In Kürze... Gute Geschichte, interessante Entscheidungen. Insgesamt ein typisches Telltale mit deutlich weniger Quick-Time und etwas Sammeltrieb. Wenn man, wie ich, die Serie The Expanse mag, Camina Drummer dort schon interessant fand, dann ist das Spiel ein No-Brainer.

Man kommt auch recht schnell durch und zumindest bei mir hat es dazu beigetragen, dass ich mir die Serie noch einmal anschauen möchte.

Grafisch ist es auch ein Upgrade zu den alten Spielen, trotz interessanter Proportionen (Kopf ist riesig) würde ich mir in der Grafik auch nochmal Remakes von anderen guten Telltales wünschen.

I'm somewhat baffled that Telltale would put their name to this, and its a big drop in quality from Life is Strange: True Colours for Deck Nine.

For a choose-your-dialogue game, The Expanse only begrudgingly allows you a say every five minutes, always limiting you to two options of dialogue, in a story already wrapped up by the writers when you start it. And it's not like the gameplay is there to pick up the slack either, with some floating about and interacting with a few things, and solving some 'puzzles' that have no stakes or challenge. And whilst Camina was a pretty cool character, it was strange putting us in control of her when she's already been portrayed on screen and in the books, and thus canonically established. We only ever got to choose the way she voiced her opinion or choice, which seemed to be already decided 90% of the time.

Oh well. The art style was gorgeous at least.

This game is designed with the fans of The Expanse in mind. So it might be a little challenging to get into for complete newcomers.

- You have read at least book 1 of The Expanse or seen Season 1 (that should suffice for context)
- You enjoy the strong-minded female characters of the show (game takes place pre-Holden and pre-Rocinante crew)

- You had no previous touch points with The Expanse or didn't enjoy the universe (it being a Telltale game won't fix this)
- You think that the existence of a female protagonist, lesbians or an Indian woman in the UNN is "woke agenda" (please snowflake elsewhere and maybe read one of the books)

In terms of timeline, the game is situated as a prequel before the events of the main series. The protomolecule gets a place in the game but clearly before anyone knows what it is. The game does add context by illustrating the mindset and gamble of people who intend to sell this stuff, especially if you know what happens eventually when it is sold to a private, greedy company.

The DLC Archangel takes places around book 3, before the Callisto Incident and before the Free Navy. It contextualizes the actions of Avasarala and how they eventually connected to the Free Navy incident.

I enjoyed both story arcs very much, being a die-hard fan of the series. I wish we could have had more of the alien tech and more sci-fi-esque elements of this kind (while the game focuses more on the inner politics of the Belt), but I still loved the commentary it provided on later events of the series.