Oye kapetang!
How do you usually create a character in an RPG? Do you just pick a class, min-max the stats, and then jump right in? Or do you take the time to figure out exactly who they were before the game even started? In any case, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn’s origins will give you something to experiment with.
During character creation, you will choose between three distinct origins: Earther, Martian, or Belter. Each of these origins offers unique bonuses to your exploration skills, starting gear, unique armor look, and affects you and your twin’s physical appearance. But the best part is how origins can alter your character’s journey throughout the game. Today, we’d like to talk about the latter in more detail.
Backstory
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a fast-paced, action-heavy game that throws you into the thick of battle right after character creation. But it’s only later that the game will offer you opportunities to reconstruct your character’s past through conversations with your twin, J, and other characters. That’s where you, as a player, will be able to consider what led you to where you are now and how it might affect your present and future. At certain moments, other characters will even acknowledge your past choices and react to them in turn. We think this creates some really interesting opportunities for role-play and self-expression without slowing down the pace of the game as a whole.
Friend or Foe
In the world of The Expanse, where you come from will affect how the denizens of the solar system look at you, and how the major factions, the UNN, MCRN, and OPA, will react to your presence. During the events of The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, Mars gets accused of destroying an ice hauler, the Canterbury, which had been transporting ice to Ceres. The populace of Ceres, left without water, will not be happy to see inners, especially Martians. Meanwhile, tensions between Earth and Mars are rapidly reaching their precipice, requiring only the faintest of prodding to compel these two rivals to lunge at each other’s throats.
Amid these tensions and hostilities, you will need to return to your roots and seek the help of your origin’s faction, opening interesting new paths for your character. The other factions, however, will treat you with suspicion, deny your ship landing, and so on. This is where your origin story really comes into play, with a whole quest chain dedicated to origin-specific missions to earn the trust and aid you seek from your faction. But after you get what you need, will you continue to offer your support?
Friends in High (and Low) Places
You’ve probably guessed already that there will be a significant amount of origin-exclusive content. Your past connections and relationships will play an important role in your story. You will need to track down representatives of your specific faction and figure out how to secure their support.
If you are a Belter who grew up on Ceres, you will find that you still have a loyal and helpful friend willing to help you find the people and information you need. But if you arrive on Ceres as an Earther, that character will be a complete stranger, offering you a glimpse into a completely different side of their personality. And while it is easier for a Belter to communicate with the locals through language and shared customs, an inner would feel like a complete outsider on Ceres. Inners will instead have their own connections and advantages: Earthers will maintain important contacts on Luna, while Martians will be the only ones allowed to land on the red planet early in the game. Each captain will find places where they belong and where they don’t.
Establishing and strengthening connections to specific factions will play a major role later in the game, but no reason to spoil that now.
Co-Authoring Your Story
We at Owlcat Games have been making role-playing games for 10 years now, and we understand how important it is to be able to play exactly the character you want to be. We know how much your characters mean to you and how much you enjoy customizing their looks, creating their backstories, and then crafting dramatic adventures based on them. Just like in the real world, in the universe of The Expanse, where you were born has a significant impact on a person’s life. We designed these origins to give you a defined place in this world and freedom of self-expression, to make you a true co-author of your own story. We can’t wait to show you more about these origins, so stay tuned for our future updates!
Oyedeng!