Support The Wertzone on Patreon

STICKIED POST

After much debate (and some requests) I have signed up with crowdfunding service Patreon to better support future blogging efforts. You can find my Patreon page here and more information after the jump.

GAME OF THRONES: WAR FOR WESTEROS gets a new trailer

Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, the latest attempt to bring George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels and their HBO TV adaptation Game of Thrones to the video game sphere, has received a new trailer.

War for Westeros is a real-time strategy game drawing heavy inspiration from the venerable Battle for Middle-earth series from the mid-2000s. You choose a faction - House Stark, Lannister or Targaryen, or the invading White Walkers - and guide them to victory over a series of battles. Your armies will include cavalry, infantry, archers, siege equipment and more exotic creatures such as giants, wights and, of course, dragons (well, three). The game features multiplayer and a single-player campaign mode, where you apparently choose which area to attack next.

The franchise has had a mixed history with official video game adaptations. Game of Thrones: Genesis was a poorly-received real-time strategy game that has been almost completely forgotten about. Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game was a surprisingly decent game (and easily has the best story set in Westeros not written or outlined by Martin himself) but had a horrendous opening couple of hours which put most players off. Game of Thrones: The Telltale Adventure Series was promising but the story devolved in a poor retelling of the main storyline with lower stakes and less-interesting houses.

The franchise has had much better success with fan-made games, such as Westeros: Total War, a mod for Medieval II: Total War, and the mods for Crusader Kings II and III, plus Mount & Blade.

War for Westeros is targeting an early 2027 release window on PC.

METRO 2039 gets first full trailer

Metro 2039, the fourth game in the long-gestating Metro series, has received a new trailer.

The Metro series is set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, where the survivors of a nuclear war in 2013 have turned the Metro into a series of underground cities linked by the old rail lines. Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light depicted the complex, multi-sided battle for control of the Metro, whilst Metro: Exodus saw a group manage to escape from Moscow altogether and find out what happened to the world beyond.

Metro 2039, set four years after Exodus, sees a mysterious stranger arrive in Moscow on a mission to kill Hunter, the leader of the Novoreich which has overrun most of the city, and find a missing friend.

It's unclear if the game will continue the move from Exodus to larger, open-world environments, or a return to the more linear levels of the first two games.

Metro 2039 will launch in February 2027 on PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.

CD Projekt Red unveil THE WITCHER III: SONGS OF THE PAST and THE WITCHER III REMASTERED

CD Projekt Red have released the first proper trailer for The Witcher III: Songs of the Past, the third and final major expansion to The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. The expansion will be released in 2027, a full eleven years after the previous expansion, Blood & Wine.

The next expansion is set in the land of Letten, which is believed to be the homeland of Geralt's friend Dandelion (aka Jaskier). The precise location of Letten is unclear, but it appears the early reports of the expansion taking place on a different continent were incorrect. The expansion will add a new chain weapon to Geralt's repertoire, and feature the enhancements to combat and graphics that are coming from The Witcher III Remastered, a new upgrade to the existing game and expansions that will launch next month. The Witcher III Remastered reworks combat and upgrades the game's lighting and textures. Most impressively, it will be completely free to all existing owners of the game.

CD Projekt Red did not show off any new footage from The Witcher IV, but have confirmed that the game is targeting a 2028 release date.

Red Dwarf (IX): Back to Earth

Nine years have passed since the crew of Red Dwarf saved their ship from destruction at the hands of a matter-destroying microbial virus. In the meantime, Kristine Kochanski has apparently died in an airlock accident, Holly was offlined due to a water tank malfunction and the aging crewmembers have had to face the probability of them dying in deep space due to dwindling supplies. However, a sequence of unusual events seems them return to Earth...and gives Lister hope of a reunion with Kochanski.

Back in 1999, Red Dwarf VIII aired. Although the most critically-lambasted season to date, it also matched Red Dwarf VII's extremely high ratings (well over six million for some episodes, unheard of for a sitcom airing on BBC2). Fans could be excused for expecting the show to continue for many years to come. Instead, they got nothing.

The reasons why the show went off the air seem obtuse, but it seems to have been a combination of the enormous workload on Doug Naylor for writing and producing the series almost single-handedly (after the departure of his co-creator Rob Grant after Season 6) and his insistence, likely not coincidentally, on making a Red Dwarf feature film instead. Funding had apparently been sourced for a larger-budgeted theatrical theatre, only for this to fall through at the last moment. Additional funding was secured but again collapsed. By the time Naylor had gotten tired of this dance and gone back to the BBC, the BBC had lost interest. More bemusingly, they remained resolutely uninterested even after Doctor Who returned in 2005 and became a monster hit, and the BBC started looking for other genre TV ideas (such as Merlin) whilst ignoring their other proven, long-running SF success.

It fell to cable channel Dave to give the show its long-awaited resurrection. Made with what initially appeared to be a reasonable budget, Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (the "IX" is a retcon, applied solely to make the ordering of the seasons make more sense on streaming services and on media releases) was a surprise hit for Dave and led to the commissioning of further series. Critically, however, Back to Earth was mauled on release in 2009 and time has not been much kinder to it.

The mini-season starts promisingly, with some solid Rimmer/Lister gags in the bunk room on Red Dwarf. You may be wondering how the crew survived the events of the Red Dwarf VIII cliffhanger and how Rimmer is back again as a hologram and what happened to the hundreds of crewmembers who evacuated the ship...and you can go on wondering, as you'll get no answers here (to be fair, the wiki has a reasonable guess). More important to the plot is that Kochanski is apparently dead and Holly decommissioned due to a malfunction. There's some very solid CGI at work here, including some half-decent virtual sets and an excellent CG model of Red Dwarf itself, and the show's first move into high-definition is reasonably impressive.

The plot kicks in when the ship's science officer Katerina Bartokovsky is resurrected and promptly decides to retire Rimmer, whom she deems has failed in his mission to keep Lister sane. A sequence of events results in our familiar crew travelling to a parallel universe where their lives exist solely in a television series called Red Dwarf. In an increasingly metafictional story, the crew meet one of the actors playing them on the show and have to find their creator before he decides to write a final episode in which everyone dies, which would kill them in their reality as well.

This metafictional idea isn't necessarily a bad idea, and in fact has been explored in Red Dwarf before, particularly in the likes of Better Than Life and Back to Reality, but those episodes were co-written with Rob Grant. The Grant-Naylor partnership made those meta episodes work, but Naylor by himself struggles. Especially weird is that he latches onto the idea of basing some story ideas on the 1982 movie Blade Runner, a very fine film, but also quite an old one by that point with no guarantee that the general audience knew what he was referencing. The special also relies a lot on knowing that Craig Charles plays a character on soap opera Coronation Street and knowing whom some of the incidental actors were on that show, which dates it painfully. It's also not particularly funny, the direction (also by Naylor) is not great and the pacing is terrible. The lack of a laughter track also hurts the show's timing, with the actors visibly struggling at times with not getting any feedback.

However, the story does perk up whenever Lister has to confront the spectre of Kochanski's death and the parallel world giving him the opportunity to possibly meet her again. Red Dwarf is at its best when it mixes comedy with pathos, something it forgot in the last couple of seasons, and it does bring that element back here with some great scenes of emotional intensity for Craig Charles, which he rises to.

Beyond that, the special is, well, not very special. Some good ideas and great vfx are undermined by poor storytelling. Sophie Winkleman as Katerina is saddled with a terrible accent and sound mixing that makes her unintelligible in some sequences. For every joke that lands, there are at least three that do not.

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (**½) is not totally without merit, with some impressive visual set-pieces and at least a few gags that land well. But poor pacing and direction undermine its better parts. After this special, fans started pondering if it was better for the show to simply end forever. Fortunately, the Dave channel had other ideas.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Red Dwarf VIII

Due to a bit of a cock-up in the nanotechnology department, the missing mining ship Red Dwarf has been recreated, along with its thousand plus crew. Lister, the Cat, Kryten and Kochanski find themselves locked up for misuse of classified information and are joined in the slammer by the ship's own version of Arnold Rimmer, restored along with the rest of the crew. Lister and the team have to work out how survive life inside and work out how to escape, or if they even want to.

The history of British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf is pretty well-known at this point. A patchy but promising first season was followed by a tightly-written and brilliantly funny second season which overcame ropey production values. The third, fourth and fifth seasons saw steadily increasing production values and ever-more-clever science fiction ideas merging with eye-wateringly hilarious scripts and just a touch of character pathos, to create an "imperial period" most TV shows can only dream about. The sixth season was almost as good, but behind-the-scenes tensions between writers Doug Naylor and Rob Grant made it a difficult season to write and shoot, and a growing overreliance on running gags and returning characters and references. A four-year break, due to some of the actors having other commitments or legal problems, and the writing team divorcing for good, was followed by the weakest season yet.

Red Dwarf VII was, with the best will in the world, something of a creative misfire, with Doug Naylor both overstretched in writing or co-writing the entire season with less-experienced writing partners (the idea to lighten the load on him was undercut by him having to rewrite the scripts by those less-experienced teammates, negating the advantages in the first place). The departure of Chris Barrie as Rimmer was a blow, but the addition of Chloe Annett to the cast as Kochanski worked much better than expected. However, the season-long subplot of Kryten being jealous of Kochanski was horrendous and kept dragging down even the better episodes of the season, and the overreliance on running gags and returning concepts was an even bigger problem than in the sixth season.

Red Dwarf VIII starts with Naylor completely revamping the premise of the show, a bold move which was probably necessary for the purposes of trying to find some fresh ideas. The season opens with our regular heroes' ship, the redoubtable Starbug which they've been living in since the end of Season 5, being blown into a million pieces as it crash-lands on Red Dwarf in one of the show's more spectacular set pieces. The return of the recurring cast of Season 1 is initially a great thing, giving our heroes more characters to bounce off, and the idea they've been wasting time and screwing around quite irresponsibly and have to answer for this is interesting, for the five seconds the show spends on it before instead dumping the characters in jail for the rest of the season on decidedly spurious grounds.

The "Red Dwarf crew in the slammer" concept is good but not, I fear, good enough to fill eight episodes. Pacing this season is completely out the window with each episode relying on a few Rimmer & Lister bunk scenes to make them work. This was one of the stronger elements of the first few seasons, eventually phased out due to Craig Charles and Chris Barrie getting on one another's nerves, and here returns because Charles and Barrie had reconnected on the convention circuit and found themselves in a better place. To be fair, these conversations are quite amusing and, though not a patch on the imperial period's exchanges (especially the episode-long laugh-fest that was Marooned in Season 3), are often the highlight of their episodes.

The limitation of the concept is rapidly exposed by the fact that although this season has eight episodes, it only has five stories. The opening episode is split into three parts and a later episode in two, with only three stand-alone episodes resulting, and these struggle to move beyond standard prison cliches. All the gags you'd expect from a lesser series about not picking up the soap, being desperate for any hint of female company etc are here, no cliche is overturned and no long-hanging fruit is left unpicked. The question of why Red Dwarf would do a prison season when it didn't have even a tenth of the wit or charm as say, dedicated prison sitcom Porridge arises, and is left unanswered.

The season suffers hugely from wasted potential. Captain Hollister (Mac McDonald) was a fine comic character in the first two seasons and he gets by on his charisma here, but he is the butt of far too many fat jokes. Fair enough that apparently McDonald himself relished making the jokes far harsher than they had been in the original scripts, but one episode of non-stop fat jokes is maybe pushing it, and by the end of eight you'll have tuned right out of them. Most of the other original cast were unavailable (Selby and Chen get one scene and then never reappear) and Kochanski has been back for a season already (though recast) so the benefit of reuniting our main crewmembers with the OG crew is pretty much lost after the first episode. The return of the original Holly (Norman Lovett) is initially welcome and he gets a few good laughs, but quickly the same problem that caused Holly's departure in the first place reasserts itself: with Kryten around, Holly's standard role as a font of exposition is no longer necessary, and with the addition of Kryten and Kochanski and the returning ship full of characters, it's a struggle for Holly to get any screentime, let alone lines. The fact there are also two Hollies around (the original, left powered down when Red Dwarf was stolen, and a new version rebuilt by Kryten's nanodroids) is an interesting idea thrown up in the first story and instantly forgotten.

There's also little or no interest by Hollister or the other crewmembers in what Lister and co. have been up to for the prior two centuries, which beggars belief. In fact, basic plot logic, already under severe strain in Season 7, goes out the window completely here. Naylor didn't seem to consider that having just four characters stuck in a tiny ship constantly scavenging for supplies was a source of tension, but having (at least) a thousand characters on a voluminous and newly-rebuilt-and-repaired five-mile-long ship is a massive advantage that can overcome almost all threats instantly. The idea of having our regulars joining the suicide squad of the prisoners, going head-first into danger in return for some prison privileges, is great, but ceases being a major plot point pretty quickly.

In terms of the episodes, Back in the Red starts off quite well but by its third part has become almost unwatchable. Cassandra is a potential classic, and easily the strongest episode of the season, with the introduction of an AI that can predict the future with 100% accuracy causing havoc as Rimmer tries to out-logic her. Krytie TV is simply the worst episode of the first eight seasons of Red Dwarf and a strong contender for the worst one ever. The inexplicably extended two-parter Pete has some good ideas (the recurring gag of Rimmer and Lister being dragged repeatedly before the Captain for increasingly insane reasons can actually be quite funny) but mostly appalling execution, with too much toilet humour - albeit of the dinosaur variety - and some vfx calls the show is only barely able to answer.

The season finale, Only the Good..., is promising with Rimmer travelling to a mirror universe where everything is reversed and he gets everything he ever wanted, with the inevitable comedown being quite crushing. However, the cliffhanger ending is inexplicable and weird, and this time the audience had to wait even longer for the resolution (technically they still are, since it has never been answered).

Red Dwarf VIII (**½) starts strong with a lot of potential, but generally fails to execute. The much-improved production values and at-last decent CGI seem to have come at the expense of characterisation, laughs and pathos, with lowest-common-denominator humour and predictable plot twists. The season is helped by a strong guest cast, including Geraldine McEwan and a young Graham McTavish, and Cassandra and Only the Good... at least have some good ideas.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Metro: Exodus

2035. The political struggle for control of the Moscow Metro, where ten thousand survivors from the 2013 nuclear war that ended the old world live with their descendants, has stabilised with an uneasy peace. For Artyom, the hero of the battle at D6, it's an opportunity to follow his dream of finding out what's happened in the world beyond the city limits. The discovery of anomalous radio signals and the capture of an armoured steam train, the Aurora, gives Artyom and his friends their chance to abandon the closed-in world of the Metro for the open skies of the world beyond...and their own, unique dangers.

Metro: Exodus is the third game in the Metro series of video games, developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and based on the novels by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky (currently living outside of Russia due to his opinions of the current political situation). It was preceded by Metro 2033 (2010) and Metro: Last Light (2013), with remastered versions of both games later released as Metro Redux. Metro: Exodus is something a mild reset of the series, removing detailed references to the events of the first two games in favour of the story at hand, and a new gameplay format.

The basics of the game are more or less unchanged. You play Artyom, a survivor of the nuclear war who has learned the hard way how to survive in the Metro. The game is ostensibly a first-person shooter, though mild survival and crafting mechanics are present and there is a strong focus on stealth. An opening section in Moscow is very much linear business as usual, until you and your allies (many of them recurring from the first two games) find a train heading out of the city and realise you can escape to the open countryside, and find out what the hell happened to the rest of the world.

From here the game adopts a structure more akin to the original Far Cry, with sequential, large and open-ish maps with a primary objective but various sub-objectives you can explore along the way, and with freedom of action in how you approach each mission. You can rush each area by doing the main objective ASAP, but going off the beaten path to explore side-areas will reveal more loot, upgrades, lore and subplots. As with the first two games there is a hidden moral metre, and behaving in a more moral and enlightened way (minimising kills, sparing surrendering enemies etc) will open up new branches in the storyline. Allies you may drive away by adopting a murder-hobo mentality will instead stay on, and provide more support in later missions.

This new approach is refreshing, allowing the introduction of open-world elements without going full open-world with a single massive map on which the whole game takes place and the main storyline takes a back seat for hours or tens of hours at a time. This structure instead allows for a degree of exploration and freedom but not too long before you have to progress the main story, which is quite enjoyable.

This is basically the Road Trip from Hell, made the worse because you don't have full control over your route (you need to stay on the rails, obviously) and even a minor setback can have massive consequences. The Russian rail services ceased to exist twenty-two years before the game takes place, so if a mudslide has washed half a kilometre of track into the Volga, you're screwed and have to go back and find another route (and hope that is passable). But it is fun, as you can repair to the train between missions and chat to other characters, building up relationships and following subplots. The characters in the Metro series have always been a lot of fun and catching up with them here is enjoyable. The main exception is Anna, Artyom's previous girlfriend turned wife, who was a formidable fighter with a sharp sense of humour in previous games and here is a bit too squeeing over Artyom, which feels odd.

Exploration is a lot of fun, with your growing equipment collection allowing for better exploration and detection of possible supplies. Some of the maps provide you with vehicles for exploration, including boats and buggies, which are an enjoyable change of pace. Each map, separated sometimes by thousands of kilometres from the last one, has its own set of characters and factions, making the game sometimes feel like an episodic road trip TV show, which is enjoyable. Making sure you close off the subplots in each region before moving on can be a bit hit-and-miss, and the game sometimes can be unclear on what you should or should not be doing. I had a rather limited experience on the Caspian Sea level, for example, by inadvertently killing what turned out to be a major NPC during an early scuffle, closing off a bunch of options for resolving that particular crisis more peacefully.

Combat remains solid, and mostly unchanged from prior games. Weapon selection is solid and a frontal assault is usually possible as long as you don't get swamped by superior numbers (and can re-arm quickly). Stealth is more more satisfying, however, with silent knife throws, critical takedowns and silenced weapons all providing excellent opportunities for stealth operatives. Lethal and non-lethal options are available in most cases, and going for the non-lethal approach can result in enemies letting you live in thanks rather than trying to kill you later on. There are granular outcomes to your choices in the game that are not immediately obvious, meaning you find yourself considering your options more carefully in a more traditional cartoon sandbox where mass violence is always rewarded positively.

The game does struggle reconciling its linear past with its new, more freeform present. The Volga and Caspian levels are huge and open to explore, but the ultra-linear Taiga level, a corridor pretending to be an open riverbank, is a little weird, and feels designed to shuffle you between cutscenes. The game feels better when it's fully embracing the open-world or when it places you in tight confines once again; a late-game visit to another Russian city with a Metro feels pleasingly nostalgic rather than irritating by snatching the open world away again. A greater irritation is that cutscenes do tend to go on a bit too long, and sometimes repeat information that is redundant. The English-language voice acting can also be a bit of a mixed bag, and hardcore veterans of the series may find the decision to completely ignore some major story and lore ramifications from the first two games a bit odd. Newcomers will be completely at ease, though.

The main game itself is solid, but these days the game also ships with its DLC. The first DLC, The Two Colonels, explains the backstory to a character mentioned but MIA in the main game. It's quite linear and very short, but it does have some interesting gameplay ideas and some great dialogue. The second DLC, Sam's Story, is huge by the standards of most such expansions. It adds the city of Vladivostok to the roster of locations, with your character exploring a fairly large area on foot and by boat, aligning with different factions and searching for vital supplies that will help your ambition of crossing the Pacific Ocean and finding out what happened to America. One of the best maps in the game and some strong NPC characterisation makes this a fine slice of the Metro series.

Overall, Metro: Exodus (****½) is a fine addition to the series. It changes things up at a point when they could have become stale. The gunplay is great, the stealth is excellent and the story is solid, with the subtle way the game handles morality, choice and consequence being refreshing. At around 30 hours (including the DLC), the game gives a solid amount of content without being too stuffed with filler.

The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox S/X, Mac and Linux. A sequel, Metro 2039 which sees a stranger arrive in Moscow, is due for release in 2027.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Dick Simnel, a man who knows exactly how a slide-rule works, has invented the steam engine. Suddenly Ankh-Morpork is at the centre of a transport revolution, as journeys across the Sto Plains that took weeks can now be accomplished in hours. The Patrician assigns the semi-fully-redoubtable Moist von Lipwig, late of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, Bank and Mint, to oversee the expansion of the rail network in a manner that is politically acceptable. But when civil war breaks out amongst the dwarfs of distant Überwald and the Low King has to get home ASAP, Lipwig and Simnel realise their modest invention may have consequences far beyond what they were expecting.

Raising Steam (2013) is the fortieth and, distressingly, penultimate Discworld novel. It's also the third novel to focus on the roguish Moist von Lipwig, following Going Postal and Making Money. Curiously, Pratchett spent several years suggesting that the third Lipwig novel would be called Raising Taxes. The book's appearance in its final form suggests that not even the mighty comedic firepower of Terry Pratchett could make a book on taxation funny, whilst he could certainly stretch to bringing the steam engine to Ankh-Morpork in a comedic manner. This subject matter almost feels like a book that could write itself.

Infamously, this book was written some years after Pratchett's unfavourable medical diagnosis, and in fact is the last novel Pratchett wrote that he fully completed, edited and polished to his satisfaction (the one remaining book, The Shepherd's Crown, was assembled from earlier drafts than Pratchett would normally be happy using). However, as with Snuff, I was surprised not to discern any sign of this in the text. In fact, Raising Steam might be one of Pratchett's best-constructed novels. The average Discworld book was usually put together in stages, stage one being "throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks" and the final stage being, "write some bits between the other bits that hopefully make sense." Most of the time, Pratchett pulled this off well. A few times, he didn't. But it's only a handful of times that he pulls it off as well as this. Raising Steam has a large number of subplots and ideas that are all in motion simultaneously and all pull together at the end with a most satisfying "click."

This may also be the most epic Discworld novel. The book fills a longer timespan than any other in the series, with the action unfolding across a year or more as tens of thousands of people assemble the Discworld's first rail network from a standing start, and Pratchett only makes this rapidity convincing given the enormous manpower the continent can draw upon, including the industrious and newly-emancipated goblin workforce (paying off a major subplot unfolding through Unseen Academicals and Snuff in the process) and a golem taskforce. There are the political ramifications of the development of the railway, requiring Lipwig to engage in political discussions with the leaders of the surrounding towns (and we again get a visit to the very-definitely-not-French city of Quirm, hot on the heels of its semi-starring role in Snuff). There's the ongoing development of the goblin culture. There's the ongoing curious relationship between the Patrician and the Lady Margolotta of Überwald. We revisit the Forest of Skund for the first time since the opening books of the series. We revisit the town of Ohulan Cutash for the first time since Equal Rites (that's Book 3, thirty-seven volumes and twenty-six years earlier, for those not keeping score). We also get the deepest dive, so to speak, into dwarfish culture that we've had in the entire series, with political intrigue, coups and counter-coups. We have the Discworld equivalent of Lenin's mad train ride across Europe in 1917 (if not with quite as bloody as result). We have - get this - battle sequences. We have Vimes playing a major role in a non-Vimes-specific novel. I think we get more City Watch action in this non-City Watch novel than in the last actual City Watch novel. It's a lot.

The book also spans a much a larger amount of the Disc than we've seen for a long time, with discussions of geography, trade routes and national borders. This is the only Discworld novel that comes with a map at the front, which feels like it's breaking the last self-imposed rule Pratchett set upon himself for the series, even if the map feels more inspired by the Reverend W. Awdry's Railway Stories than by Tolkien.

There's also a simmering anger here that is allowed, with appropriate wordplay, to boil over at the right moments. The book is a simmering call to arms in favour of reason, rationality, diplomacy, science and discourse rooted in logic and facts. The world the religious fundamentalist dwarfs want, of superstition and fear and the other kept as far away as is dwarfishly possible, is being swept away and their response is to lash out rather than to adapt. Pratchett has no track with such self-imposed blindness and, as usual when he's annoyed, the author produces some of his best work.

Raising Steam (*****) is a powerhouse freight train of a book, which I was completely not expecting. It depicts the Disc and its vast array of characters in their full panoramic glory, marching into the Industrial Revolution not in fear, but in optimism and hope. If this had been the final Discworld novel, it would have been Pratchett going out on a crowd-pleasing high. But of course that would be a bit too obvious, a bit too easy. For the actual final book, Pratchett would instead go for the emotional jugular.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Commander Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch has faced down some of the greatest perils anyone can think of: dragons, guns, magic, time travel and Ankh-Morpork street food. But now he faces a challenge that he cannot escape, avoid or resist through force: a holiday. Relocating to the Ramkin rural estate, Vimes has to relax, eat good food and perform other hideous tasks like socialising, but his mood improves markedly when the dead bodies start showing up.

Snuff (2011) is the thirty-ninth Discworld novel and the last to feature Commander Sam Vimes in a starring role. The character originated in the eighth Discworld novel, Guards! Guards!, originally published in 1989, and Pratchett carefully developed his character over the course of twenty-two years and multiple books, making him one of the most popular Discworld characters and also the only one to have his own theory of macroeconomics that is often quoted in the real world.

For his swansong, Pratchett gives him a starring role with the rest of the City Watch relegated to brief, background appearances. The plot is nothing spectacularly new, with shades of The Wicker Man and Hot Fuzz here (not to mention a sprinkling of light Jane Austen) as Vimes becomes a fish-out-of-water in the countryside where the rules are different and his normal resources are not available. One of the reasons for Vimes's popularity is his impressive competence, with opponents getting the upper hand through surprise or genuine innovation rather than because the protagonist is given an idiot ball to hold for a while, and that holds true here. Vimes may not know the inns and outs of countryside politics but he does know people and how they operate, and that gives him a strong advantage.

The novel is on the long side for Discworld but is not as egregiously long as Unseen Academicals, which spun its wheels so long it was surprising it could be extracted from the ruts to be published. It helps that Vimes's investigation is genuinely interesting, taking in as it does local economics and the inter-species relationship between humans and goblins, the last Discworld species it is still "okay to hate," something that Vimes sets about changing. We got a taster of this storyline in Unseen Academicals but here it is explored more in-depth, with goblin society explored in full. It's impressive that, almost forty books in, Pratchett was keen to explore more of the Disc and its people.

The book is also helped by its pacing and it furiously action-packed finale, one of Pratchett's stronger resolutions as Vimes and his squad of hand-picked friends have to race along the river to stop a huge injustice taking place. The novel also continues the immensely impressive city-building of Ankh-Morpork, with brief interludes to return to the city to find out what's up with the Patrician and some of the other Watch members.

Given this is a late Pratchett novel, written after being diagnosed with a terminal illness, it is impressive how optimistic it is (an improvement over Academicals). Vimes's investigation legitimises an entire species of people and changes the perception of them overnight, to the betterment of the world. Sergeant Colon, a popular character but one who has been excused for his limited world view and prejudices too long, gets an astonishing wake-up call. Nobby Nobbs finds happiness! Kind of. If that doesn't give you hope for humanity (or immediately adjacent sub-species), I don't know what else will.

On the negative side, we probably again get too many extended scenes with the Patrician, which dents his mystique a little. Pratchett also lets a few running gags (Vimes's son's obsession with excrement of any and all zoological origin; the Patrician's increasingly bitter, metaphorical battle-to-the-death with the Times crossword compiler) maybe run on a few times too long. But these are minor issues.

For late-stage Discworld, Snuff (****½) is a very solid book, packed with interesting ideas that make you think, and some good laughs.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Microsoft wind up ELDER SCROLLS fans by hinting at the next game's title

Elder Scrolls fans have become a patient breed, with developers Bethesda clocking in almost fifteen years since the release of the last mainline game in the series, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies to become one of the best-selling individual video games of all time, so fans are understandably antsy over when the sequel will be released.

Bethesda did confirm way back in 2018 that The Elder Scrolls VI was in development, allaying fears after the release of multiplayer spin-off prequel, The Elder Scrolls Online. However, with Bethesda all-in on developing Fallout 4 (2015), Fallout 76 (2018) and Starfield (2023), the game had to take a back seat, with full-time development only beginning after Starfield's release three years ago. The game is now Bethesda's main focus, but when to expect it is a key question. Even a six-year development window these days feels quite short, but that would still mean the game not appearing before late 2029, potentially even drifting into the 2030s. Hopefully Bethesda have had a second team working on the game to ensure we get it before then.

Whilst that question will not be answered for some considerable time, another one has been hinted at: what the game will be called. Asha Sharma, the head of Xbox at Microsoft, tweeted that she had seen a playthrough of Elder Scrolls VI and been very impressed (presumably less-impressed at the protest outside Bethesda's Rockville HQ against recent layoffs). Most notably, she called it The Elder Scrolls VI: ********. To emphasise this, Bethesda tweeted back that it was awesome to be able to show her "********." This would seemingly emphasise that the game's title consists of eight letters and one word.

Previous Elder Scrolls games have largely had titles built around locations. The third and fifth games, Morrowind and Skyrim, are named after provinces of the Empire of Tamriel. The first game, Arena, and spin-off game Battlespire are named after individual buildings (though "the Arena" is an archaic name for the whole continent as well). The fourth game, Oblivion, was named after a plane of existence. Spin-off games Redguard and Blades are named after factions within the universe.

With the sixth game widely believed to take place in western Tamriel, in the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell, this opens up some intriguing possibilities for the game's title.

• The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel is a noisome title. Sentinel is the name of the capital city of Hammerfell, and likely a key location in the game.
• The Elder Scrolls VI: Dominion sounds pretty good. The series metaplot has focused on the rise of the Aldemari Dominion and its challenge to the power of the Empire. This was explored in a key questline in Skyrim. Fans have been theorising that the full-scale confrontation between the Empire and the Dominion, possibly in Hammerfell, is a likely storyline in the sixth game.
• The Elder Scrolls VI: Orsinium. Orsinium is a major city-state and kingdom in High Rock, and is the home of Tamriel's civilised orcish civilisation.
• The Elder Scrolls VI: Redguard. The Redguards are the primary inhabitants of Hammerfell and are one of the setting's most popular factions. However, no main series game has been named after a faction before. Also, a 1998 action spin-off game was called The Elder Scroll Adventures: Redguard, which might get confusing. That game is very old though and extremely obscure (as well as likely the franchise's least-selling title), and the title is pretty good, so don't put it past Bethesda to reuse it.
• The Elder Scrolls VI: Highrock. Maybe the developers have decided to lose the space.

Hopefully this is a hint we might get more information about the game soon, but it's really past time.

Of course, it might be the eight characters were totally random and none of this actually means anything, but fans are so devoid of clues that they'll take anything at this point.