For $80, you too can play The Expanse: Osiris Reborn beta today

Fans of the sci-fi franchise The Expanse will be able to try out a slice of the upcoming game The Expanse: Osiris Reborn in a closed beta available now for those who pre-order it. Although it’s only a brief demo lasting around an hour, it gives a taste of what the full game has in store, and there’s nothing stopping you from trying it a few times to see what you missed – which is what I did, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Access to the beta isn’t cheap: while the base game costs $50, players will need to head to Owlcat Studios’ online store to purchase either the $80 Miller’s Pack Edition or the $289 Collector’s Edition to try out the same demo I was able to play. The beta covers a short portion of the game with combat, investigation, lore, and a big cliffhanger. We’ll have to wait a long time to see what else happens, as the game won’t be released until spring 2027.

And yes, Osiris Reborn is a lot like Mass Effect – a third-person shooter with role-playing elements and plenty of characters players need to know. The preview I saw in the demo, assuming it’s representative of what players will experience in the final version, will feel like a homecoming for fans of the Mass Effect franchise. Fortunately, it’s undoubtedly set in The Expanse universe, with realistic science, interplanetary culture clashes, and conspiracy twists like those found in the franchise’s “hard” sci-fi books and shows.

I admit that as a fan of the series, I was tickled by the references I recognized, including a news report explaining the destruction of the merchant ship The Canterbury (the event that kicks off the series) and the mention of a video of the hero James Holden, even though it doesn’t show him. This fits with Owlcat developers’ assurance that the game will take place concurrently, but not largely overlap with the events of the series and books.

By far the best part of the demo – which you’ll have to play through twice to see – is how different decisions change the outcomes of the story. What seems like a standard request from your character changes the fate of another and seems likely to have larger payoffs later in the full game (I’ll share what happens next in the next section).

In the demo, you play as an anonymous mercenary registered alongside his twin with the private company Pinkwater Security. The demo lets you play as one of four preset builds, such as a gadget-based damage-focused hacker or a gun-skilled officer, with origin choices coming from Earth or the asteroid belt beyond Mars (known as Belters).

The main character and his twin return from a mission gone wrong (presumably the one that opens the game) as the sole survivors of their mercenary team on Eros, the space station invaded by the plague-like alien protomolecule in the books and series. Relieved after their ordeal, they are free to wander Pinkwater Station 4, and I recommend doing so to chat with wanderlust saleswoman Luciana and sullen ship dispatcher Harry. Talk to enough people and snoop around on tablets and computer stations, and you’ll discover side quests. If your engineering skills are high enough, you can open a door.

Next, your main character must go up to report, explaining to station master and Pinkwater boss O’Connell what happened to your team on Eros. Unfortunately, something has been stalking you from this cursed place, and you’ll have to fight your way out of Pinkwater 4 to reach your stolen ship, piloted by your new teammate Zafar.

Osiris Reborn Demo: What’s Kept and Discarded from Mass Effect

I’ll return to the unsuspecting critical importance of the choice you make with O’Connell, but (now we get into spoilers) it’s the coolest thing in the demo and the most different from Mass Effect – or rather, the natural evolution of what BioWare’s game series has always promised. As a squad of armored police officers from the shadowy corporation Protogen boards the station in search of the main character, they can either tell O’Connel to stay away or convince him to ask Pinkwater’s security forces to fight.

If you convince them of the latter, you’ll have help in the upcoming firefights as you traverse the corridors and exterior of the station to escape back to your ship. Combat feels a lot like Mass Effect as you run from cover to cover shooting your enemies and using abilities, including grenades or swarms of drones, to even the odds. You can also command your teammate (in the demo, your brother J) to perform strategic attacks that will disrupt enemies, like exploding barrels or destroying enemy cover.

The best part of the combat in the demo was the zero-g segments that the Owlcat developers alluded to in our March interview. As I wandered around outside Pinkwater Station exchanging fire with Protogen henchmen, I stepped onto a platform from a different angle – and the camera tilted to adjust as my magnetic boots held me upright, but my enemies were angled below. It wasn’t quite a shot from the ceiling like the Osiris Reborn trailer showed, but it was an impressive recreation of how zero-g combat appears in The Expanse series.

One of the best changes from Mass Effect is how you can mix and match your kit at any time, freeing you from the “class” restrictions of the BioWare series in favor of starting bonuses that come from your experience (like greater athletic skill from being born in Earth’s 1G gravity). In the demo, you can mix and match your three gadget slots, and I replaced my incendiary rounds with an explosive rocket that I scavenged. There are also four subsystem equipment slots for armor and other buffs. You can also swap your weapons for those you collect along the way and upgrade all of the above mid-mission with different salvage materials.

Since Osiris Reborn is an RPG, there is a skill tree system that you can put points into once you gain enough experience to level up, but what I saw in the demo was adequate, but not overly exciting. The leadership tree improves your teammates’ stats and abilities when commanded, and the gadget tree improves abilities like the drone swarm, but the gun-related tree only increases damage. It’s necessary, but not as new as the story and the choices.

Speaking of which, there are some mid-mission choices that open up your path in nice ways, like choosing to wait for your teammate Zafar to distract an orbiting Protogen ship so you can reach the airlock it’s patrolling, or taking a different airlock through a gas-filled tunnel. Far scarier is the realization that while you convinced Stationmaster O’Connell to rally Pinkwater to fight for you at the start of the demo, you’ll find the living quarters littered with numerous corpses once you arrive.

Fight your way into the same hall you entered peacefully at the start of the demo and you’ll be confronted by the heavily armored enforcers and the fierce Protogen agent who commands them, standing between you and your ship. Luckily, Zafar is ready to help, and you can launch strikes with the gunship’s Vulcan Point Defense Cannons (“PDC” in Expanse lingo) bursting through the opposition, giving you a window to board and escape.

Now comes the most promising part of the demo: if Pinkwater fought alongside you, Agent Protogen unflinchingly takes down O’Connell and, as you fly away in your ship, obliterates Pinkwater Station 4 with a nuclear blast. But if you told O’Connell to stand down at the start of the protest, he and the station will live another day, albeit at gunpoint. To me, this is a shocking binary born from a choice that would be harmless in another game but has serious consequences in the world of The Expanse. It felt like a brutal outcome that fit the harsh world of the books and series.

At just over an hour per run, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn beta demo offers an insightful look at the meat and potatoes of the game’s combat, abilities, and gear. But we’ll still have to wait to see how the story, characters, relationships, and romances play out—the most promising elements to discover, as far as I’m concerned (and, I’d wager, for many Mass Effect fans, too).

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn releases in spring 2027 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, starting at $50. Fans who pre-order the $80 Miller’s Pack Edition or the $289 Collector’s Edition gain access to the beta.