The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, an upcoming third-person action RPG from developer Owlcat, will feature a progression system where player gear, rather than fixed character classes, defines combat roles. The studio aims to provide significant player freedom, allowing experimentation with various playstyles.
While players will select an origin at the start of the game that shapes their captain's initial journey and skills, this choice does not lock them into a specific playstyle. Instead, character development is managed across four distinct skill trees: Marksmanship, Gadgets, Survivalist, and Leader. Marksmanship focuses on weapon mastery, enhancing critical damage and accuracy. The Gadgets tree improves the effectiveness of abilities, increasing damage, duration, and reducing cooldowns. Survivalist skills bolster survivability through increased health and armor, while the Leader tree enhances companion effectiveness and provides buffs to the captain when allies are near.
Players can freely combine skills from these trees, allowing for hybrid builds. For instance, a player could begin as a cyber warfare specialist, focusing on gadgets, but invest points into weapon skills to become a hybrid marksman and gadget user. While the full extent of all skills cannot be mastered simultaneously, players have the option to respec their character on their ship for a fee, with the cost increasing each time. This feature encourages careful consideration of build choices before engaging in combat.
Gear plays a pivotal role in defining combat approach. Weapons and gadgets can be upgraded at workbenches, with each item offering unique upgrade paths. Some upgrades provide straightforward stat boosts, such as increased damage or reduced cooldowns. Rarer upgrades can unlock entirely new abilities for existing gear. Even basic items like frag grenades can be enhanced, offering expanded radius or the ability to emit additional projectiles. At each upgrade tier, players choose between distinct paths, leading to a powerful final perk at the highest tier. The depth of an item's upgrade potential is tied to its quality, though higher-quality versions of the same item can be found. Upgrade resources invested in an item can be recovered using a limited consumable, allowing players to reallocate those resources to new equipment.
Companions in The Expanse: Osiris Reborn also possess their own skill trees and signature gadgets with unique upgrade paths. For example, the engineer companion Zafar can deploy a portable turret, which can be enhanced to increase its rate of fire and targeting systems, or modified with a heavy-caliber module for area-of-effect damage. Player customization extends to companion gear, allowing it to synergize with the captain's chosen playstyle.
Owlcat has stated that the design philosophy for Osiris Reborn is to avoid locking players into predefined roles. "Instead of fixed classes, you are free to experiment with different playstyles until you find what you enjoy the most," the studio explained. "Your captain's arsenal and your companions’ skills and equipment are designed to adapt to your chosen playstyle."