Getting Started

Overview

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a third-person action RPG that blends cover-based shooting, squad tactics, and deep narrative choices within The Expanse universe. Developed by Owlcat Games, the studio behind the Pathfinder CRPGs and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, the game draws inspiration from Mass Effect, Gears of War, The Division, and Dark Souls. If you are jumping in for the first time, this guide covers everything you need to know before your first mission.

You play as a Pinkwater Security mercenary who survives a catastrophic incident on Eros Station and takes command of the Gemini, the solar system's most advanced spaceship. From there, you recruit a crew of seven companions, navigate faction politics between Earth, Mars, and the Belt, and uncover the truth behind the Protomolecule and Project Caliban. Every decision you make carries weight, and some choices cannot be undone.

Choosing Your Origin

The first major decision happens during character creation. You pick one of three origins: Earther, Martian, or Belter. This is not a cosmetic choice. Your origin determines your character's physical build, starting stats, and how every faction in the game reacts to you. Dialogue options, NPC attitudes, shop prices, and entire quest branches change depending on where your character was born.

The Belter origin is confirmed to have the most additional side quest content. This reflects the richness of Belt culture in the source material. Belter players also gain access to Creole dialogue options and can natively understand Belter hand gestures that other origins cannot read. If you want the broadest narrative experience on a first playthrough, Belter is the origin with the most unique content. That said, every origin provides a complete and distinct experience, so pick whichever background resonates with you.

The game prioritizes book canon over the TV show when depicting Belter culture. Expect Belter NPCs to speak Creole and use gestures developed for communication in environments where sound does not carry well, such as vacuum, noisy stations, and large open spaces.

Understanding Combat

Combat in Osiris Reborn is built around three interlocking layers: cover-based shooting, skills and technology, and companion commands. Every encounter is designed as a tactical puzzle. Positioning, ability usage, and squad coordination all matter, and ignoring any one layer will make fights significantly harder.

Stay in Cover

The single most important habit to develop is staying behind cover. The game uses a time-to-death mechanic where standing in the open for more than a few seconds is fatal on Normal difficulty or higher. Health regenerates while you are in cover, but that safety comes with a tradeoff: staying behind one piece of cover for too long invites flanking. Enemies will move to outflank you, and some cover is destructible, meaning it can be shot apart by sustained fire or explosions.

The core combat rhythm is a constant push-and-pull. Snap to cover, lean out to fire or use abilities, then vault to new cover before enemies surround your position. Blind-firing over obstacles is safer but less accurate. Vaulting between cover points keeps you mobile and harder to pin down.

Use Secondary Fire Modes

Every weapon has a secondary fire mode that can be swapped to instantly during combat. An assault rifle might mount a grenade launcher. A pistol might switch to a charged shot. A sniper rifle might toggle armor-piercing rounds. Learning to swap between fire modes mid-fight gives you flexibility without needing to switch weapons entirely. Pay attention to each weapon's secondary mode when you pick it up, and incorporate it into your combat flow early.

No Melee, No Stealth

There are no melee-focused builds and no stealth takedowns. Close-quarters encounters are handled with shotguns, point-blank tech abilities, and grenades. If enemies close the distance, your best options are a shotgun blast, a grenade at your feet, or a quick dodge to create space. Combat is always the expected resolution for hostile encounters. While the Tactical Visor lets you scout ahead and approach from favorable angles, the game does not support stealth as a primary playstyle.

The Exploit System

The Exploit system is one of the most powerful tools in your tactical arsenal. It lets you use the environment itself as a weapon by coordinating with your companions. A well-executed Exploit can wipe out an entire group of enemies in a single action, turning a prolonged firefight into an instant win.

Using an Exploit follows three steps:

1. Identify the opportunity. Scan your surroundings for interactive environmental elements: unstable structures, exposed electrical systems, fuel containers, loose overhead fixtures, and similar hazards.

2. Position enemies near the hazard. Use aggressive flanking, grenades, or your own movement to push enemy groups into the area of effect. Drawing their attention so they cluster near the hazard is the key.

3. Command your companion. Order the right companion to execute their Exploit ability on the environmental element. If the companion's category matches the hazard type, the result is devastating area damage.

The catch is that each companion belongs to one of four Exploit categories, and using the wrong category on a hazard will not produce the desired effect. Match the companion to the situation:

When you enter a new combat zone, take a moment to scan for environmental hazards before engaging. Planning your Exploit opportunity before the shooting starts gives you a massive advantage. If you bring two companions with different Exploit categories, you can handle a wider variety of environmental setups.

Building Your Playstyle

Osiris Reborn does not have traditional classes. There are no rigid archetypes like Soldier, Engineer, or Medic that lock you into a predetermined path. Instead, your build emerges organically from the weapons and equipment you discover and the abilities you invest in as you level up. Creative Director Alexander Mishulin has compared this approach to Dark Souls: find the weapon that feels right and build your entire playstyle around it.

The early hours of the game are designed for experimentation. Try different weapon categories, test out the various tech abilities, and see which combinations feel natural to you. Over time, you will naturally gravitate toward a preferred style and start investing more deeply in the skills that support it.

Here are some example build directions to consider:

These directions are not mutually exclusive. You can invest primarily in gunplay while picking up a few drone abilities for defense, or focus on companion effectiveness while still unlocking the Tactical Visor. The system rewards hybrid approaches and experimentation. One specific synergy the developers highlighted: a visor that highlights enemies through smoke and cover works better with slow, hard-hitting weapons than with a fast-firing submachine gun. Look for these kinds of combinations as you unlock new gear.

Companion Management

You can bring two companions into the field on each mission. The remaining crew members are not idle. They lead secondary squads on parallel objectives, provide strategic analysis from the Gemini, contact you via radio with intelligence updates, temporarily meet you at specific mission points, or support the team remotely by hacking into systems and drawing enemy attention.

Choosing your field pair is a tactical decision with both combat and narrative implications. Think about Exploit category coverage (bringing two companions with different categories lets you handle more environmental setups), combat role balance (pairing a sniper like Regina with a frontline heavy like Michael gives you range flexibility), and personal questline access (some companion interactions only trigger when that companion is in your active squad).

Companion Permadeath

This is one of the most important things to understand early. Certain companions can die permanently based on your choices, and once they are gone, they are gone for the rest of that playthrough. The developers have confirmed this system draws direct inspiration from Mass Effect 2's suicide mission.

Companion permadeath is not limited to a single climactic event. The risk exists throughout the campaign. How you treat your crew, which missions you prioritize, and how you handle critical story moments all feed into whether companions survive. Pay attention to your crew's personal struggles and take their concerns seriously. Helping a companion through their problems can determine their fate later in the story.

Unsignposted Decisions

Many critical choices in the game are not flagged or highlighted. There is no on-screen prompt warning you that a particular dialogue option or action will lock in a major consequence. The game trusts you to weigh your words and actions the same way you would in a real situation. Side conversations and seemingly minor missions can have far-reaching consequences, so treat every interaction as potentially meaningful.

Skills and Non-Combat Progression

Outside of combat, three skill categories govern interactions during dialogue and exploration: Persuasion, Science, and Hacking. Each has multiple proficiency levels that you invest in through the progression system.

Skill checks are flat pass/fail based on your current proficiency level. There are no dice rolls and no random elements. If you have enough points, you pass every time. If you do not, you fail every time. Failed checks never block the main story, but they can close off optional dialogue branches, bonus rewards, and alternative approaches. Keep this in mind when distributing your level-up points: investing a few points in Persuasion or Hacking early on can open up paths that make missions easier or more rewarding.

Difficulty Settings

The game offers three difficulty levels. You can choose the one that best matches your priorities:

If you are new to cover-based shooters or primarily interested in the story, Story difficulty lets you experience the full narrative without combat frustration. Normal is well-suited for players with shooter experience who want both a tactical challenge and a narrative-focused pace. Hard is designed for players who want every encounter to feel like a genuine tactical puzzle where mistakes are punished.

Zero-Gravity Combat

A significant portion of the game takes place in zero-gravity environments. Combat and movement work differently in zero-g, and adapting to these changes early will save you a lot of trouble.

• Magnetic boots clamp you to surfaces and let you walk along floors, walls, and ceilings. Movement is slower and more deliberate than in gravity. You can disengage your boots at any time to push off and float freely.

• Weapon handling changes. Firearm ballistics and recoil behave differently without gravity. Every weapon has a second dimension of performance in zero-g that you need to account for.

• Grenades with thrusters become especially useful. In zero-g, these grenades use small RCS thrusters to adjust trajectory mid-flight, curving around cover to reach hidden enemies.

• Debris floats freely. Destructible environments create floating debris that can obscure sightlines or serve as improvised cover. Explosions scatter objects in all directions rather than dropping them to the ground.

• No fall damage in zero-g, but colliding with surfaces at high speed after a botched thrust maneuver can still cause damage. Control your momentum carefully.

Consumables and Resources

Med-kits, stims, grenades, and other consumable items are designed to be used frequently rather than hoarded. The game's economy provides enough supplies that you should not feel the need to save them for emergencies. Every fight is an opportunity to use your full toolkit, so spend your consumables aggressively rather than stockpiling them for a rainy day.

Materials for the crafting system come from two sources: looting them from environments and enemies during missions, and purchasing them from vendors at social hubs. Crafting lets you build weapons, armor, and gadgets to supplement what you find and buy. Do not neglect the vendor economy; checking shops between missions keeps your loadout current.

Exploration Advice

The game spans multiple locations across the solar system, from Belt stations to inner-planet installations. Here are a few general tips for getting the most out of exploration:

• Talk to everyone. NPC conversations unlock side quests, lore, and faction reputation changes. Some dialogue branches only open if you have invested in the Persuasion or Science skill, so even casual conversations can reward skill investment.

• Check your surroundings before combat. Look for environmental hazards you can use with the Exploit system. Every encounter space is designed with exploitable elements, but you need to spot them before the shooting starts.

• Your origin matters in every location. Faction reception changes based on whether you are an Earther, Martian, or Belter. Expect different prices, quest availability, and NPC willingness to share information depending on where you go and who you are.

• There are no survival mechanics. Despite the hostile vacuum of space, there are no oxygen meters, hunger bars, or temperature gauges. Danger in vacuum environments comes from enemy fire and physics, not resource timers. Focus on the combat and story without worrying about keeping meters topped off.

• Fall damage exists in gravity. Jumping or falling from heights in pressurized stations or planetary surfaces deals damage. In zero-g sections, fall damage does not apply, but high-speed collisions still hurt.

Quick Reference Tips

1. Cover is life. Never stay in the open for more than a moment. Health regenerates in cover, and exposure is lethal on Normal and Hard.

2. Match companions to Exploits. Each companion's Exploit category must match the environmental hazard for the Exploit to work. Bring two different categories for maximum flexibility.

3. Experiment early, specialize later. The early game gives you freedom to try every weapon and ability. Commit to a build direction once you find what suits you.

4. Use secondary fire modes. Swapping to a grenade launcher or charged shot mid-fight can solve problems that primary fire cannot.

5. Spend consumables freely. The game is balanced around frequent consumable use. Do not hoard them.

6. Invest in at least one non-combat skill. A few points in Persuasion, Science, or Hacking open up alternative mission paths and bonus rewards.

7. Pay attention to companion concerns. Companion permadeath is real, and how you treat your crew directly affects their survival. There are no warning prompts before critical decisions.

8. Scan before you shoot. Take a moment to identify Exploit opportunities and environmental hazards before engaging enemies.

9. Adapt to zero-g. Weapons, grenades, and movement all behave differently in zero gravity. Familiarize yourself with the changes during the early station missions.

10. Replay with a different origin. Each origin provides distinct narrative content, faction reactions, and side quests. A second playthrough as a different origin reveals story threads that were invisible the first time.

At a Glance

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a single-player third-person cover-based action RPG from Owlcat Games, built in Unreal Engine 5 and targeting a 2027 release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC (Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store). Xbox Game Pass Day One is confirmed. The game ships with full voice acting and six launch languages: English, Spanish, French, Russian, simplified Chinese, and German. The closed-beta build already supports Normal and Hard difficulty settings.

Opening Setup for New Players

The story drops you into the aftermath of the Eros incident. You play a mercenary working for Pinkwater Security, one of a pair of twins. The prologue places you and your sibling aboard the Pinkwater ship Piranha when the Eros catastrophe unfolds, and the two of you narrowly escape aboard a vessel seized from the attackers. Shortly after, you dock at your home base, Pinkwater Four Station, which is the game's first hub. There you report to the station's director, Oscar O'Connell, and begin untangling the mess the two of you brought home. For the deeper setting context, see the Gemini (the ship you and your twin now pilot).

Character Creation in the Full Game

Character creation in the finished game lets you pick the appearance and gender of both your protagonist and your twin sibling, plus one of three origins: Earther, Belter, or Martian. Your twin's gender mirrors yours. Belters are visibly taller and more elongated than Inners, a silhouette choice that is immediately obvious when standing next to Earther or Martian NPCs. There are no rigid classes; the backgrounds only seed different starting gadgets, passive bonuses, and skill allocations, and you are free to invest across every tree from level one. For the full progression rundown, see character creation and progression.

In the closed beta, custom character creation is locked. You instead pick between four pre-made slots: Belter Officer, Belter Hacker, Earther Officer, and Earther Hacker. The Martian origin is not exposed in the beta at all.

Origins and Their Personal Passives

Every origin grants a single personal passive that bumps one skill at character creation, on top of the background's narrative framing:

Starting Loadout and Slots

Gear is organized into four slot pools, all of which are visible from level one. Understanding the layout makes the first trip to the station workbench much less confusing:

• Two weapon slots. One rifle-sized primary and one short sidearm on the hip. If you pick up a rifle-sized submachine gun later, it fills the primary slot, so you cannot also carry a handgun.

• Three gadget slots. These cover your active combat abilities, from grenades and incendiary rounds to scanners, drone swarms, and wrist-mounted launchers.

• Four subsystem slots. Subsystems come in categories like Mechanical and Digital and grant passive bonuses to armor, reload speed, ability damage, cooldowns, and similar numbers.

• One decorative armor slot. Purely cosmetic. Changes how your suit and helmet look without affecting combat stats.

There are no gear tiers and no rarity colors. Every item is unique and can be upgraded through three grades at a workbench using crafting materials like aluminium alloy. A starting weapon that you bond with on mission one can carry the whole campaign. The full slot-by-slot breakdown lives in weapons and equipment.

Six Exploration Skills

Outside combat, six exploration skills (also called social skills) resolve the pass or fail of conversation checks, obstacle interactions, and hidden-path unlocks. Each character, the player and every companion, has two of them.

Checks resolve against the combined score of the player plus the companions brought along on the mission. If you are sitting at Engineering 2 and your squadmate is sitting at Engineering 2, a check for 4 succeeds. A consumable focus drug temporarily raises one non-combat skill by one point, which is often enough to push a borderline check into success.

Four Combat Skill Trees

Combat progression splits across four skill trees. Player characters have access to all four. Companions have three: Shooter, Gadget, and Survivalist, since the Leader role belongs to you.

The crew shares a single level. Every level-up hands out points to the player and to each companion for their own trees at the same time, so a patch of grinding lifts everyone at once. Node values are substantial; the very first Survivalist point alone is about a 15 percent armor increase, not the tiny sliver you might expect from other action RPGs.

Combat Primer

Combat is a third-person cover shooter, but it leans into squad tactics more heavily than the genre default. A few habits make the first encounters go much more smoothly. See combat and gameplay for the full mechanical breakdown.

• Tactical slow-mo. The F key (on keyboard) drops the encounter into heavy slow motion, not a full pause. Use it to switch focus to a companion, queue an Engage order, cycle gadgets, or aim at an environmental target. Everything it enables can also be done at normal speed, so slow-mo is optional rather than required.

• Engage command. The Engage order focuses a companion on a target, boosts their damage, and triggers their signature gadget. Heavy investment in the Leader tree can drop its cooldown so low that whole playstyles hinge on directing companions instead of shooting personally.

• Every number matters. The skill-tree values are generous. A single point in Shooter, Gadget, Survivalist, or Leader usually produces a noticeable effect inside the next firefight, which makes experimentation cheap and comfortable.

• Environmental exploits. Companions can break specific battlefield elements to clear cover or scramble electronics. The full taxonomy (Precision, Demolitions, Malfunction, Cyber Attack) lives in the exploit system. Your sibling defaults to Precision; on the Gemini, Zafar can rain point-defense fire onto the station as his support exploit.

Closed-Beta Tips

The following tips apply specifically to the closed-beta build of the Pinkwater Four Station mission. They should age out as the full game launches, but they make the current beta session much richer.

• Try both presets. Running the Officer once and the Hacker once is the cleanest way to feel how gadget rotations reshape the same encounters. The Officer leans into a frag-grenade and incendiary-rounds rhythm; the Hacker leans into Tactical Scanner, Pandemic Algorithm, and the Gremlin Drone Swarm.

• Talk to everyone before reporting in. There is a surprising amount of flavor and side content on Pinkwater Four Station. Walk the hub once before heading to the director's office; your twin will sometimes break off to chat with bystanders dynamically, and several NPCs remember earlier interactions.

• Persuade Luciana more than once. The station's vendor has a branching gossip tree. Each successful persuasion check unlocks a juicier piece of gossip about station politics and the Piranha's captain, so push past the first option if you have the points.

• Pass the Engineering check on the broken door behind Luciana. Clearing it opens a side cache stocked with Subsystem Gear. Belter Hacker has Engineering pre-invested; the Earther Officer can still pass it if an Engineering-focused companion is brought along and a focus drug bumps the check.

• Read every data pad. One of the pads in the living quarters contains the 9009 door code. Your character automatically remembers codes once seen, so you do not have to dig through menus; the code stays on the HUD when you reach the keypad.

• Wait for Zafar's spacewalk distraction. During the EVA section, it is slower to wait for Zafar to reposition and pop an airlock cleanly, but doing so keeps him happy. Rushing the nearer airlock trips an alarm and seeds a long-term relationship hit.

• Think before every Pinkwater Four choice. The beta's pivotal decisions matter beyond the immediate scene. See choices and consequences for the branching structure, including how persuading Oscar to resist Protogen or telling him to stand down reshapes the rest of the run.

EVA and Zero Gravity

Part of the mission happens outside the station in vacuum. Magnetic boots lock you to exterior surfaces so you can walk along walls and ceilings, though short fully zero-gravity stretches exist as well. Firearms sound muted in vacuum, bodies and debris drift on their own physics, and grenades use small thrusters instead of a conventional throwing arc. The full rule set lives in zero-gravity mechanics.

Editions and Beta Access

Founder pre-order tiers come in four flavors. Closed-beta access ships with the Miller's Pack and Collector's Edition; the Standard Pack and Deluxe Edition do not include beta keys. Full details, bonus cosmetics, and physical extras live in pre-order editions.