AI in The Expanse: Devs Talk Big, Players Smell BS

Owlcat Games just dropped a PR grenade: their upcoming space RPG Osiris Reborn is being developed with ‘some help’ from generative AI. The studio’s blog post reads like a corporate crisis comms team’s first draft—equal parts vague assurance (‘100 percent human-made content’) and legalese sidestepping (‘tools’ not ‘creators’). Kotaku’s report calls it what it is: damage control after backlash, not transparency.

Here’s the thing: players aren’t stupid. When a studio says ‘we used AI for efficiency’ but refuses to detail what that means, gamers hear ‘we outsourced narrative, art, or dialogue to a bot’. The Mass Effect-like genre thrives on deep player attachment—Shepard’s voice, the Normandy’s weight, the feel of choices. If AI generated even 5% of that, it’s not just a tool, it’s a creative dilution. And the community knows it.

Steam forums and Reddit threads are already lighting up with the same three questions: What exactly was AI-generated? Can you prove it wasn’t dialogue trees? Why won’t you show us the ‘100 percent human’ pipeline? The answers so far? Crickets. That silence is the real PR failure—not the AI use, but the lack of honesty about it.

The bigger story isn’t the AI itself—it’s the trust collapse. Owlcat’s Pathfinder and Warhammer games built loyal followings precisely because they delivered handcrafted worlds. If Osiris Reborn feels like a mid-2000s BioWare knockoff with AI-polished edges, players will revolt. And they should.

Let’s talk gameplay impact. The studio’s claim of ‘no AI in final assets’ is technically possible—but meaningless if AI was used for early drafts, quest design, or placeholder dialogue. Imagine booting up the game only to find NPC barks that feel like ChatGPT’s ‘pirate’ persona: tonally flat, emotionally safe, devoid of character quirks. That’s the risk here.

The community’s reaction is a masterclass in skepticism. Reddit’s r/Games thread is full of ‘prove it’ demands, while Steam reviews are preemptively docking points for ‘lack of transparency’. The loudest voices? Not the anti-AI purists, but the players who just want to know what they’re buying. They’re not asking for perfection—they’re asking for honesty.

Owlcat’s PR move here is fascinatingly clumsy. Instead of leaning into the ‘we used AI to speed up X but kept Y human’ narrative (which could’ve been a win), they went full ‘nothing to see here’. That’s the same energy as a developer saying ‘our game has no bugs’—sure, Jan.

The real bottleneck isn’t the AI debate. It’s the studio’s refusal to engage with players like adults. If Osiris Reborn launches with generic side quests or forgettable NPCs, the finger-pointing will be swift. And deserved.

What to watch: Will Owlcat release a postmortem on their AI use? Unlikely. Will players keep demanding one? Absolutely. The first patch notes will be scrutinized like a leaked Supreme Court opinion. Any whiff of ‘AI-assisted’ tweaks could spark a full-blown revolt.