Owlcat's rather unusual tradition of holding Closed Beta tests for its single player roleplaying games continues with The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. Starting today, customers who have purchased the Miller's Pack (at €79.99) or the Collector's Edition (at €289) from the official website will be able to get a taste of the game via the Closed Beta, available across all platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S and X.
Owlcat kindly provided Wccftech with advanced access to the Closed Beta build, giving me the chance to preview this highly anticipated action RPG. The section of the game included in the CBT is the same one the developer showed at Gamescom 2025, so I was already quite familiar with it. It takes place immediately after the game's beginning, in which the protagonist and their twin, J, narrowly escape the Eros incident (the protomolecule's outbreak from the canon story) by boarding a Protogen ship and returning to the base of operation of Pinkwater, a smaller private security firm that employs both siblings.
Upon taking control of the main character (which, in the CBT, can be a pre-made female character from the Belt or a male character from Earth, specialized in either officer or hacker abilities), the player can either explore the Pinkwater station a bit, chatting up with some NPCs and even accessing the first trader, or head directly to the station chief, who's waiting to hear a report on what exactly went wrong on Eros.
Since this is an RPG at its core, I did the former. Even though the explorable space isn't large by any means, there were a lot of little things to do, such as repairing a stuck door, discovering gossip on other Pinkwater members, and even taking on a couple of side quests (which, however, cannot be completed in the beta). To successfully pull off some of those actions, you'll have to have enough points in skills like Engineering, Persuasion, or Athletics, for example. Either you meet the minimum criteria, such as two points in Persuasion, or you don't - there is no halfway measure.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is deliberately inspired by Mass Effect, and that shows clearly in its cinematic dialogues, which allow the player to choose between various options. Some of them can lead to different outcomes, at least in theory. For example, shortly after you report to the Pinkwater station chief, the station itself is boarded by a Protogen strike team, which demands to apprehend the sibling protagonists and return their ship. The game gives you two options: either ask the chief to turn the whole station against the invaders (after a successful Persuasion check) or tell him to make it look like they are complying with their orders while the two reach the ship and escape under Protogen's noses.
If you choose the first option, Pinkwater operatives will target and be targeted by the Protogen invaders; otherwise, you're on your own. You'd think the former would make the escape a bit easier, but really, there are very few differences, both in terms of combat difficulty and actual consequences. Visually, you'll see a lot of dead Pinkwater bodies if you ask them to fight for you, whereas with the other option, the operatives simply disappear from sight. Perhaps they have flown away in escape pods? If so, it's never shown in the beta.
There is a little change later in the beta, when you reach the station's armory. If you asked Pinkwater to fight, the armory is open but basically empty; if not, the armory is closed and you'll need to find a code to enter. If you do, though, there's more stuff to loot. Of course, it's possible the aforementioned decision might have larger repercussions later in the actual game. There's simply no way to know that right now.
What is obvious even from this CBT, though, is that Owlcat might be onto something great. The dialogues are very well written, as usual for their games. Unlike their previous cRPGs, however, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a third-person game, so it has to be fully voiced, with proper facial animations for every dialogue and so on. Thankfully, even though they aren't benchmark-setting, both voice and facial performances are done well enough. Graphically (the game is powered by Unreal Engine 5), it looks good but not great compared to other UE5 titles. Performance is already very solid, though, and upscaler like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS are already available, including their frame generation components.
The combat itself is very reminiscent of Mass Effect. It's a third-person cover shooter with the ability to issue commands to your companions and enter a tactical pause that slows down the action. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn doesn't have Biotics-style "magic" abilities, of course, because there's no such thing in the lore created by James S. A. Corey (the pseudonym used by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). However, the game does place a strong emphasis on environmental interaction; you can destroy certain cover objects (as the enemy can do for yours), and in some specific scenarios devised by the developers, you can ask the companions to use their abilities to affect the environment.
This includes companions who aren't actually in the active party; for instance, in the beta, Jafar can lay down cover fire with the ship's point defence cannon (PDC) weapons, even though he's not technically in the group. This is Owlcat's way to involve non-active companions, which is something that roleplaying games have historically struggled with.
The cover system could use some tightening: sometimes, it does not snap to cover as quickly as you'd want to. However, there's still one year left before the game's launch, so I'm not worried about it. The same goes for the shooting, which is already decent but could use a bit more polish and hit feedback.
Overall, though, it's a great first impression, especially when considering that this is Owlcat's first third-person action RPG with triple-A like ambition. Based on this beta, it's also fair to say they are staying close to the extensive lore behind The Expanse. For example, Belters are much taller and thinner than Earthers due to having lived in the low gravity environments of space stations for generations. They also speak their trademark creole language, as evidenced by some of the logs you can find while roaming the station.
As a big fan of Mass Effect, Owlcat's games, and The Expanse, I wish I could freeze myself and awaken when the full game is available in Spring 2027. This looks like the proverbial match made in heaven; alas, we'll have to make do with this beta for one more year.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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