Aphelion seems like a solid space adventure, but I need to see more before it really excites

I’ve played just under an hour of Life is Strange developer Don’t Nod’s next game and, honestly, I’m going to need to see a bit more before getting excited.

Aphelion is a sci-fi adventure that sounds like it should combine the traversal of a game like Tomb Raider with tense character drama a la the studio’s excellent 2024 role-playing game (RPG) Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden.

It’s a compelling formula on paper, but the two chapters that I tried failed to play to the team’s established strengths in narrative design and world-building.