With The Expanse, Deck Nine proves there’s life left in the adventure genre by revisiting its roots, honoring its source material, and placing the player in impossible positions.
Nothing good has ever come from exploring a derelict spaceship – except great stories.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series doesn’t reinvent the adventure genre, instead streamlining and refining many of its conventions. That it does so while providing a relentless and engaging story is a testament to the smart decisions taken by developer Deck Nine, which has scraped away much of the extraneous features of graphic adventure games to reveal their underlying appeal.
The game is a prequel to the cult show of the same name. Despite that, it feels very much standalone, with a story that provides insight into one of the show’s main characters while being wholly accessible to newcomers.
As such it is in the execution of the story that The Expanse lives or dies. Happily the game doesn’t overload the player with exposition, relegating much of the backstory of the setting to lightweight audio and text logs found scattered throughout its world. It shows rather than tells the impact of that setting through the interactions of main character Camina Drummer and her supporting cast, all of whom feel fully realised right from the off.
Characters that in less assured hands would feel cliched instead feel like genuine products of their environment. Khan, the irascible and tetchy pilot of the Artemis – the game’s primary location – can be humanised considerably throughout the first two episodes, transforming from a silhouette in a pilot’s seat to a tormented ally to Drummer.A real scrap
It’s a neat way to integrate the characters’ occupations as scavengers into the narrative while also reiterating that space in the Expanse-verse is inherently hostile to humankind. That fact plays into the story repeatedly, from the threat of execution through being ejected from an airlock to the impact it has upon the psyches of Belters – a faction who have no affiliation to any planet within the solar system.
That hostility is at the core of the story. Over the first few episodes Drummer and the crew of the Artemis discover the existence of a valuable item from a derelict ship, the mere knowledge of which makes them the target of pirate attacks and in-fighting within the crew themselves. It provides impetus for the decisions that you-as-Drummer have to make in order to keep the crew alive, while also emphasising the lack of value placed on human life that is integral to the setting.
The game mixes up the exploration sequences with scenes of relatively calm relationship development and QTE-based sections similar to those of previous Telltale Games. It provides welcome variety within each episode – and it doesn’t hurt that the action sequences have stellar art direction, making each shot and impact feel visceral.
