Telltale boldly goes where the Expanse needed it to go
Camina Drummer quickly became a fan favorite after her debut in Season 2 of the amazing, wonderful, fantastic sci-fi opera TV series The Expanse. You’ve heard us talk about and fawn over the show over the last several years, and while the cast is tremendous and the storylines deep and thoughtful, Camina (played by Cara Gee) stood apart. Her portrayal of a Belter caught in a war and trying to do what’s right for her people — often mixing it up with pirates and alien phenomena and those dumb Earthers — gave her moral high ground purpose. She was the easiest to cheer for.
Not only is Telltale’s take on the Expanse a great adventure game, but it pays tons of respect to her journey, and it’s extremely worth the admission.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series is a direct prequel to the show, focusing on Drummer with Gee as the actor in place. Developed by Deck Nine (of Life is Strange fame) the game is split into 5 episodes, and follows the formula of great Telltale games of the past. There’s much more movement here than in those games you may remember, but that adds to the “we’re in space” theme that is essential. Not only can we walk around our ship to interact with people, but we’ll also find ourselves in space, with lite action when required. We learn the basics of what we’re in for in the opening scenes, in which we traverse around out vessel to talk to (or brush off, if we feel like it) some of our shipmates, poking around their surroundings to learn more about who they are and what makes them tick. It gives us the basics of becoming familiar with the controls without feeling like a tutorial.
From this point the game starts to open up, as we’re treated to a plot of space looting and betrayal and tension, all of which falls firmly in line with the show that it’s based on. In fact, the team at Deck Nine really does a wonderful job of capturing the essence of the TV series and its locations, and the episodic format actually helps make it feel like we’re watching more of the show that we love. Terrific pacing keeps the plot moving, even when we think things are about to slow down.
It’s gorgeous to look at, with great character modeling and textures, and sound that we can almost “feel” is schoing off of the walls of a starliner. If anything, the trappings of the vastness of space do show through here — space is wide open, and crews aren’t huge on the ships, which leads to some locales feeling a bit devoid of life. That’s not stopping the game from being good, it just makes us appreciate how TV production and cinematographers do such stellar (pun!) jobs of focusing camera angles and compositions to make the void feel somehow full of energy.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series may be dropping during a time when a billion other games are also hitting our shelves, but it stands above as a perfect companion to the series and a great, refreshing take on life in the cosmos. It capitalizes on what we loved the most about the show — the reality of human to human interaction in the future — and throws in both moments of chaos and some with surprising tenderness.
Oh, and it’s always a great game when it gives me the option to space someone and throw them out of an airlock.
This review is based on an Epic Games Store code sent to SideQuesting through https://keymailer.co. It originally appeared on the August 4th episode of The SideQuest.
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