It’s gotten a bit lost during the furor of San Diego Comic Con 2023, but Telltale Games has released a new trailer for its upcoming narrative-driven adventure game, The Expanse: A Telltale Series. The trailer, titled ‘Archangel’, teases a sixth bonus episode with a storyline that will purportedly center around another fan-favorite character from The Expanse TV series – Her Excellency, Chrisjen Avasarala, Secretary-General of the United Nations.
The teaser trailer is only about a minute long and opens with a narrator monologuing about the Game of Chess and its parallels to the Game of War. As the backdrop shifts from the skyline of New York City to an underground United Nations security bunker, the blurred figure of a woman shifts into focus – Chrisjen Avasarala, voiced by the original TV actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, ends the trailer with a powerful (if somewhat cliched) warning about the true face of politics, delivered in her iconic style. You can check out the trailer below:
The bonus episode is part of a new series of episodic narrative adventures set in the hard sci-fi universe of The Expanse. Based on the sci-fi book series by James S.A Corey and the subsequent Amazon TV series by the same name, the story takes place in the near future when humanity has managed to colonize the solar system but still finds itself bogged down by class conflict and the machinations of power-hungry politicians. Despite the extravagant sci-fi setting of the world itself, the stories told within the universe of The Expanse tend to focus on more human motivations such as family, camaraderie, survival, betrayal, and the pursuit of power. The five-part game series is set to be a prequel to the first season of the TV show and will follow the journey of Camina Drummer, played by Canadian actress Cara Gee who reprises her role from the TV show. Since it’s a prequel, players who have never read or watched The Expanse should have no problems following the narrative.
In line with the DNA of the original IP, The Expanse: A Telltale Series will supposedly focus on the human conflict amidst the backdrop of an ever-expanding frontier of space of knowledge. The developer Telltale Games has a long history of crafting similar narrative and gameplay experiences based on other popular IPs including The Walking Dead, Batman, and even Game of Thrones, all of which were received positively by critics and audiences alike. However, The Expanse: A Telltale Series is set to be the first major release by the studio ever since its demise and subsequent rebirth after being acquired by Malibu, California-based LCG Entertainment.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series is set to release on July 27, 2023 for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC exclusively via Epic Games Store (it’s one of those 1-year timed exclusive deals, so if you were hoping to play the game on Steam you might have to wait a while). The base version is priced at $39.99 and will give you access to the five main story episodes as soon as they are released, whereas The Expanse: A Telltale Series Deluxe Edition is priced a bit higher at $44.99 and also includes the bonus ARCHANGEL episode. While I understand that the episodic release structure is fundamental to all Telltale games, bonus episodes locked behind Deluxe editions only serve to increase consumer confusion. I am excited about Telltale Games and their narrative style of choice-consequence gameplay making a comeback, I just wish they would have simplified their pricing and editions a little bit.
