Owlcat Video games’ The Expanse: Osiris Reborn was one of many standouts from the latest Summer season of Gaming sequence of showcases. Developed in Unreal Engine 5, the third-person shooter/role-playing sport gave actual Mass Impact vibes.
Whereas it’s seemingly come out of nowhere, Osiris Reborn has been within the works for years. Inventive director Alexander Mishulin informed WCCF Tech that improvement started in 2021, and the staff spent “nearly a yr doing prototypes.”
“The event began in 2021. We spent nearly a yr doing prototypes, transitioning between genres as a result of the sport we had been making was not fairly just like the video games we had executed beforehand. So we established new processes, established new approaches, and made certain that every thing was working effectively, the taking pictures components had been working effectively, and naturally, established all the brand new processes to make content material. After that, we began making our vertical slices, and now we’re totally in manufacturing.”
In fact, those that have seen Owlcat Video games’ output through the years will know that its main focus is CRPGs. Even the upcoming Warhammer 40K: Darkish Heresy, its second title within the Warhammer 40K universe after Rogue Dealer, is inside that very same construction. Nevertheless, Mishuli reveals that the staff at all times wished to make a third-person title with Osiris Reborn.
“From the primary pitch, it was all about making a third-person sport as a result of The Expanse is about folks. We wish you to attach extra with the characters, the protagonist and the companions, and we wish you to be immersed on this very grounded, real looking, sci-fi world.
“We wished to point out you that, and for that, we wanted to alter perspective and make issues extra real looking and cinematic. Due to that, we transitioned to the third particular person, and sure, we had been slightly bit afraid at first. We began prototyping and made a number of fight and exploration arenas. We experimented with totally different approaches, how we wished our cowl system to work, how we wished our enemies to work.”
For fight arenas alone, the developer had six prototypes to nail the fight fundamentals. Nevertheless, for individuals who loved its earlier titles, Osiris Reborn is “very a lot nonetheless the identical Owlcat sport with all of the totally different choices so that you can select while you’re taking part in new characters, to embrace them, to really feel the results of these decisions, with all of the politics and net of intrigue taking place in The Expanse universe. It’s very a lot the identical strategy to narrative we had in earlier video games, other than the dialogue being extra cinematic, extra in step with the style.”
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is in improvement for Xbox Sequence X/S, PS5, and PC for $49.99. Those that buy the $79.99 Miller’s Pack will obtain unique entry to the beta.
