The Expanse Osiris Reborn - 2027

[Takiwaki]

[Krandor]

Owlcat finally expanding beyond Unity engine, praise the emperor

[Andalusian girls]

i love The Expanse and Owlcat but kinda worried they're going from developing a single CRPG at a time to a CRPG, continual DLC for a released CRPG, and an action-RPG in Unreal simultaneously. hopefully they scale up well but their QA already fuckin sucked tbh and wouldn't be the first AA dev to bite off more than they can chew. tentative hype.

[Krandor]

Oh this will for sure be a buggy mess for like at least 5-6 months after release, just like every other Owlcat game.

[6souls]

Main theme

[6souls]

Coming in Spring 2027

[Obsidian]

I keep getting this game and Exodus confused. Are they both coming out in Spring 2027 now? lol

[Takiwaki]

Maybe its just the enclosed spaces but all the combat looks so static..

[Takiwaki]

I keep getting this game and Exodus confused. Are they both coming out in Spring 2027 now? lol

The only game in spring is Revelation.

[clydepineda]

i love The Expanse and Owlcat but kinda worried they're going from developing a single CRPG at a time to a CRPG, continual DLC for a released CRPG, and an action-RPG in Unreal simultaneously. hopefully they scale up well but their QA already fuckin sucked tbh and wouldn't be the first AA dev to bite off more than they can chew. tentative hype.

I love their writing, the launch-day bugs are usually a nightmare.

[6souls]

Coming in Spring 2027

Extended gameplay

[6souls]

https://thisweekinvideogames.com/fea...i-anticipated/

Gamescom had an hour demo available that gave a positive impression.

The opening section is Owlcat flexing its well-trained RPG muscles – strongly written interactions with various dialogue choices that allow J and I to blag our way out of situations, deceive Protogen employees, and ultimately get the information we need. Some interactions come with level-based skill checks that are black and white, so there’s no gambling on a risky dice roll if your character is underleveled in a particular skill.

I can tackle the main objectives of this section in any order, and there’s no handholding when it comes to the approach you want to take – objective markers only ever seem to appear when you’re just a few metres away from what you’re looking for, and I stumbled across solutions to my problems in pleasingly organic ways.

Owlcat used cover-based shooters like Uncharted, The Last of Us, Gears of War, and The Division as influences for development.

Roughly 20 minutes into the demo, chaos ensues, and it’s time to break the guns out. Another group with a bone to pick with Protogen breaks into the base and gets trigger happy, while at the same time one of the corporation’s mutated experiments has escaped and is running rampant.

Given that this is the debut shooter from a studio used to a very different style of RPG, I was actually impressed. Is this best-in-class third-person gunplay? No. Is the movement and cover switching silky smooth and incredibly dynamic? Also no. But does it feel good to blast your way through a space station and mow down bad guys? Absolutely.

Companions can also play a role in combat outside of just spraying bullets around. Certain parts of the environment will be glowing red and will show the face of a companion hovering over it, which signals that they can interact with it to help take out enemies. For example, when instructed, J can use a rocket launcher-style weapon to blow up large flammable containers, causing a huge explosion to damage nearby foes.

The aesthetic and tone shifts once more in the final minutes, when the trio enters a large agricultural dome full of farm workers who are seemingly unaware of the chaos that’s raged in the rest of the base. Knowing our bullets will be ineffective, this is where we hatch a plan to kill the experiment – however, the efficacy of that plan depends on a big moral choice.

There’s a strong chance that the innocent civilian farm workers are going to get caught in the crossfire of our showdown, so do we evacuate them? If we do, we increase their chances of survival, but we’ll lose a member of the trio as they chaperone the workers to safety. If we don’t evacuate, we put them in harm’s way, but we have a better chance of taking the threat down with a full roster of companions. I decide to evacuate them, losing J from the squad.

The demo ends before the boss fight. Owlcat confirms there are currently 3 endings to the game with slight variances to faction decision making. Owlcat has also been in contact with Exodus dev Archetype Entertainment to "share notes" and they play each other's demos.

[6souls]

[Takiwaki]

The facial animations really needs work. Its quite off-putting for a story driven game.