Telltale’s The Expanse nails the vibes of one of TV’s most overlooked sci-fi dramas

polygon.com:

It’s been over a year since the TV series The Expanse ended with a compressed sixth season. While it’s a miracle it managed to cover six of the nine Expanse novels during its run on SyFy and later Amazon Prime, it’s hard not to feel like we left that universe too soon. Nothing on television today quite compares to the hard sci-fi world-building and political allegory the show managed to thread on a weekly basis. Thankfully, The Expanse: A Telltale Series manages to fill that void admirably. I’ve played the first three episodes of a planned five, and while it may not contain the lovable cast of the Rocinante, just about everything else that made the show so compelling has returned.

First and foremost, we have Cara Gee, who reprises her memorable role as Camina Drummer and acts as the game’s main character. Giving players control of such a fiercely charismatic person goes a long way to making the game’s world engrossing from the get-go, but your crew of misfit scrappers certainly aren’t weak links. There’s the curmudgeonly pilot, the hotshot (former) Marine, and an impeccably professional doctor who must be hiding something to be serving with a ragtag group like this.

The writing and performances in the first two episodes are every bit as well crafted as the show, with a focus more on intimate character beats than solar-system politics. For better or worse, sometimes you forget you’re playing a video game and not watching an animated Expanse series.

Not only do the level designers imbue the environments with an appropriate amount of “lived-in-ness” — much of what they’ve created can be explored in zero gravity. The implementation here is shockingly intuitive, allowing you to attach your “grav boots” not only to the floor,