Osiris Reborn Looks Like the Best Video Game Adaptation Ever

It’s punchy and responsive. Fights require both tactical planning and instinctual repositioning to survive. There’s a frenetic tension evocative of the great hits from the golden age of third-person shooters, a technical brilliance here that should appeal even to players who don’t even know what a Beltalowda is. Given the merits of Osiris Reborn’s combat, going into my demo, I fully expected the game to primarily be occupied with shooting lots of bad guys. But much like the best action RPGs, I went more than half an hour before experiencing any combat, and got the sense I could’ve spent way longer exploring if I had more time to do.

The mission I played through, “Beetle in the Anthill,” was supposedly around the 10-hour mark and appeared to take place some time after the destruction of Eros Station. (The Expanse: Osiris Reborn will last roughly 30 hours, depending on your playstyle.) Your party is contracted with the paramilitary organization Pinkwater. You’re at Ganymede station, tasked with gathering compromising information on Protogen, a different paramilitary organization that happens to be responsible for a lot of bad shit that happens in The Expanse-iverse. In other words: You conveniently don’t have to feel bad about shooting these guys.

But “Beetle in the Anthill,” at least for its first part, doesn’t let you just dive into all situations with guns blazing. In this, the devs behind Osiris Reborn understand the essence of The Expanse, which has always been more concerned with the politics of how humans end up fighting each other rather than the fight itself. Despite how violent the series and books can get, its characters often strive to solve conflicts without violence. And in Osiris Reborn, the nonlethal approach results in a Hitman-like level of immersive sim.

For instance, at one point of the mission, I had to access the contents of a storage container, but it was blocked by a Protogen guard who wouldn’t let me pass without permission from the shipping officer. But that guy wouldn’t give me permission unless I could provide him with an invoice. But I realized I didn’t have an invoice or even know what one looked like, so I had to hack a computer to get a template. But I didn’t know the serial number of the shipping container, so I had to find a vantage point where I could scan it.

More complicated than just shooting all these guys in the face? Sure. Also way more satisfying.

These quieter moments allowed me to take in the environment. The extent to which the dockyards of Ganymede have been recreated is impressive. There are, of course, direct references to the source material, but even those seem to manifest with remarkable restraint.

Take the Ganymede agricultural domes, a string of staggeringly large spherical greenhouses that viewers of the show will remember as a central part of a major disaster in season two. One such dome is rendered here in all its grandeur, a bit of meticulous production seemingly ripped straight from a SyFy set, but doesn’t come with any ham-fisted “I got that reference!” dialogue from its characters. For people who watched the show, it’s a sly reference toward things to come, a winking, nodding harbinger of death and famine. For everyone else, it’s just a really cool building.

My demo ended with the Hybrid — a human that’s transformed into a bullet-proof blue monster by exposure to the genetically modifying Protomolecule — chasing my crew down a network of tunnels as everything exploded in the background. We ended up in one of the ag domes, and I had to choose one crew member to corral civilian scientists to safety while another hacked a computer to enable our escape. (I did not see the outcome of this choice but gathered that it will have Mass Effect-like consequences down the line.) Just before the “you’re stuck in a circular room with this thing” boss fight began, the demo ended. Having seen the show, I have a good idea of what happens next. I’m guessing potential players who aren’t familiar with the lore won’t, though.

Therein lies the biggest challenge facing The Expanse: Osiris Reborn: Despite its mechanical excellence, it’s still a licensed game at the end of the day. Yes, The Expanse was an enormous cultural phenomenon — popular enough to famously get un-canceled. But by the time Osiris Reborn comes out, it will have been five years since the TV show ended (despite its finale wrapping on a frustrating cliffhanger with several books left unadapted). I don’t think anyone would claim that Telltale spinoff left an Eros-sized impact, even though the best actor from the show reprised her role as its best character.

This is not to say that a licensed game can’t succeed. (See: 007 First Light.) But it is an uphill climb. I also don’t think Osiris Reborn could conceivably be anything other than an Expanse game: everything from the set design to narrative to the armor your character wears is so interwoven . But if Osiris Reborn maintains its careful balance throughout, it could pull off the same trick pulled years ago other widely hailed game series based on books, like The Witcher and Metro: give longtime fans the Disney Land they’ve been waiting for, while showing a new crop of players why it became so beloved in the first place.

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn will be released in spring 2027 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.