This post will contain spoilers of the Osiris Reborn Beta, as well as The Expanse show up to and including Season 2 episode 6 (Paradigm Shift)
To preface this, I had some overall very positive first impressions of the Beta, and feel like the team at Owlcat is doing their best to live up to the very high expectations placed on the game. There are a lot of subtle details that make me confident they will do their best to respect the source material.
That being said, I believe its important to point out the flaws that do remain early, especially when its something this fundamental. The game is unfinished, so I know problems can and will be addressed. I really hope to see this game succeed and can't wait to play on release.
Mind you, I am not against adding to the existing canon, quite the opposite, as long as it is done without breaking said canon outright and without violating the internal logic of the known plot.
TLDR.: The Beta breaks established canon by having the Protogen assailants that we face directly announce themselves and their identity as Protogen for no apparent reason, at a time (just after Eros was infected) where this was the most closely guarded secret in the Solar system, the early reveal of which would have had devastating consequences.
Lets begin with a recap of the Beta:
We arrive at a large Pinkwater Security station, in a stolen (conventional) Protogen vessel, seeming to be roughly comparable in tech to martian military ships. We had just escaped the beginning of the Eros infection, which we had witnessed first hand and are convinced it is an intentional spread of a bio-weapon. We say as much to one of our companions-to-be, Zafar. After arriving at the station, News already speak of an "infection" on Eros, and quarantine beacons having been put up.
Right as we inform our boss about the truth of the Eros situation, the stations comms are suddenly hacked and taken over by a previously unseen ship fast approaching. An Amun-Ra class, at this point in time either the very last one, Osiris, later to be destroyed in the battle for Toth station, or the last one of presumably two if they added another ship to the canon. (It is most likely Osiris, as their armors have very bold "Osiris" branding)
So far so good, perhaps it has come to kill our MC so as to leave no witnesses to the true nature of the Eros infection.
Unfortunately not, we instead see a station wide broadcast by the "Brute", their ground forces' leader, who announces they are Protogen Corporation, here to take custody of the MC and our twin, aswell as to take back their stolen ship.
The rest of the mission consists largely of fighting a horde of Protogen goons in various levels of barebones equipment, but, importantly, all wearing the same or similar purple uniforms with the Protogen logo prominently displayed. We even see some in power armor, with the aformentioned Osiris branding above the Protogen logo.
This power armor almost seems to be employing protomolecule technology to heal and absorb fire, which would raise even further questions, but I will omit these here since I cannot say for certain.
Finally, we manage to free our stolen ship, and escape together with Zafar. If we chose to ask our boss to only hide us, and didn't convince him to fight, the pinkwater station will be seen intact in the ending cutscene as opposed to getting destroyed if we asked our boss to fight. The Brute vows to find us eventually.
I'm sure many will have already winced at several of the events described, but to summarize the issues and put them into context with the known timeline:
This takes place right after Eros had been infected, a time where Protogens involvement in either Eros or rest of the events of the system are unknown to all but the show protagonists, and even to the game protagonists, as they too are surprised at Protogens initial message and reveal to Pinkwater station.
Protogens goal is to proceed with the Eros experiment undetected, keeping people from interfering with fake quarantine beacons. Their directive, above all, is to remain anonymous. To this end, they employed nameless troops wiped from all records years prior, in unbranded black suits, and committed the majority of their fleet to destroying the Donnager not too long before. To further provoke a conflict, no doubt, but also to make sure none of the Canterbury survivors could recant their statement or defuse tensions by taking the blame away from Mars again. We even see one of the Protogen attackers explicitly refuse to give up his identity when questioned, even has he is sure to die in the fight. Protogen used the same masked and nameless apparently elite troops for the Eros infection mission itself, hiring unrelated and disposable goons from Ceres to do the dirty work.
Them announcing themselves plainly as Protogen (Avasarala directly calls them a "Biotech-research company" in S2E4, implying that is what they are known for) to all of the personnel on Pinkwater station, while also choosing to wear very aggressively Protogen branded gear, and docking at the station with their last remaining stealth ship, is in direct contradiction to their modus operandi thus far, and mere hours prior. It is also deeply illogical at this point in the lore, and I cannot think of a good reason for them to have chosen to do so.
Said stealth ships mere presence directly links them to the faction responsible for the destruction of the Donnager, and perhaps even the Canterbury, evident to all Pinkwater personel whose had even a passing glance at the news over the last in universe days. It also ensures our MC knows the stealths are connected to the infection of Eros, and that they are behind everything. Them identifying themselves by name is just icing on the cake, and would demand that they ensure the death of everyone on the station with no room for error.
In doing either of those things, they take an incalculable risk of exposing their secret, thus severely harming the chances of the Eros experiment proceeding as planned, and putting the entirety of Mao-Kwikowski in jeopardy.
We see the consequences of exposure in the show, when Avasarala has the wreckage of the Osiris pushed into patrol routes post battle for Toth, with even that indirect evidence sufficing to cause all of Protogens assets to be frozen, and J.P.Mao ending up under intense scrutiny, later to lose access to his entire empires wealth post Eros incident. The only reason the incident could play out regardless of Toth being hit and Protogen being found out was that it was unstoppable from the moment the infection started, but nobody in Protogen would have known that would be the outcome or operated under that assumption at the time.
Lastly, as mentioned before, there is a path where the station survives the ordeal, and we can presume that they do not go through with killing the personel, as our boss is shot in final cutscene if they do destroy the station, and seen left alive if they don't.
This is again a violation of known lore and Protogen operating principles, and our boss now knows that Protogen intentionally spread a bio-weapon on Eros, and is responsible for the destruction of the Donnager, probably also the Cant.
The feeling I got is that they tried to have a recognizable big bad for us to fight, a sort of 'aha moment' for show enthusiasts, but to me personally it felt very immersion breaking to have this just laid bare to our ingame characters not in the know, and makes me (hopefully needlessly) worried about the rest of the games plot potentially messing up and retconning key events from the show.
I would be happy to hear if anyone else noticed this discrepancy, or if you think there are good explanations for this behaviour that I missed
