The Expanse: A Telltale Series tells an original story set in the universe of the popular television show of the same name. Cara Gee reprises her role as Camina Drummer, who is quickly introduced as our protagonist aboard the ship The Artemis. I played the first of what will be a five part Telltale series, and while I went in lacking any investment or understanding of the source material, I can safely say that the game caught my intrigue and I’m looking forward to the future episodes.
The Expanse is a science fiction television series based on a series of novels by James S.A. Corey (a pen name for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). I was totally unfamiliar with The Expanse before going into the Telltale game. I’m actually learning, post-playthrough, that this wasn’t a Telltale original IP.
For players like me who may not be familiar with “The Expanse” series before playing the Telltale game, the developers have taken care to make the game accessible to newcomers. The game does a good job of introducing sci-fi concepts and lore from the series into the first episode, especially around what appears to be the main theme of the story, race and racism. A lot of the lore is introduced subtly through dialogue rather than exposition, and I felt like I had a good understanding of the world (or galaxy) of The Expanse fairly early on in the first episode.
The story of episode one follows Camina Drummer, who works as the XO (or E(X)ecutive (O)fficer) aboard the Artemis, a ship of ill repute conducting shady scavenging work and hunting for a big score in a part of our solar system referred to as the Belt. Tensions on the ship are high as low supplies and lower morale push the tiny crew to their breaking point. Things are only made worse when their supposed big score leads to perhaps more trouble than it’s worth.
As I said before, Drummer is a returning character from the series of the same name. I’m not personally sure where the Telltale game takes place in the story relative to the series, but it doesn’t seem like knowing is particularly important. Some parts of Drummer’s past are mentioned, but preexisting knowledge of the series doesn’t seem to be important at least as of episode one.
The gameplay in Telltale’s The Expanse is mostly based around decision-making and branching narratives, as is typical of Telltale Games’ style. You’re presented with choices that shape the direction of the story and influence the relationships between characters, though having only done one playthrough of just one episode, it’s hard yet to say how impactful my decisions will be down the line.
There are about ten or eleven events that require you to decide between two presented choices. While it is again impossible to know how impactful my decisions will be, there were a few moments where I certainly felt like my choices had weight, and made me hesitant to choose a course of action. If nothing else the drama of these big moments are great for player immersion, especially when after making my decision all of the music cut out and left me to think about the weight of what I had just done.
The gameplay of episode one of The Expanse also involved some movement puzzles and quicktime events. These movement puzzles were interesting, tasking you with exploring a zero gravity environment in ways you might not expect at first, but weren’t so in depth as to intrude on the narrative, which is the real point in any Telltale game anyway. The quicktime events were so easy that I’d say they were trivial and didn’t need to be in the game at all, though I suspect they served as an introduction to harder quicktime events that may be present in later episodes.
The gameplay is simple and keeps the game from feeling like one long cutscene without pulling you away from the narrative for too long. One complaint I had was the way interacting with the world kind of put the gameplay on pause. When you interact with an object, it often triggers a conversation between characters, one that locks you out of interacting with anything else until it’s over. This is done to provide you with more lore and to keep you from skipping out on dialogue, but taking control away from the player like that is never a fun experience.
If I wanted to listen to the whole conversation, I would. It isn’t a great feeling to be locked from progressing thanks to a conversation I wasn’t as interested in as I thought I would be.
Visually, the game is this sort of weird mix between stunning and off-putting. Everything definitely looks nice, but all of the characters are modeled in the typical Telltale cartoon/comic book style, which I felt kind of clashes with the more realism-styled textures and lightning of the game. This look did begin to grow on me, but left certain moments where jarring visuals were too hard to ignore.
The subtle worldbuilding of this sci-fi setting was one of my favorite aspects of this episode, which is done mostly through dialogue but also through the visuals. The biggest and perhaps most important piece of worldbuilding are the different human races, born through mankind’s expanse into the stars. The game does a really good job of visually representing these differences, such as making the Martian character taller than the rest and making the spacefaring race, referred to as “skinnies” by prejudice earthlings, thinner and lankier. It’s in the subtle presentation that Telltale helps you get invested in the world, making things noticeable but not distracting.
The Final Word
Episode one served as an intriguing set up to the story to be told in later episodes of the game. The game sets you up with some big decisions to make, and I was left curious as to how they would pay off later in the series. The Expanse – A Telltale Series Episode One acts as an intriguing introduction to what promises to be another great Telltale story.
Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! The Expanse – A Telltale Series Episode One is available on Epic Games, Playstation and Xbox.
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