The Expanse: A TellTale Series Review

Take to space and step into the shoes of Camina Drummer, a Belter with a past, aboard the Artemis, a salvage ship looking for its big score. In The Expanse: A Telltale Game, all the actions and decisions that you make affect the story that you’re trying to navigate through. There might be love, treachery, double-crossing, and life and death situations, it just all depends on how you play the game. As in any TellTale game, your actions truly have weight. An item that you find during a particular part of the game might help deepen a relationship, save a life, or cause irreparable harm to all. Your dialogdialog choices and actions taken (or not taken) upon characters in the game might change the course of the entire story. 

I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed this type of game. Sure, there are copycats out there that try to make everything matter, but no one does it quite in the same way as TellTale Games. I found myself, in several moments, having to deal with a decision that I knew was going to just kill me, the gamer, to make. I always end up wishing that there was a way to navigate the game where I always feel like I came out on top, but that never happens, and that’s why I yet again got extremely emotionally invested in the game.

There is a little bit of combat to the game, but just like other games it comes down to quicktime events where you just have to make sure you hit the correct button, or sequence of buttons to keep the story going. If you do screw up, there’s usually some sort of checkpoint that you’ll be taken back to, and for the most part you’re not going to have to do huge sections of the game over again. 

There are 5 chapters to this game, and each one picks up on a cliffhanger from the previous episode. For those who haven’t played this type of game there is a chance to go back and replay through a chapter if you didn’t like the outcome, or if you’re just trying to grab all the achievements. I mentioned previously that you’re going to have to make tough decisions throughout the game, and at the end of each chapter you’ll see, if you have an active internet connection, how your decisions compare to all of the other players who have come before. This, in my opinion, will make you feel better about your decision, feel like you understood something others didn’t, or make you wonder if you did make the correct decision.

As I’ve stated in any of my previous reviews of TellTale Games, this is not for everyone, this is a choose your own adventure book in computer format, but it’s GOOD. If you like games like this you’re going to enjoy it. If you are a fan of The Expanse TV show you’ll get a chance to see what could have happened to Camina Drummer right before you meet her in the TV series.