It wasn’t an excessive amount of of a shock to listen to that developer Telltale was coming again with an episodic sport primarily based on SyFy and Amazon’s in style sci-fi sequence The Expanse. Before it was shut down and revived, Telltale made a reputation for itself on such licensed video games. What was way more intriguing to me was that Deck Nine Games, the studio behind 2021’s glorious Life is Strange: True Colors, was dealing with the event of the undertaking and that it was seeking to develop the world of The Expanse by revealing the backstory of one in all its most mysterious characters whereas increasing the gameplay prospects {that a} Telltale-style narrative journey sport can present.
Telltale Games
That’s why I used to be excited to get an opportunity to play The Expanse: A Telltale Series early at an occasion and communicate to Cara Gee, the actress behind the sport’s predominant character Carmina Drummer, in addition to its sport director Stephan Frost. What I found was an expertise that feels devoted to each basic narrative journey video games and The Expanse, whereas additionally feeling a bit like Dead Space.
Perfecting the Telltale formulation
The Expanse is a success tv present primarily based on a sequence of sci-fi books. While it’s not as in style because the likes of Star Wars or Star Trek, it has a passionate fanbase who adore its extra lifelike tackle the physics and politics that may be extra more likely to play out if humanity ever managed to populate Mars and the Asteroid Belt. As the sequence progresses, it does study more durable and more durable into the sci-fi parts with a strong Protomolcule, aliens, and finally Ring Gates that enable folks to journey far across the galaxy.
But this The Expanse sport comes earlier than all that. It’s set earlier than the primary season of the TV present (Frost tells Digital Trends that is primarily based on the present’s canon and never the books) and follows a personality named Carmina Drummer, performed by an actress named Cara Gee in each the present and the sport. Drummer first seems within the present because the stoic assistant to OPA chief Fred Johnson on Tycho Station.
As her character is an amalgamation of some completely different characters within the books and her backstory was by no means delved into that a lot within the present, she was Deck Nine’s first selection for making a The Expanse sport. Gee was satisfied to hitch the undertaking after director Stephan Frost walked her by the story and requested her to make decisions as in the event that they have been enjoying a sport of Dungeons & Dragons.
Telltale Games
“Frost basically walked me through the story like we were playing D&D,” Gee tells Digital Trends. “I would get to a point, and I would have to make a choice, and it was really hard to make the choices, like perfectly agonizing. It’s a super cool way to experience this story, and I was totally on board as I wanted to make a thing where people could have that same experience with this story.”
Frost tells Digital Trends that is one thing he did with new members of the event crew. The story follows Carmina Drummer as she works with, and finally takes management of, the scavenger crew on a ship referred to as the Artemis. It’s a little bit of an area pirate journey, though the sport does have a darker tone than that form of description suggests. In the primary episode of The Expanse: A Telltale Series, which we performed, Drummer will get reacquainted along with her crew earlier than exploring the bloodied wreckage of a ship from Earth.
It’s unlucky that Deck Nine’s narrative crew suffered layoffs final month, as they did an ideal job capturing the tone of The Expanse and crafting some robust decisions for gamers to make. The first episode’s most important choices are whether or not or not Drummer ought to punch one in all her crew members when they’re disrespectful and whether or not or not she is keen to sacrifice one other Artemis crew member’s leg to get extra treasure after they get caught.
These look like considerably small choices on the time they occur however develop into critically necessary on the finish of the episode, as Drummer has to persuade her crewmates that she was left for lifeless by the Artemis’ captain and that she must take management of the ship. Even although I’d punched the crew member that was out of line, I nonetheless managed to persuade them to take my facet, as I’d prioritized the protection of the injured crewmate over any potential treasure. The episode ended with the selection to area or jail the captain. I killed him by releasing him into area throughout this demo, however I did really feel bizarre about it afterward, so I’ll maintain him alive once I play the ultimate model of this sport.
Through and thru, that is very a lot a story journey sport within the model of Telltale’s classics. Whether you’re a fan of The Expanse or simply Telltale’s formulation, you will discover one thing to get pleasure from right here. And whereas Deck Nine might’ve stopped there and made the alternatives the one actual attention-grabbing factor about The Expanse: A Telltale Series, they went a step additional, including zero gravity sections that really feel extra like Dead Space than The Wolf Among Us.
Evolving the Telltale formulation
Pushing the basic Telltale formulation in intriguing methods is important for the narrative journey sport style to evolve in survive. In specific, a chapter in Deck Nine’s Life is Strange: True Colors, the place its dialogue decisions and conversations are reworked into Final Fantasy-inspired turn-based battles, tease the probabilities of what these sorts of video games can accomplish. In The Expanse: A Telltale Series’ case, that uniqueness comes from these zero-G sections.
Gravity is such an necessary part to the present …
Once the expedition to that wreckage begins, gamers are left to drift by area as they discover it. If there’s a selected space that gamers need to analyze extra deeply, gamers can then land on it and stroll on its partitions and roof with the assistance of Mag-Boots. Gravity will play a key position within the gameplay of The Expanse: A Telltale Series, with Stephan Frost telling Digital Trends that it was a should to make that intrinsic to this sport.
“When you’re making a video game story for an intellectual property with rules for its world that already exist, you have to think about what’s cool about being in that world and what a player would want to interact with,” Frosts says. “Gravity is such an important component to the show that it would almost feel missing if you played a The Expanse game in space that didn’t have zero-G.”
Telltale Games
Everyone on this ship was brutally murdered, too, with their heads chopped off, so exploring is a fairly tense and creepy expertise. While it lacks any of the fight and extra terrifying moments of Dead Space, it definitely felt loads like I used to be enjoying EA Motive’s glorious remake as I floated by area in zero-G and noticed the aftermath of a horrifying occasion that I’m largely at the hours of darkness about. It’s a killer mixture and works simply in addition to Life is Strange: True Colors’ RPG chapter.
Walking on the partitions or ceilings of areas or just floating by a ship whereas on the lookout for one thing offered a gameplay expertise than I’ve ever gotten from a story journey sport earlier than. Working on this sport was additionally a really completely different expertise for Cara Gee, who needed to faucet into her background in theater as she couldn’t act as nonetheless and stoic throughout movement seize.
“I come from a background of working in theater, and that’s head to toe the whole time,” Gee explains. “You have to have this full body awareness, and that’s the same body awareness that you need in the motion capture volume … Drummer, in particular, is a really still character, but if you try to do something that is still-looking in a game, it looks like a glitch. You have to have a little bit of movement for the character to feel alive.”
Telltale Games
Thankfully, Drummer doesn’t look bizarre and stilted within the sport. While it’s positively a bit stylized, this sport seems and animates loads higher than lots of Telltale’s basic titles. That reinforces that we’re seeing the basic Telltale formulation evolve right here. While that developer’s video games felt formulaic within the firm’s remaining years, this sport demonstrates that by choosing the proper IPs and getting essentially the most potential attainable out of them, narrative journey video games can really feel simply as intriguing and tense as one thing like Dead Space.
The first episode of The Expanse: A Telltale Series can be launched on July 27 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. New episodes can be launched each two weeks after that, which the builders inform Digital Trends is to emulate the texture of a TV present, just like the one this sport is predicated on.
Disclosure: Telltale Games and PR company Tara Bruno PR paid for journey and lodging in order that Digital Trends might take part on this preview occasion in Los Angeles. This didn’t affect Digital Trends’ protection of the sport
Editors’ Recommendations