Say Hello to The Expanse: Osiris Reborn's Champions

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is Owlcat Games' upcoming take on party-driven storytelling within one of science fiction's most grounded and politically textured universes. Owlcat has a reputation for companions that feel genuinely alive, whose ideologies, backstories, and banter shape the player's experience as much as any main quest. And while The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is still quite a ways off with its Spring 2027 release, the strength of its crew of mercenary companions could be a make-or-break factor.

The setting itself makes developing compelling companions a uniquely difficult challenge, too. The Expanse is a hard sci-fi world with very few shortcuts taken — which means Owlcat can't reach for its usual fantasy toolkit to make characters feel distinctive. Instead, every squadmate in Osiris Reborn must earn their identity through the ideologies, personal histories, and the cultural fault lines that separate Earth, Mars, and the Belt. That's a harder needle to thread, and it's exactly why these recently revealed companions are worth paying close attention to, especially before Osiris Reborn’s closed beta test this April.

Osiris Reborn’s Companions and the Exploit System

But before diving into the crew themselves, it's worth understanding their unique Exploits, which are the mechanical system that ties their personalities to combat. Each companion in Osiris Reborn carries one of four Exploit categories: Precision, Demolition, Malfunction, or Cyber-attack. Crucially, these allow the companions to interact with the battlefield in ways specific to their character.

Osiris Reborn's Exploits:

• Precision: lets a companion identify environmental weak points, triggering collapses or hazards
• Demolition: destroys cover and terrain outright, forcing enemies into the open
• Malfunction: sends electrical systems haywire
• Cyber-attack: hijacks enemy tech entirely, turning it against its owners

These Exploits are also flavored to match each character. Not all of them have been revealed yet, but one demolition companion, for example, has a shield and a unique shoulder-mounted cannon, while another relies on armor and a submachine gun. That alignment between personality and mechanics is still a bit opaque this far out, but it’s a promising start for Owlcat's first 3rd person RPG.

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J Represents the Player's Closest Ally and Narrative Mirror

• Exploit: Precision

To start, J is a rare kind of character, the protagonist's identical twin, which means their appearance and gender shift to match your custom character. Their personality is entirely their own, however, and J is impulsive, fiercely loyal, and positioned to be the player's right-hand person. In combat, J's Exploit and Precision reinforce that unique identity, allowing them to read the battlefield and act on instinct, finding the shot or the structural weakness that can change a fight.

Teo Adds Moral Complexity to the Combat Medic Archetype

• Exploit: Malfunction

Teo is the crew’s doctor, one who lost his medical license back on Earth. Loud, boisterous, and apparently unbothered by his own professional disgrace, he channels that energy into being an aggressively effective combat medic, using tough armor and experimental stimulants to wade into fights most healers would avoid. His archetype is familiar, but his particular flavor of ethical ambiguity fits The Expanse's broader skepticism toward institutions and authority. His Malfunction Exploit is a curious wrinkle, though, as scrambling electrical systems is a stretch from experimental stimulants — but both mark him as a man who works around the rules, not within them.

Regina Embodies Espionage and a Quiet Agenda

• Exploit: Precision

Regina is described as the crew's sniper, scout, and infiltrator, and she keeps her past guarded enough that piecing together her true motivations is explicitly framed as part of the experience. In a setting rife with covert political maneuvering between Earth, Mars, and corporate factions, a character built around hidden agendas slots in naturally, and her Precision Exploit is a strong mechanical fit; everything here seems to suggest that her personal questline will be more than meets the eye. Already, Regina seems reminiscent of Miranda from Mass Effect 2, which leaves her familiar, sure, but already one of the roster's more compelling additions.

Aleesha Brings Corporate Rebellion into Crew Dynamics

• Exploit: Cyber-attack

Aleesha walked away from corporate life to become a free agent, and now she chases the hardest problems she can find, not for the money, but for intellectual stimulation. In The Expanse's universe, mega-corporate power shapes everything from asteroid mining to political elections, so a defector who genuinely rejects that world carries real ideological weight. She's reportedly a bit of the snarky hacker type, and her Cyber-attack Exploit is one of the more direct mechanical expressions of a character's philosophy, but that snark and fitting circumstance promise to sit on top of something more principled.

Polly Blends Optimism and a Belter’s Perspective

• Exploit: Demolition

Polly is a Belter, born in space as a member of The Expanse's most systematically marginalized cultural group. In combat, her Demolition Exploit pairs with a submachine gun and enough armor to absorb hits, but overall, Polly’s strength so far is one of character, and she may well become the emotional center of the crew, the character whose stakes feel most immediate and whose perspective most directly engages the game's political themes. She wants to prove herself and do something genuinely great, which carries a weight that a similar motivation in a different character might not in the context of Belt life.

Michael Reinforces the Setting's Militaristic Undertones

• Exploit: Demolition

Michael epitomizes the seen-it-all soldier archetype, a UN soldier who switched to private security before eventually landing in mercenary work out of disillusionment. He's described as principled and carrying some past tragedy close to the chest, but that doesn't stop him from charging into the thick of it with his Demolition Exploit, a shield and a shoulder-mounted autocannon. In Expanse terms, a disillusioned UN soldier carries significant ideological baggage, so a soldier who rejected that institution is well-positioned to interrogate it.

Zafar Brings Depth and Engineering Ingenuity

• Exploit: Malfunction

Finally, Zafar is reportedly more measured than most; a man who chooses his words carefully, and occasionally ends up somewhere unexpectedly poetic in the process. His engineering background grounds him in The Expanse's practical, survival-oriented tech culture, and in battle, he deploys turrets and EMF devices that degrade enemy equipment, applying methodical pressure rather than direct aggression. Malfunction as an Exploit fits a character who understands machines well enough to know exactly how to make them fail, and Zafar's philosophical streak suggests there may be more to his backstory than mere technical expertise lets on.

Osiris Reborn's Companions Could Be the Game’s Defining Strength

The seven companions of The Expanse: Osiris Reborn map neatly across the social and political geography of The Expanse universe, and while the game’s success is still very much up in the air, chances are, these seven people will be a huge determining factor. Adapting that approach to a licensed, politically specific universe is a unique challenge, but the studio's track record with the Pathfinder games offers some confidence, as does Owlcat’s visible understanding of what The Expanse requires: characters whose differences are rooted in where they came from, what they believe, and what they've lost. If the game delivers on that promise, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn could stand as one of the more thoughtful entries in the sci-fi RPG genre.

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