The Game Awards 2021 filled its runtime with a lot of reveals, including several games featured during the pre-show. Among the titles that were announced at the Game Awards was Telltale Games’ The Expanse. The series has been running on Amazon Prime for the past several years, exploring a near-future science-fiction narrative where many of the struggles and inequities that plague Earth today directly affect humanity's efforts in the colonization of the solar system.
The show is a rich adaptation of a series of novels, and between the two this franchise has laid a solid foundation for The Expanse's new game. Between six ongoing seasons of television, as well as eight books, there’s no shortage of source material for The Expanse to tap into. While purists may want to see The Expanse novels adapted more faithfully in Telltale Games’ The Expanse, fans of the show should be in for a treat when it comes to understanding Camina Drummer’s past as a Belter.
Telltale Games Can Explore Camina Drummer
In the show, Belters are often the resilient, exploited labor class for the solar system’s planetary governments and corporations. The struggles and liberation of Belters play a major role in the show’s stories, and many of The Expanse’s best episodes are directly tied to the repercussions of actions taken by the inner worlds of Earth and Mars. Camina Drummer is one of the most notable Belters to show up in the series so far, and in the show has lived a life where she has lost mentors and friends while fighting through to become a strong leader.
While many other protagonists in The Expanse, and the crew of the Rocinante in particular, often seek a path that is morally well-defined, characters like Camina Drummer and Chrisjen Avasarala - portrayed by the voice actor for Lakshmi-2 from Destiny 2, Shohreh Aghdashloo - are often forced into corners. Even though their places in the power structures of The Expanse are opposite for much of the show, the choice to focus on Camina Drummer’s story is one that shows the game’s intent to grapple with the difficult struggles of the universe it’s set in.
Camina Drummer’s journey doesn’t start her at the top, and while she’s the second-in-command to Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) faction leader Fred Johnson when the show begins, before the events fans see on Amazon’s The Expanse she was with Anderson Dawes. The OPA leader is often brutal, but his influence within the OPA makes him a leader that holds Ceres station together despite his dislike of politics. In many instances this is only by a thread, but Anderson Dawes's ability to do so often helps to keep the peace.
Exploring Camina Drummer’s time with this character will see her struggle with the choices that come from being a part of the OPA, while also introducing future key characters like Fred Johnson. Many of The Expanse’s most notable figures are tied to one another. While Drummer eventually finds herself within Fred Johnson’s organization, she’s the one that influences Dawes to spare the ruined man when he is first found. Her growth during this period molds her into the character that fans have come to love, a Belter captain who wants to hold her people together without turning them into the monsters that the systems' other military forces act like. Exploring this in Telltale Games' prequel to The Expanse should add depth to an already fantastic character while filling out some of the show's history.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series is in development for PC and consoles.