The Expanse: A Telltale Series finishes strong for fans of the series, propelling protagonist Camina Drummer toward the station where we first find her on the show (in Season 2). Episode 5: Europa’s Folly fully bridges any remaining gap between this prequel video game and the television series. The weight of where the episode and Telltale series concludes, however, might be lost on some players not familiar with The Expanse.
Episode 5 is fast and largely choice-based. Telltale trades the exploration and introspection of previous episodes for intense conversations and quick-time event combat encounters. At 45 minutes, it is the same length as the penultimate episode. The weight of player choices throughout the series, however, pays off in meaningful and memorable ways.
Fight for the Artemis
The cliffhanger of Episode 4 promised a fight to remember. The opening of Episode 5 personalizes this fight—immediately putting the player between a pirate and a friend. This near-immediate choice sets the pace. From the start, this finale puts player choice above all and forces the player to decide quickly.
This fast pace leaves the player little time to enjoy the smaller moments. Such instances respond to major choices that the player made in prior episodes, even at times consisting of subtle allusions to a previous conversation with a character. At other times, they nod at larger decisions—like did you space Captain Cox in the first episode?
These moments are well written and narratively well earned, though at the speed of the episode, it feels like catching the finale of a half-hour cable drama. There are a lot of threads dangling and not a ton of time to carefully knit them together. In what time we get, Telltale weaves a corner of an existing space tapestry.
Episode 5 is the most action-oriented episode in Telltale’s The Expanse series. Drummer and the crew of the Artemis spend quite a bit of time fighting space pirates. These sequences often unfold from Telltale’s choice-based dialogue, where the QTEs feel like an extension of the game design rather than a disruption or distraction.
Of course, Telltale’s The Expanse never embraces being a third-person space shooter—this isn’t Mass Effect or Starfield—but its combat never feels like a hindrance. Battle sequences fold quickly into more intense conversations, ranging from anxiety attacks to a standoff with the space pirate captain Tousaint Zapata.
Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going
Episode 5 abandons the structure of previous episodes. Players won’t be navigating empty or derelict space stations, but Drummer spends most of the episode within the familiar Artemis. Inside the ship’s spaces, players will rarely take direct control of Drummer at all. Rather, Episode 5 plays out in a way that feels responsive to what came before as the player watches the stories of the Artemis’s crew conclude. In this way, its reflections almost resemble that of an epilogue.
The final episode meditates on its place in the larger Expanse narrative. A familiar character from the show assists in a memorable way (a character whose fate fans of the show and books have known for around a decade). Their appearance accompanies the discovery of the fate of the game’s new characters in a moment that brings up a tension familiar to Telltale players, one made even more tangible when the familiar encounters the new in franchises near and dear to fans’ hearts.
Walking Dead, Fables, and Borderlands fans shared similar experiences during Telltale’s previous series, but they also occupied a shared media moment. The second season of AMC’s Walking Dead show had just wrapped and the comics were ongoing when season one of Telltale’s game was released. We were between numbered Borderlands entries when Tales of Borderlands dropped, and Vertigo’s Fables was two years from its (first) conclusion while we were playing Wolf Among Us. The Expanse: A Telltale Series didn’t release between seasons of The Expanse the television series (or between books).
James S.A. Corey released the final book of The Expanse series, Leviathan Falls, in 2021. The final season of the show premiered that same year and concluded in 2022. Of course, there is still life in The Expanse series, but the Telltale game comes when fans have felt quite a bit of closure with the series across different media. Being on this side of two series finales, this finale—as well as the prequel series as a whole—feels like a short story in the corner of the universe. At its best, the game leans on this genre identity, focusing on the smaller untold stories of characters we don’t know and their relationships with one we do.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series has its sight set on a larger stage, connecting its little corner to the franchise’s grander narrative. This forward-facing view of what’s to come is rewarding for the player in the know but left me wanting more depth or maybe more detours.
Final Thoughts
The Expanse: A Telltale Series, Episode 5 brings everything to an exciting, albeit brief conclusion. Each character, whether pirate or Artemis crewmember, is given screen time here. This often means that most characters only really interact with Drummer and even then only once, taking away from the chemistry and shared histories between characters teased in the first half of the season. I left my playthrough wanting to hear even more banter between the Artemis’s crew.
While the Drummer and the Artemis’s crew have set their sights on Tycho Station, I hope that Telltale eventually gives us more time with this cast of characters. They deserve the stars.
