Camina Drummer has a few problems: Her spaceship is running out of fuel. Her medic is hiding a dark secret. And there's an asteroid headed their way. But that's just another day on The Artemis. In The Expanse: A Telltale Series, Drummer's problems are your problems. If you know her from the television show of the same name, you know she's strong-willed and loyal, with the kind of fierce temperament suited to space exploration. But here, in Telltale's first new game in five years, you get to make the decisions. And your crew—and the game—is paying attention. Episodic narratives are making a comeback. With them returns a style of game that is uniquely suited both to the video game medium and our present moment.

Today's release is the first of five to be rolled out over the next two months. The planned schedule is very much in line with prestige TV: Each episode will be between sixty and ninety minutes, and by the end you'll have witnessed a full narrative arc for this "eccentric crew," as Game Director Stephan Frost describes Drummer and her cohorts. But what makes episodic games so exciting and different from episodic television is the obvious fact that you don't just get one narrative, of course. You get yours, as you decide how and when to make certain decisions, with each plotline breaking off down multiple paths and crisscrossing across many story nodes. Sometimes this means you get to take down the leader of a doomsday cult with either force or subterfuge, as in HITMAN: World of Assassination; sometimes this means running into a burning building and risking the life of a trusted friend who runs in after you, as in The Walking Dead: Michonne.The Expanse: A Telltale Series lets you steer the story of the scavenger ship Artemis and its crew. Instead of exploring a solar system, you try to navigate the complexities of human relationships within the tense confines of a vehicle hurtling through the cosmos. This limitation is what makes the original Expanse books—written by an author duo under the pen name James S. A. Corey—so riveting. They traffic in big, crunchy hard sci-fi that still grounds its plots in human motivations, which are moving targets as volatile as any asteroid.

The TV show, first produced by SyFy then picked up by Amazon for seasons four to six, continued and expanded on the themes of the book. Whereas Telltale's award-winning Walking Dead games took place in the comic's direct universe, this version of The Expanse will dovetail more directly with the television show, with the episodes following fan-favorite character Camina Drummer (voiced by Cara Gee, who played the role on TV) during a period of time prior to the events of the show.


Want to piece together a cogent backstory for a character you know and love? Now's your chance. But if you know nothing of The Expanse universe and are just being introduced to Drummer and co., the prequel setting means you don't have to know a textbook's worth of background lore to understand what's happening. It's the perfect starting point for newcomers.

You might call it a "restarting point." One advantage to episodic narratives built around player decision is that the consequences of our actions (or words) are transparent and mutable. We don't have to wait for the end of a 100-hour epic to see if we said the right thing. And if ninety minutes later we want to try again later and see what changes, it's all part of the experience.

One major reason episodic narrative titles work so well is the replayable nature of games. They take the narrative constraints of traditional TV media and break them into moveable pieces. Something like Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly might work as a short Youtube video, if it were animated as a more traditional show. But our direct involvement as players turns the relatively simple interactions of a barista into compelling human drama with what feel like real stakes.That's why Telltale's own New Tales from the Borderlands works so well alongside its first-person shooter origin games. With a series this witty and conversational, it was a shame you couldn't, you know, talk to these characters. Using an episodic narrative format gave veteran players a reason to re-engage with old characters while also granting new players a chance to get to know them for the first time.

We Are OFK is another recent game that reinterprets the serialized drama of yesteryear with a very modern sensibility: that of a young pop band trying to make it in our present era of smartphones and social media. Such games reflect back on us the fragmented way so many of us consume media today—in blips and clips—and are the exact kind of experimental title that's been made possible through digital distribution. Instead of "jump" or "shoot," the main verbs for such story-first games can be "think" or "choose"—a more internalized kind of action that can produce equally dramatic consequences.

The Expanse universe is rife with these moments that weigh heavy on the character's mind; giving players agency over the fate of what happens at pivotal moments is a thrill that's impossible to replicate in traditional storytelling media. Fans of the show still mourning the loss of its exquisite world-building and captivating performances will no doubt be eager to step inside the mind (and gravity boots) of Drummer and not only see, but decide what happens next.

Though the industry has changed greatly since The Walking Dead's monumental season one in 2012, in some ways, it's never been more like episodic television. The success of Fortnite's battle pass and its ongoing series of discrete one-time events has taught the industry the benefit of a game that functions more like an old-fashioned TV show—with special guests and cliffhanger endings—than a single discrete game-in-a-box. The era of "live-service games" is, I think, a misnomer. They feel more like live broadcasts, with characters you come back to week after week to see what they're doing now.

If there is a danger to episodic gaming, or games that more directly mimic the pace and frequency of television, it's the potential that we'd just rather be watching it as a show instead.

But the inverse can be true: Much of our time spent watching an anticipated show, we yell at the characters to do this or that, shouting suggestions like we're in the audience of The Price is Right, wishing we could take control. Narrative games allow you to do just that—and it's not only Telltale making them.

Perhaps episodic gaming is making a return because there's something cathartic, almost necessary, about having this sense of agency and control over an uncertain narrative. The style of play certainly fits our present post-pandemic era. Whether in a dark house on a hill, or an isolated scavenger ship hurtling through space, we can push back against an unknown future—with the freedom to change our mind if the decision turns out for the worst.

Remedy Entertainment's upcoming Alan Wake 2 is making a comeback at just the right time. The original Alan Wake leaned into episodic narrative from within its single release format—Sam Lake, the game's Creative Director, suggested an episodic release to Microsoft, to no avail. Its structure mimicked television episodes, complete with "Previously On"-style recaps. The long-awaited sequel has finally been announced and you can expect a game that apes the cadence of a well-crafted show or a page-turning horror thriller.The Expanse: A Telltale Series won't be just a digitized Choose Your Own Adventure book, though. There're arguably more "game-y" sections than previous Telltale titles, with more emphasis on third-person exploration, as well as a system of locomotion centered about zero-G that will prove familiar to fans of the gnarly dismemberment of Dead Space or the engineering feats of Kerbal Space Program. But at its heart, The Expanse is a character-driven story you get to control. And then you wait to see what happens.

With the advent of streaming, many services began to dump an entire season's worth of episodes in one go—all the better to binge over the weekend. But recently, there's been a return of weekly releases akin to a pre-streaming era, when audiences had no choice but to watch and then—painfully—wait. But what a good pain! The anticipation builds, and the community can discuss and hypothesize together. Such expectation elevates the eventual experience.

Much like short chapters in a compulsive book, a sequence of episodes—each with their own beginning and ending—gives creators more fertile ground to deliver impactful moments. It's why Frost and his team can introduce and develop the story of each of the crew members on the Artemis, and how they may (or may not) survive the voyage. Full stops every ninety minutes provide more narrative beats for a compelling, enthralling story. There's a reason deer live around the periphery of the forest; the areas toward the edge of the woods are rich with nutrients. The same proves true for narrative.

The Expanse: A Telltale Series aims to capitalize on this, with today's first episode setting the stage for this new chapter and stoking the flames of a patient but eager audience. (Though the game takes place before the show began, a 12-part graphic novel, The Expanse: Dragon Tooth, will continue where the show left off by picking up on strands from the books.)

Will Telltale return again to give players the controls to another ship piloted by another favorite character in a separate adventure? Producers on the show told Variety in 2021 they're "considering all kinds of interesting possibilities."

We will remember that.