Even if you’re not familiar with The Expanse TV series, which wrapped up in early 2022, you may want to give Telltale’s latest venture some consideration. The Expanse: A Telltale Series is a prequel to the series, giving fan-favourite character Camina Drummer a backstory. Mostly, though, it’s an opportunity for players to take control of a space scavenger, able to freely wander around numerous eerie wreckages in the depths of the Milky Way. For science fiction fans, then, it’s a mouth-watering prospect.
We’ve had our fill of the first three episodes of The Expanse: A Telltale Series so far, with five total (and one bonus episode) making up the full series. And so we’re unable to pass full judgement of the entire story. This review is based on the first three episodes, and once we’ve played the final two episodes we’ll update this review to reflect our final opinion.
If you’ve read our early hands-on preview of The Expanse: A Telltale Series, you’ll already know what to expect in the first episode. It provides a brief introduction to our protagonist, Camina Drummer, and the crew of the ship she’s working on, The Artemis. There are some tense choices to make, a bit of exploration and a quick time event. In other words, it feels a little like a Telltale Episode 101: an introduction to everything a Telltale game is. It’s a little brief and rushed, but it still left us with an overall positive impression. When the game releases on 27th July, Episode 1 is all that will be available, with further episodes releasing every two weeks. The good news is, that first episode gives us just enough to make us want to keep playing. The better news is, episodes two and three have gone from strength to strength.
Camina Drummer never gives too much away as a character. Even after playing through three episodes with her, we feel like we don’t really know her. She’s a closed book, keeping her cards close to her chest. Some of the decisions you make will open her up a little more if you choose to: there’s a romance option, and you can choose how much you want to interact with the other crew members on board The Artemis. It really is worth going out of your way to seek out additional interactions with the crew, because you’re going to get much more out of the game by forging deeper relationships with the characters.
Of course, being a Telltale Game, story is king here. And so it’s those conversations, the choices you make while talking to characters, that form the backbone of the narrative running throughout the full series. But the highlight for us, in all three episodes we’ve played, has been the exploration. There’s a greater level of freedom than in previous Telltale games, and players are encouraged to poke around in order to find collectibles and additional objectives. Each episode so far has had us exploring a different wreckage in space, and it’s been a thrilling experience.
The first episode has us aboard the ruined Urshanabi, a UNN ship taken down by pirates. The first thing we’re greeted with is a bridge awash with floating heads: The Expanse: A Telltale Series certainly isn’t afraid to shock. This isn’t a horror game by any means, but there are certainly some moments befitting of the genre, and not just in episode one. Perhaps our favourite so far comes in episode three, when Camina finds herself aboard an abandoned space station, filled with coffins of its long-dead residents.
Dark and atmospheric, wandering these locations does leave the hairs on the back of your neck standing up, as you’re never quite sure what’s going to be waiting around the next corner. Exploration is exhilarating, and made more interesting by the game’s zero-gravity mechanics. You’re weighted down with magnetic boots, but with the push of your right trigger you can release into the air, allowing for free exploration. It can be a little fiddly at times, but for the most part Camina controls really well and the extra freedom you’re given adds a new dimension to the experience.
Any real tension, however, is somewhat let down by the fact that all action sequences in The Expanse: A Telltale Series are played out as quick time events. This won’t come as a surprise if you’ve played a Telltale title before, but when it comes to firefight sections, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself wishing you could have full freedom, being let loose with a gun by yourself. But no; you’ll simply have to push a stick in the right direction or press the right button as a prompt appears on screen. Alas, that’s the nature of a Telltale game: it’s not a full-on action-adventure – as much as some scenes make us wish it was – so we can’t begrudge it too much.
As you’d expect, there are some important choices to be made in each episode, with the decisions you make feeding into future events. Even some of the extra-curricular stuff will have an impact: managing to find the side-objective in the first episode will have an impact on something in the second episode, for example. Not having played all five episodes, we can’t quite tell just how impactful all choices will be, but we certainly get the sense that there’s more gravity to your decisions. Thinking back to earlier Telltale games, like The Walking Dead, some characters were always destined to live or die and some of your choices were merely an illusion. The Expanse doesn’t feel like that, at least not so far. We’ve encountered a number of live-or-death choices so far, and we get the sense they’re truly impactful, leaving us excited to see where our decisions take us in the remaining episodes.
In terms of production values, it seems that Telltale’s signature jankiness has been left behind, with The Expanse being more polished than ever before. That’s undoubtedly thanks to the fact that Life is Strange: True Colors developer Deck Nine is at the helm. It looks fantastic; its environments are brimming with detail, making them a pleasure to explore. Characters, too, although somewhat cartoonish in style, feel lifelike and believable. Part of that is down to the excellent voice acting – Cara Gee reprises her role as Drummer, but the supporting cast do a wonderful job, too. We’re particularly fond of the ship’s pilot, Kahn, a foul-mouthed Earther who’s clearly dealt with a lot of crap in her life. Getting her to warm to you feels like quite an achievement – if you pull it off, that is.
If you’re already a fan of The Expanse, you’re undoubtedly going to get more out of this. But don’t write The Expanse: A Telltale Series off if you’ve never seen it before – this prequel does a great job of introducing newcomers, thanks to its cast of new characters and focus on space exploration. As much as we’re enjoying the story, the highlight so far is digging through the eerie, empty wreckages of spacecraft and space stations. Sure, we’ve still got two episodes to go, but we’ve played enough to know that Telltale’s return is a strong one – and it’s left us on tenterhooks to find out what happens next.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series Review – GameSpew’s Score (Provisional)
As a review in progress, our score is provisional, based on the three episodes we’ve played so far. Once we’ve completed the full game we’ll update with our final verdict.
