Osiris Reborn demo is way harder than Mass Effect ever was

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn has never been able to escape the Mass Effect accusations. A space opera RPG, branching stories, real-time cover-based action — the comparisons were inevitable. I recently spent some time with a demo version of the game, and the comparisons are warranted. But it looks like developer Owlcat Games isn’t just copying an old favorite. The team seems to be building on Mass Effect‘s RPG elements and combat in meaningful ways.

It’s been a good six years since I saw any of SyFy’s The Expanse, and I haven’t seen any of the seasons after Amazon picked the show up or read James S.A. Corey’s novels. Most of the series’ proper nouns escape me; I only recall a vague outline of the general setup. Names like Pinkwater and Protogen will probably mean more to folks who know the history behind them, but in the beta segment at least, Owlcat does an admirable job of easing the uninitiated and lapsed like myself into what’s happening. You get the gist of what Pinkwater is and how it operates from conversations overheard on the station; you know there’s some kind of background conflict between Earth and Mars that shapes people’s attitudes; and you know Protogen is The Bad Group after seeing them kill lots of innocent people, which is one of those universally accepted signs of villainy.

Getting an impression of the story is tough in a short, action-heavy demo (the demo I played ran about 80 minutes, though I played it through a few times), but all that killing surprised me. Not the violence — that’s typical for this kind of game — but how intense the fights are. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a Mass Effect-style cover shooter where you have a few special abilities and two guns to swap between, plus a lot of environmental pieces to take cover behind. In Mass Effect, fights move pretty slowly. Osiris Reborn might use the same structure, but it felt more like someone dropped me into a Call of Duty match.

Enemies move fast and hit hard even on normal difficulty, and they won’t leave you alone, either. They track you down or flush you out with grenades (or, in some cases, push you into the open where snipers have uninhibited access if you’re not careful). And while I was used to normal mode grenades in Mass Effect being somewhat equivalent to big firecrackers, grenades in The Expanse: Osiris Reborn will just about kill you in one go. You have to make good use of cover and all your tools.

I can’t complain, though, since the tools are a lot of fun. Among other things, the beta demo gives you an electric shock that spreads to multiple enemies if they’re close to your target and a swarm of killer bugs that you can direct by pressing the skill button again while they’re active. Cooldown timers are comparatively short for this kind of game, which lets gadgets play a larger role in your strategy beyond just the occasional big thing that clinches a fight. It all made for a far more enjoyable setup than I expected, immobilizing one group of enemies and setting murderous space bugs on another while I dashed to safety, before directing my companion to blow up a nearby device and deal with yet another group of foes.

Over the last 10 years or so, skill trees in action-RPGs haven’t been terribly interesting, filled instead with piddling upgrades like +5.7% pistol power instead of, y’know, actual skills. Owlcat fixes that (sort of). The gadget skill tree, for example, has modifiers that activate when you use a certain type of tool or even a specific gun, while some of the “survival” skills push you toward reckless playstyles where you activate buffs if your armor gets blown off or you’re near death. These seem like useful upgrades with potential for changing how you strategize.

Image: Owlcat Games via Polygon

Then there’s the “shooter” tree, which is potentially far less interesting. Extra handgun power, better accuracy — it’s full of the kind of enhancements that belong on mods, not skill trees. The few skill points you can get in the beta do seem to make a tangible difference, at least. Rifle accuracy is appalling initially, and improving it or bumping up handgun power for close encounters has noticeable improvements. Still, power and accuracy are gun attributes. A skill for someone who specializes in firearms should involve something unique they can do with the gun, not just using it slightly better.

Osiris Reborn seems like it’ll handle a different kind of skill more effectively, though: character traits. Passing skill checks for things like perception or athletics rewarded me with access to otherwise-impossible-to-reach areas where I found new gadgets that shook up how I played. One example was a wristband that launched little rockets — very James Bond — which I instantly equipped in place of my scanner. The rockets were great, assuming I aimed properly, and took out some enemies with a single hit. The wristband had a cost, though. The scanner, a tool I previously thought was Just Whatever, suddenly became more important in the demo’s final encounters, where you’re battling across several rooms and can’t see most enemies in a single glance.

Battle outcomes feel more like the result of your choice instead of something inevitable this way. But it’s also refreshing to see a game that’s potentially unafraid to make you live with your choices, unlike some recent RPGs. All the skill checks were low-level in the demo, though presumably specializing in one thing over another in the main game means you’ll miss out on special gear and things that matter.

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is set for launch sometime in 2027, but the demo we played is available now for Miller’s Pack founders and those who purchased the collector’s edition.