Telltale Games revealed a new trailer for The Expanse: A Telltale Series at Gamescom Opening Night Live this year. Telltale is returning to form with a unique take on a well-known TV series, following in the steps of Game of Thrones or Stranger Things that released before Telltale's sudden closure in 2018. With a significant following and a wealth of potential for new stories from its source material The Expanse could be an ideal series for Telltale to adapt.
What makes The Expanse especially interesting is its new zero-G mechanic. Since The Expanse is predominantly set in the depths of space, it would be unusual to not give players the opportunity to become fully weightless astronauts. Audiences saw a glimpse of The Expanse's take on zero-G environments at Gamescom, showcasing the extent to which they can explore various levels from ship corridors to outdoor wreckages. With Telltale's penchant for adding in puzzles alongside moral choices and dialogue trees, zero-G environments could add a new depth to puzzle-solving.
Telltale's Previous Puzzles
Telltale Games rose to prominence with games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, characterized by episodic formats and the significance of moral choices. While at first these games were more akin to visual novels with branching dialogue trees that had quick-time events for moments of action, Telltale refined its formula to incorporate more game-y elements. It's no surprise that Telltale began to include puzzles in its later titles.
Telltale's Batman games are good examples of this, as while the Batman: Arkham series brought in huge crowds, these were still action-adventure beat 'em ups at their core. Telltale was able to explore the side of Batman as the world's greatest detective, providing players with opportunities to conduct their own investigations of crime scenes and uncover hidden truths. Though straightforward, it made Telltale's Batman games stand out for providing more than just moral conundrums, and likely would have continued into the future projects had the studio not gone bankrupt.
The Challenges of Zero-G Puzzle-Solving
With the introduction of zero-G to the Telltale format, level design can take on a more vertical approach than ever before. Traditionally, players would be provided with an enclosed environment with things to do and find, but with zero-G players will be able to explore up and down as well - turning these once flat levels into potentially expansive areas, with many hidden corners and inherently different routes. In The Expanse's gameplay trailer, players are shown exploring a wrecked ship or station, demonstrating just how open these levels can be.
In addition to the increased range of exploration, zero-G is a novel mechanic in games like Heavenly Bodies, which incidentally demonstrates the challenges of navigating and puzzle-solving in space. Telltale could take advantage of the weightlessness by moving ordinarily heavy objects, or use the physics of momentum to create situations in which players may need to save themselves from drifting into space. With its unique setting and The Expanse's extensive source material, there's ample potential.
How Telltale plans to use zero-G could be tricky, depending on how close to The Expanse's commitment to real science it will stick. Canonically, ships in The Expanse don't generate gravity, but instead use physics to simulate it by exploiting centripetal force or maintaining acceleration. If players encounter a situation where realistic zero-G is used, they won't be able to just switch it on and off. It will be interesting then to see how Telltale navigates this challenge, and what puzzles it can throw in players' way.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series is set to release in summer 2023.