soli

Yeah, one of the most soulless and boring games I’ve played. The Expanse seemed like such a good property to adapt into a Telltale game too.

If you’re looking for a good sci-fi Telltale style game, Star Trek: Resurgence came out around the same time from a studio of former Telltate employees and it is an absolute joy for anyone who misses 90’s Trek.

I really enjoyed The Wolf Among Us, but given how terrible their Expanse game was I’m not holding my breath.

I actually didn’t realize there was a Descent 3 for some reason, I’ve only played 1 & 2. They’re the sort of game I can just jump in for 20 minutes and have fun but all the back tracking through the levels makes me feel sick playing any longer.

Just a heads up if you do try it, I mean the original not Catalyst. The sequel constantly kills that flow state with all the annoying intrusions you’ll see from other AAA open world games. It’s not the worst game ever, I did finish it, but it was the last time I bought something on release.

The original is just a short collection of levels. It’s extremely minimalist. The only diversions from the flow is a simple story linking them and a handful of hidden collectibles.

Mirror’s Edge - I usually turn the voices off and just run. Once you’re in the flow it’s so calming, and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

The editor is truly amazing. It has powerful scripting engine and was easy to use. One of my potentially hot takes is it was so much better than using Morrowind’s construction kit. The game used to be full of custom persistent world servers which were sort of MMO-lite, big communities that were often way more roleplay based and free of the time wasting, money sucking bullshit of actual MMOs. Sadly, one of those ephemeral game moments that cannot be replayed.

And yeah, Deekin comes in the Shadows of Undrentide expansion and remains a companion through Horde of the Underdark. Honestly, if you like Deekin and haven’t played Undrentide I’d recommend giving it ago. It’s a refreshingly small scale adventure - it’s more like the CRPG equivalent of a short paperback fantasy novel than a grand epic. It also makes the wise decision of not being a continuation of the original campaign.

I loved NWN when it came out but it’s appeal was rooted in the multiplayer and custom content. It had an amazing community with great tools to support it. You can still find servers for it but they’re not worth it, it’s the bastion of people who haven’t moved on in 20 years.

The single player was pretty bland. Shadows of Undrentide is a genuinely fun adventure, and I’ll love Deekin (a kobold companion) forever, but the original campaign is a slapped together proof of concept and Hordes of the Underdark is a mess that’s only really notable for being a high level adventure.

Some of the premium modules were praised but I’d moved on to persistent world servers then other games long before they were released.

I thought after playing Star Trek: Resurgence, which I adored, that I’d follow up with The Expanse: A Telltale Series. I’m a fan of both series and The Expanse seems just as well suited to the format, I’ve enjoyed the other Telltale games I’ve played and I really like Camina Drummer. Recipe for a slam dunk.

Off the bat, The Expanse has a lot of advantages over Resurgence. It’s far better on a technical level - it never crashed, I didn’t have any visual bugs, I didn’t have any performance problems and there were no input issues. All things Resurgence was rife with.

But here’s where the problems start. The Expanse, in a technical sense, is better graphically. It doesn’t look better though. It’s just creatively kind of dull. This is going to be a running theme with the game - it suffers any time an artistic choice had to be made.

There’s only a brief moment in the first episode - of five - where we escape the uninspired industrial corridors. You might point out those industrial corridors are part of the show’s aesthetic, but they don’t convey the same details about how these machines work and how the people live in them. They miss details like how the decks are laid out in relation to the direction of thrust, and are weirdly wide rather than that utilitarian claustrophobia. The show also had no problem finding spectacular space vistas that are largely absent here.

But visuals are not why we are here. It’s the story, right? But for the first time in any Expanse media - from the books, novellas, show, etc - I was incredibly bored. None of these characters are remotely interesting. The Camina I know is intense, driven and decisive. This Camina is unsure, anxious and just all around unimpressive. The politics are gone - not that the faction don’t get a lot of lip service, but everything said is incredibly surface level and dull.

The game is blatantly obvious in how it forces outcomes regardless of choice. I was particularly frustrated when I shot a mutinous crew member multiple times, saw him floating limp in space, only for him to teleport mere moments later and have a gun pointed at another crew member again. I had these whiplash moments pretty often, where it felt like there needed to be an intermediary set up scene but instead we just awkwardly jump to something.

More important than decisions in story outcomes is stuff you find while exploring. People live or die based on these. Except you have no idea whether clicking something or walking somewhere is going to trigger a cutscene that’ll push you past a threshold where you can’t return to find something. Locations of items rely on moon logic - you don’t find meds in any of the med bays you go through, you them on a random crate floating in space. The result is an anxiety over whether you’ll miss something, and butchered pacing as you aimlessly walk around trying to find these things that could be anywhere.

The voice acting is sadly sub par. I really liked Camina’s actress in the show, but she sounds like she is phoning it in here. The others aren’t any better. The belter accents were particularly awkward.

It feels weird to talk about game play in this genre, but with dialogue choices this weak I couldn’t help but notice how much worse The Expanse’s were. There is a lot of tedious filler walking, jarring video game-y avoiding patrolling “drones” with comical red laser beam search lights and holding a button until a thing is collected. Resurgence had plenty of issues in this regard but, to it’s credit, it mostly just cut to the next scene (at least in the first half).

The one puzzle I remember was moon logic. You need to work out a password, which is connecting a series of shapes, and are encouraged to look around the environment for shapes that might have been important to the previous inhabitants. Is it any of the pseudo-religious iconography? Anything of sentimental importance? No, it’s the path of the silly connect the power lines chore you did earlier.

Ugh, I could go on. This is already way longer than anyone should read. The TL;DR is The Expanse gets a 3/10 for me, compared to Resurgence at a 9/10. It should have been an easy passing grade given my investment in the series and it’s suitability for this format but it’s just so creatively bankrupt.

The only upcoming game I’m really excited for ❤️‍

I’m unironically disappointed. I’d take any new direction at the moment, I’ve already been pushed past the point where it wouldn’t make a meaningful difference to me if it got worse. Even a change with a low chance of getting better is worth it over a guarantee of remaining shit.

Star Trek: Resurgence. The short version is I really liked it. It’s one of those Telltale/Life is Strange style games that is basically a visual novel. Not perfect by any means, but this could have been a banger season of a peak Trek show. I want more.