Can The Expanse: Osiris Reborn Avoid Mass Effect's Biggest Mistake?

Osiris Reborn: The Hardest Choice in Video Games

Osiris Reborn carries a heavy weight on its shoulders. The upcoming Expanse game, set to release in spring 2027, is being developed by Owlcat Games, the studio behind dense role-playing experiences like Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. But this time, the team is stepping into unfamiliar territory: a third-person shooter and role-playing game where you captain a spaceship and lead a found-family crew across the far-future solar system.

The setup sounds familiar to anyone who has played Mass Effect. You fight enemies, float through zero-gravity environments, and make dialogue choices that shape the narrative, and if you've spent any time with Commander Shepard, you know exactly how that rhythm goes. The hard-science setting of The Expanse books and show gives it a distinct flavor. But the structural DNA is unmistakable. And that is exactly where the danger lies.

Mass Effect 3 botched its ending. It reduced years of player choices into three nearly identical concluding options, a letdown that still haunts the genre, and that sting hasn't faded for anyone who watched their galaxy's fate collapse into a palette swap. So the question now is whether Osiris Reborn can dodge that same trap. It can't afford to repeat it.

A First-Person Studio Goes Third-Person

Owlcat built its reputation on top-down, isometric RPGs. That's the easy part. But shifting to a third-person shooter marks a real departure for the Cyprus-based developer, a gamble that trades their familiar god's-eye view for shoulder-mounted chaos. So they beefed up their staff to handle the new format, and the early results have been mixed, showing flashes of promise alongside clunky, unresolved edges. It's a bold move.

Osiris Reborn's April beta release earned real praise for its combat and visuals. Players had far less kind words for the story and voice acting. That sting is familiar. Fans who've waited years for a faithful adaptation are still waiting for one beloved piece of the world to show up, and the game hasn't yet included "Belter creole," the made-up language spoken by characters in *The Expanse*. And that omission hurts. It's the kind of authentic detail fans can't stop talking about. So the praise rings hollow for them.

But this was a beta test. The company has said it is working on addressing player feedback, even going so far as to recast a voice actor. The question is how much of the criticism reflects real problems versus the natural rough edges of an unfinished build.

Why The Expanse Is Hard to Adapt

The source material doesn't make things easy. Osiris Reborn sits right alongside the first and second books of a nine-book series, and that means the story has to operate within an established canon where major characters already have their fates written down for them. So it's a tight squeeze. But that's the challenge.

This creates a creative bind. It's a real problem. A game with branching choices needs room for player agency to matter, and that demands a certain flexibility in how events can unfold, yet The Expanse has a fixed narrative that fans know well, a story already told and cherished. But rewriting the fates of beloved characters would feel wrong. That's a betrayal. So the developer itself acknowledges the tension, and they've chosen to respect the source material instead of forcing a false freedom that can't exist.

Leonid Rastorguev, the game's design director, addressed this tension in written responses to questions. The Expanse also has an established canon and major characters whose stories have already been told in the books and the TV series, he wrote, which makes it tricky to play with their paths. It would feel strange for us to rewrite their fates. And we can't just introduce branching outcomes into events that are already firmly established. So we don't.

That is a thoughtful position. But it also raises a harder question: how do you make choices feel meaningful when the big story beats are already locked in?

An Internal System Called Etudes

Owlcat is betting on a proprietary development system it calls Etudes. This internal tool builds a network of flags and triggers in the narrative that track player decisions, even small ones, and carry them forward throughout the game.

The choices can range from cosmetic alterations to decisions that block off or unlock additional content. Some may lead to a character dying. Others might change the ending entirely. The system is designed to remember what you did, even if you do not see the consequences right away.

It's not their first rodeo. Rastorguev made that crystal clear when he wrote, "This isn't our first game where the sheer number of choices and consequences is a core part of the experience," and that statement alone speaks volumes about the studio's long history with complex choice structures, a history they've clearly built upon with deliberate care. But they're not resting on past success. They're pushing further.

That pedigree shows in how Osiris Reborn approaches character development. There are no skill classes. Your character grows based on the decisions you make, not a preset build. You can also mentor your crew members, helping them advance their skills in different areas as the story unfolds.

Three Factions, One Tightrope

Three factions carve up the solar system in The Expanse. Earth, Mars, and the Belters who live in the asteroid belt all fight for control, and that struggle forms the game's central conflict, so every alliance you make carries a hidden price. But you can work with all three. Befriending one might cost you with another.

Owlcat puts it bluntly: "Keeping good relations with everyone won't be easy;you'll only get one chance to stay on everyone's good side."

That's a bold design choice. Most RPGs let you max out every faction's reputation eventually, but here, the game seems to demand actual trade-offs, forcing you to pick sides and live with the consequences of what you've abandoned. So the real question is whether those trade-offs hit you in the moment. Or only sting in retrospect.

"[Players] want to feel that they've left a mark on the universe itself."

That quote from Rastorguev captures the ambition. But critics who reviewed the beta found that the outcomes of choices were not immediately noticeable. In one example, a choice between fighting and standing down from a battle played out nearly the same way in the moment, regardless of which option the player picked.

Owlcat says this is by design. Beta players have not yet seen "how far that decision ripples." The consequences may surface later in conversations, in-game news reports, or changes to the world that suggest your actions will continue to matter long after you have moved on.

Rastorguev argues that the key is giving players enough information to know they have set something in motion, without revealing the entire chain of consequences. It is a delicate balance. Give away too much, and the mystery dies. Give away too little, and players wonder if their choices matter at all.

The Mass Effect 3 Nightmare

Here's the part that should worry anyone who loves this genre. Choice systems in games are great, but they often collapse into two or three big options at the end, and that's a structural flaw we've seen repeat time and again, no matter how polished the rest of the experience might be. Mass Effect 3 became the cautionary tale. It reduced a trilogy of player decisions into a handful of near-identical endings. The backlash was swift and brutal. So don't mistake that outrage for a one-off mistake. It's a warning.

Osiris Reborn will have multiple endings. Owlcat won't say how many, or how different they'll be from one another, and that's a fact they're keeping close to the chest for now. That secrecy is understandable. But it also leaves room for doubt.

The fear is that all those carefully tracked decisions end up funneling into a few predetermined outcomes. And that's a real problem. The Etudes system may be brilliant at tracking choices, but tracking isn't the same as honoring them, so the real question becomes whether those choices actually reshape the narrative in ways the player can feel, not just see on a stat sheet. It's a matter of lived experience.

Rastorguev insists the team has thought this through. "We've put a lot of thought into this," he wrote, "and found ways for some of the player's choices to feel meaningful on the scale of the wider universe and potentially shape consequences that extend years beyond the immediate events of our story."

That is a strong promise. The Expanse, after all, is a series about how small actions ripple across decades and across the solar system. A game that honors that theme would need to make its choices echo far beyond the final mission. Whether Owlcat can pull that off remains to be seen.

Beta feedback says the combat and visuals are already in good shape. That's a relief. The story and voice acting need work, but those are fixable problems, and they're the kind of things a solid patch cycle can smooth out before launch. The harder challenge is structural: building a choice system that avoids the trap of false agency at the finale. That's the real test. If Osiris Reborn can do that, it might just become the adaptation that The Expanse deserves. If not, it will join the long list of games where player decisions felt like an illusion, and that's a list no fan wants to see it on. So the answer will not come until the full release, but the stakes could not be higher.