After a three-week hiatus, I finally found the time to work on the third and fourth chapters of The Expanse: A Telltale Series. I was thrilled with how the first couple of episodes played out and was hopeful for more space station exploration and character backstory to keep the fun going. Unfortunately, when Episode III was released, there were still issues on the PS5 platform for players to access it.

I had the worst of it, having to get in touch with our press contact and open a ticket with Telltale themselves just to play, leading to the delay in this review. Thanks to strong communication, the issue was resolved and the fourth chapter was released without incident. With that in mind, can this title keep the excitement going in the middle of its story?

Episode III picks up after a cliffhanger of encountering a mysterious space station. Where have I seen that before? It also sees you learning about the First Ones, a group of individuals who are cult-like and take drastic measures to carry out their collective mission statement.

It’s another example of a game revealing its background through showing and not telling, as the only other person on the ship is Maya, who you made a big, big choice about at the tail-end of Episode II. Depending on what you chose, a good deal of the dialogue will either be tense or empty. The long-term effects of that decision will rear their ugly head as this episode comes to a close.

The runtime of Episode III of The Expanse: A Telltale Series clocks in at about 45 minutes, and that includes searching every nook and cranny. There is one fight sequence, one puzzle to solve, and that’s about it for content. It’s a total of a whopping three scenes. This is abysmal for a story-telling adventure and if it weren’t for the impact of the climax of First Ones, this entire episode would have been a wash.

This is especially frustrating considering you only interact with half of the cast in the majority of Episode III. I distinctly remember playing Episode IV of Tales From the Borderlands on release day and feeling upset that it took only 2 hours. This is a new level of brief and it truly felt fleeting and more of a bridge than anything. If anything, there wasn’t any room to add filler, so I’ll give it that.

This is a bit of a bump in the road for The Expanse: A Telltale Series. It’s not jumping the shark or nosediving in quality though. I loved learning about the First Ones and it had great dialogue throughout the episode. I just wish there was more involvement with the rest of The Artemis and maybe even one more scene to build to the climax instead of rushing into it.

Tack that onto missing the mark with the release schedule once again and this was a sub-par experience that I can hope gets remedied in the fallout within Episode IV which is loaded up and ready to play. Some more zero-grav delving and conversations are all I need for this game to pick back up again.

A PlayStation 5 review copy of The Expanse: A Telltale Series was provided by Telltale Games for this review.

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The Expanse: A Telltale Series

39.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• More Great Exploration
• Big Story Beats
• Choices Finally Come Into Play

Cons

• Shortest Telltale Episode To Date
• Disregards Half the Crew