Owlcat’s promising Mass Effecty take on sci-fi fiction The Expanse – Expanse: Osiris Reborn – has been given a release window of next spring (2027), but there will be a closed beta demo released next month so people who’ve pre-purchased the more expensive editions of the game can try it.
Coinciding with the announcement are a short gameplay trailer showing the beta content, and word that Expanse: Osiris Reborn will be a day-one Game Pass Ultimate game when it arrives.
The closed beta will be available from 22nd April on all platforms the game is coming to: PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X, and you’ll be able to access it if you’ve bought the Collector’s Edition of The Expanse: Osiris Reborn ($289!) or the Miller’s Pack version of the game ($80).
In terms of content, the closed beta lets you access one mission relatively early in the game – it’s the second mission in the game, I was told in a press briefing – just after your protagonist and your sibling have escaped a catastrophe on a planet called Eros and snagged yourselves a ship. You’ll be able to choose from a couple of backgrounds, a couple of classes, and experience a cross-section of the experiences The Expanse: Osiris Reborn offers.
So, things like cover-based group combat – think Mass Effect, complete with companion orders – cinematic dialogue with choices (think Mass effect again) and a bit of equipment upgrading and levelling up. It’s all very Mass Effect, albeit with less space magic and more believable sci-fi gadgetry. And you’ll be able to explore inside a space station during the demo and outside of it, clomping around in mag-boots in zero-gravity so you don’t accidentally float off into space, wee!
The idea of a closed beta for a single-player game strikes me as slightly odd, as there’s no multiplayer component to test, but apparently this is something Owlcat does regularly. “We still want to check how the game will be received by the players – see feedback – and we still have time to iterate some systems based on feedback,” design director Leonid Rastorguev told me. “So we really want our players to play the game and give us their opinions.”
Game design producer Yuliya Chernenko added: “We’re used to doing such closed beta tests, or something very similar, throughout any game development. Even our other games also had something very similar. So this is something for us to showcase our game, to get feedback, to understand how people perceive this game – whether they like it or not.”
Owlcat used a similar approach making its two Pathfinder games (Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous), and for Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader – the computer role-playing games the Cyprus-based studio built a reputation on. We didn’t review the Pathfinder games but did review Rogue Trader, awarding it four stars. “Rogue Trader nails the 40k setting and provides an appropriately massive narrative filled with meaty tactical combat, though some bugs and poor performance hold it back,” we wrote in our Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader review.
As a third-person, Unreal Engine-built, over-the-shoulder action RPG, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn represents a new and ambitious push for the studio, and I’m surprised to discover there are 200 people working on it. There are also a further 60-70 people working on a Rogue Trader follow-up called Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy. There’s lots of promise, although there are concerns surrounding Owlcat and its use of gen-AI during development of The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. Nevertheless, I hope to bring you fuller thoughts on the closed beta when I can.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is not to be confused with that other Mass Effecty-looking sci-fi game Exodus, which is also, coincidentaly, being released in 2027.
