, taking off and flying over blocked corridors, and eventually moving from one half of the torn-up spaceship to the other.
There's a moment of eerie, almost gothic sublimity as you move through empty space. With nothing above or below you but the gape of the universe itself, you're completely alone save for intermittent use of the radio communications system. Your comparative insignificance when faced with the sheer, unknown vastness surrounding you has the potential to be terrifying, but The Expanse doesn't dwell on it long enough to venture into Dead Space territory.
If I don't get my space Sapphics fantasy in The Expanse, I'm going to hurl my controller out the window. It's safe to say I'm invested already.
Using the magsuit is justifiably confusing at first. The controls themselves aren't complicated, being able to take off and land with ease on pretty much any surface you can see, but walking up the walls to scavenge materials from behind metal panels overhead definitely left me feeling discombobulated at best and motion sick at worst.
Despite the fairly linear exploration pathways you're guided through, it's still easy to get disoriented. There are times you literally will not know which way is up, but thankfully you can hit a button for on-screen directional prompts to lead you back to your objectives.
But scavenging materials is just the bare bones of exploration in The Expanse. The first episode alone features two missable items to be spotted amid the wreckage, and I'm told by Frost that each has the potential to sway later events in a marked way. I only managed to find one of the two, even after doubling back on myself and examining every on-screen prompt I could find, and since the item I missed out on was a request from the ship's resident medic, I'm pretty sure it was important. Oops.
Telltale's tried and true formula is a great fit for The Expanse, and not only because it reflects the episodic nature of the TV show. Episode One is a great bit of exposition for the coming instalments, teaching you the ropes over its three-hour ballpark duration and showing rather than telling important information. That being said, it concludes with a major choice to be made that had me hesitating for far longer than I'd like to admit.
Some choices are bound to come back and bite you in your magsuit one way or another. With five episodes total to be released two weeks apart from July 27, we will get to explore Camina's story piece by piece and watch the consequences of our actions unfold. If you're like me, that will probably mean that you forget most of the decisions you make. The crew aboard the Artemis, on the other hand, will not.
Check out some of the best space games to explore while you await The Expanse and Starfield.
