The Expanse

I forgot how much I like these Choose Your Own Adventure style Telltale Games. It didn’t help that the last one I played was the weakest release in the series. Given the “meh” taste that one left, I may not have picked The Expanse up, but I recently finished reading the books and I wanted to linger in that world a little longer.

The Expanse video game is a stand-alone story of Camina Drummer before she joined Fred Johnson, serving aboard a ship of Belt scavengers. They discover the location of what could be their biggest score only to run afoul of space pirates, suffer inter-crew drama, and the usual space opera fare. The plot doesn’t really tie-in to the grander themes of the series and books. It feels more like one of the many Expanse novellas. The stakes aren’t as big, but it was an entertaining story nonetheless.

As far as the “game” goes, the choices weren’t quite as dire as other Telltale games. Usually these games throw in a difficult “choose who dies” moment at the end of the first act. We didn’t get that here. In fact, one of the later episodes almost felt choice-free and was more like a non-violent version of Dead Space‘s haunted ships. I didn’t mind it so much, but that sort of sequence would have more appropriate in an RPG. But still, there was enough interaction here to keep it engaging through to the climax.