Can the Upcoming ‘Expanse’ Game Avoid the Biggest Mistake of ‘Mass Effect’?
Can the Upcoming ‘Expanse’ Game Avoid the Biggest Mistake of ‘Mass Effect’?
即将推出的《苍穹浩瀚》游戏能否避免《质量效应》犯下的最大错误？
A main theme of the nine-book sci-fi series The Expanse is that sometimes you may never know the consequences of a choice you made. The universe, utterly indifferent black box that it is, “never tells us if we did right or wrong,” as the character Naomi Nagata puts it in The Expanse TV show. 九部曲科幻系列《苍穹浩瀚》（The Expanse）的一个核心主题是：有时你可能永远无法得知自己所做选择的后果。正如剧中角色娜奥米·中田（Naomi Nagata）所言，宇宙是一个完全冷漠的黑匣子，“它从不告诉我们是对是错”。
That’s the line the developer of the upcoming Expanse video game has adopted as its own slogan. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is set to release in spring 2027. It’s being developed by Owlcat Games, the Cyprus-based developer known for dense role-playing games like Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. 这正是即将推出的《苍穹浩瀚》电子游戏开发商所采用的口号。《苍穹浩瀚：奥西里斯重生》（The Expanse: Osiris Reborn）定于 2027 年春季发布。该游戏由总部位于塞浦路斯的 Owlcat Games 开发，该公司以《开拓者：拥王者》（Pathfinder: Kingmaker）和《战锤 40,000：行商浪人》（Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader）等深度角色扮演游戏而闻名。
Osiris Reborn is a third-person shooter and role-playing game where the player slips into the boots of a spaceship captain leading a found-family crew of misfits across the far-future solar system. You fight bad guys and float around in zero-gravity environments in the hard-science setting of The Expanse books and show. Dialog options and choice trees baked into cutscenes let you shape the narrative and change the outcomes. As many people have pointed out, it sounds very much like the Mass Effect video game series. 《奥西里斯重生》是一款第三人称射击与角色扮演游戏，玩家将扮演一名飞船船长，带领一群由各色边缘人物组成的“临时家庭”船员，穿越遥远未来的太阳系。在《苍穹浩瀚》原著和剧集那硬核科幻的背景下，你将与反派战斗，并在零重力环境中穿梭。嵌入过场动画的对话选项和分支树让你能够塑造剧情并改变结局。正如许多人指出的那样，这听起来非常像《质量效应》（Mass Effect）系列游戏。
This will be the studio’s first third-person shooter, a departure for a company known for its top-down role-playing games. Owlcat Games beefed up its staff to build Osiris Reborn and has faced criticism after releasing a beta version of the game in April. Players lauded the combat and visuals, but many found the story and voice acting lacking. (Apparently the game does not yet incorporate “Belter creole,” a language construct used by characters in The Expanse that has become a beloved part of the series.) It’s important to note that this was indeed a beta test, and the company has said it is aiming to fix some issues players have called attention to, even recasting a voice actor. 这将是该工作室的第一款第三人称射击游戏，对于一家以俯视角角色扮演游戏闻名的公司来说，这是一个巨大的转变。Owlcat Games 为开发《奥西里斯重生》扩充了员工队伍，但在 4 月发布测试版后也面临了一些批评。玩家称赞了战斗和视觉效果，但许多人认为故事和配音表现不足。（显然，游戏尚未加入“小行星带克里奥尔语”，这是《苍穹浩瀚》角色使用的一种语言结构，已成为该系列深受喜爱的一部分。）值得注意的是，这确实是一次测试，公司表示正致力于修复玩家指出的问题，甚至重新选角了一位配音演员。
The Expanse is a complicated property to adapt, given that Osiris Reborn takes place around the same time as the first and second books of a nine-book series. Owlcat shared some details with WIRED about how it plans to implement choices in the story—moments where the player is faced with the opportunity to make a decision that affects the world and story that plays out. 《苍穹浩瀚》是一个复杂的改编对象，因为《奥西里斯重生》的故事发生时间大约在九部曲系列的第一部和第二部之间。Owlcat 向《连线》（WIRED）分享了一些关于如何实现故事选择的细节——即玩家在面对能够影响世界和剧情走向的决策时刻。
You can choose a backstory and appearance for your character, but there are no skill classes. Your character is meant to develop based on the decisions you make. There are also choices for how you interact with your spaceship’s crew, and the ability to mentor them to advance their skills in different areas. 你可以为角色选择背景故事和外观，但没有职业技能划分。你的角色将根据你所做的决定来发展。此外，你还可以选择如何与飞船船员互动，并能够指导他们提升不同领域的技能。
There are three competing factions (Earth, Mars, and the outer-space dwellers in the asteroid belt called Belters) you can work with and try to befriend. Owlcat Games says, “Keeping good relations with everyone won’t be easy—you’ll only get one chance to stay on everyone’s good side.” 游戏中有三个相互竞争的派系（地球、火星以及居住在小行星带的“小行星带人”），你可以与他们合作并尝试结交。Owlcat Games 表示：“与所有人保持良好关系并不容易——你只有一次机会来维持各方的友好。”
It all sounds very much like decision-tier systems in games like Mass Effect. Will it compare to the truly transformative choices you can make in a game like Baldur’s Gate 3? Maybe not. Owlcat wasn’t able to speak with WIRED directly, but Leonid Rastorguev, the game’s design director, replied to questions via email. 这一切听起来非常像《质量效应》等游戏中的决策系统。它能与《博德之门 3》（Baldur’s Gate 3）中那些真正具有变革性的选择相提并论吗？可能不行。Owlcat 无法直接接受《连线》采访，但游戏设计总监列昂尼德·拉斯托古耶夫（Leonid Rastorguev）通过电子邮件回答了问题。
“This isn’t our first game where the sheer number of choices and consequences is a core part of the experience,” Rastorguev wrote. “这并不是我们第一次将海量的选择与后果作为游戏体验的核心，”拉斯托古耶夫写道。
For Osiris Reborn, Owlcat is using an internal development system it calls Etudes to build a system of flags and triggers in the narrative that can help track player decisions, even small ones, and carry them forward in the game. Rastorguev says those choices can range from cosmetic changes, to ones that block off or unlock additional content, lead to a character dying, or change the ending. 为了开发《奥西里斯重生》，Owlcat 使用了一套名为“Etudes”的内部开发系统，在叙事中构建了一套标记和触发器系统，用以追踪玩家的决策（即使是微小的决定），并将其延续到后续游戏中。拉斯托古耶夫表示，这些选择的影响范围很广，从外观变化，到锁定或解锁额外内容，再到导致角色死亡或改变结局，应有尽有。
According to critics who have reviewed the beta, the outcome of the choices isn’t immediately noticeable. One choice—where you have to pick between fighting and standing down from a battle—plays out nearly the same way in the moment no matter which option the player chooses. Owlcat says what beta players haven’t seen yet is “how far that decision ripples.” 据测试版评论家称，选择的结果并不会立即显现。例如，在一个必须选择“战斗”还是“撤退”的场景中，无论玩家选择哪一个，当下的结果几乎是一样的。Owlcat 表示，测试版玩家尚未看到的是“这些决定会产生多么深远的连锁反应”。
“[Players] want to feel that they’ve left a mark on the universe itself,” Rastorguev wrote. “But The Expanse also has an established canon and major characters whose stories have already been told in the books and the TV series. It would feel strange for us to rewrite their fates, especially by introducing branching outcomes into events that are already firmly established.” “（玩家）希望感觉到自己在宇宙中留下了印记，”拉斯托古耶夫写道，“但《苍穹浩瀚》拥有既定的正史，主要角色的故事已经在原著和剧集中讲述完毕。如果我们改写他们的命运，尤其是通过在已经确定的事件中引入分支结局，会让人感觉很奇怪。”
Rastorguev says the key to a successful choice system is to give players enough information to know that they’ve set something in motion, without necessarily giving them the entire chain of consequences. The events may be referenced again in conversations, in-game news reports, or changes in the world, and “can suggest that the consequences of your decision will continue long after you’ve moved on.” 拉斯托古耶夫认为，成功的选择系统的关键在于，让玩家获得足够的信息以意识到自己启动了某些进程，而不必向他们展示完整的后果链。这些事件可能会在对话、游戏内新闻报道或世界变化中再次被提及，并“暗示你的决定所带来的后果将在你离开后持续存在”。
If that holds, it will be very neat. For a game so influenced by Mass Effect, I do worry that Osiris Reborn might inadvertently recreate Mass Effect 3’s worst mistake: botching the ending of its series by limiting all the choices people had made across the games into three basic options to wrap everything up. Choice systems in games are great, but they often boil down into two or three big options at the end. (The game will have multiple endings, but Owlcat is not ready to say how many there will be or how different they are from one another.) 如果能做到这一点，那将非常出色。对于一款深受《质量效应》影响的游戏，我确实担心《奥西里斯重生》可能会无意中重蹈《质量效应 3》最大的覆辙：将玩家在整个系列中做出的所有选择简化为三个基本选项来草草收尾，从而搞砸了结局。游戏中的选择系统固然很棒，但它们往往最终归结为两三个大选项。（该游戏将有多个结局，但 Owlcat 尚未透露具体会有多少个，以及它们之间会有多大差异。）
“We’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Rastorguev wrote, “and found ways for some of the player’s choices to feel meaningful on the scale of the wider universe and potentially shape consequences that extend years beyond the immediate events of our story.” “我们对此进行了深入思考，”拉斯托古耶夫写道，“并找到了一些方法，让玩家的部分选择在更广阔的宇宙尺度上显得意义重大，并有可能塑造出超越我们故事直接事件、影响深远的后果。”
Sounds like a real moonshot. 听起来这真是一个雄心勃勃的挑战。