S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

An ex-soldier, Skif, is annoyed when his flat is destroyed by an "artifact," a strange, reality-warping device brought out of the Zone, the huge stretch of countryside surrounding the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant which has been sealed off from the world for almost twenty years whilst mercenaries and fortune-hunters, "stalkers," explore its ruins for artifacts and loot. Skif decides to head into the Zone to find out why this artifact was ejected into the outside world, and rapidly discovers events in the Zone are building to a bloody and dangerous climax.

There are few video game franchises both as beloved and janky as STALKER. The creation of Ukrainian developers GSC Game World, the original STALKER: Shadow of Chornobyl was acclaimed on release in 2007 for its graphics, its bleak atmosphere and its depiction of the real-life Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, filtered through a weird alt-history horror lens inspired by the 1979 movie Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky and its own inspiration, the 1972 novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers (who also wrote the movie script). STALKER was also famous for its numerous bugs, lengthy patching process, and subsequent fan mods which restored cut content and made the game more stable.

The game was followed by two stand-alone expansions, the somehow-even-jankier Clear Sky (2008) and the much more polished Call of Pripyat (2009), which expanded the STALKER story with new characters, factions and stories. A planned "proper" sequel was announced, followed by the company promptly going bust (some devs spun off to make the splendid Metro series of games) and, just a few years later, suddenly coming back to life. Then, as STALKER 2 was entering the final stretch of development, the developers' homeland was invaded, forcing part of the dev team to relocate to Prague (some of the other devs stayed behind to join the army or help in the civilian support effort).

STALKER 2 is here and in some respects it's like the franchise has never been away: STALKER 2 is janky, but there's a lot of heart and interesting ideas bubbling under the surface. This is an old-school game with deteriorating weapons, the need to repair equipment and think about food and water, but also has a more modern design, with a massive open-world map and various side-stories to explore alongside the main narrative. Fortunately, the game rejects the idea of Ubiclone makework BS, with the bulk of the game's 60-hour playtime taken up by consequential missions and exploration rather than tracking down collectibles.

The main narrative is the focus of the game and is fairly entertaining. You play Skif, an ex-soldier who is rather irritated when his flat is blown up by a glowing rock from the Zone. Rather than file an insurance claim, Skif decides to perform a one-man vengeance mission into the Zone to find out where this rock came from and find someone who is going to pay for a new pad. As a newcomer to the Zone, Skif doesn't know what the hell is going on and other characters try to fill him in on the convoluted backstory from the original trilogy of games (which variously baffles Skif or leaves him apathetic; this guy is really focused on finding out why a rogue geode demolished his domicile). This is obviously a boon for newcomers to the franchise who haven't play the original games either, but getting up to speed is rather tough going as you are assaulted by a battery of proper nouns, nefarious-sounding organisations (Ward, Spark, Duty, Noontide, Monolith) and introduced to a ton of characters, most of whom are some variation on "cynical soldier-philosopher." I suspect Malazan fans will love this game. The story as it unfolds is reasonably intriguing, though sometimes goes off in a weird tangent that's not very-well explained (the STALKER Wikis might be your friend in understanding some of these events) which can be a bit odd.

Gameplay is your standard first-person shooter. You shoot a lot of people, things and mutated animals in this game, with an impressive array of weapons, each of which has its own ammo supply, which also comes in variants (armour-piercing, etc) which are meant for different types of enemies. I'll be honest and say this system is great if you really want to engage with it, but I went with "fire whatever is at hand at the enemy and hope for the best," and most of the time this was fine. Unfortunately, despite being a trained soldier, Skif is also apparently an asthmatic who runs out of breath after lightly jogging for about 12 seconds, so can't carry much in the way of weapons or supplies. As the game progresses you can get better armour, even power-assisted exoskeletons, and acquire weird artefacts from the Zone that ups your carrying capacity, but even so you're never going to be able to carry more than about four weapons max. Weapon variety is solid, but mostly boils down to you being recommended to carry a silenced pistol, some kind of semi-automatic rifle, a sniper rifle and a shotgun, the latter being essential for dealing with bloodsucker mutants that are usually invisible until they attack you without warning. Oh yes, the standard stealth system allowing you sneak up behind someone and stab them silently is present and correct.

Combat against human enemies is enjoyable, with some good sniper duels possible across the rooftops of Pripyat or between office buildings in abandoned industrial zones. Combat against mutants, on the other hand, is mostly tedious. A lot of the mutants are preposterously bullet-spongey, especially galling after the game plays fair with human enemies, where headshots will take down almost everyone in one headshot, unless they have armoured helmets. Patches have nerfed some mutants (bloodsuckers are now much easier to deal with) but others, like chimaeras and pseudogiants, remain absolute joyless slogs to fight and are simply best avoided or run away from.

Graphically, STALKER 2 is frequently jaw-dropping. In some lighting conditions, the game looks photorealistic with amazing environments, textures and lighting. Fog or sunshine almost makes the game look like you've taken photos in the real Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Human characters are a still not really there, with stiff animation and uncanny valley effects, and the mutants are almost universally ugly and not really convincing. It feels like the mutants were designed right at the start of the process when they might have been thinking about the game launching on last-gen hardware and were never updated to the latest version of the game engine. Still, for atmosphere there is no game out there (bar maybe Alan Wake 2) that can match STALKER 2. Trudging through a forest miles from the nearest town, trying not to stumble into an anomaly and low on health and ammo, only for a pack of wild dogs to attack and force you to take shelter in a nearby ramshackle barn, is an unmatched gaming experience. As with the better Bethesda RPGs, STALKER 2 is at its best when channelling an atmosphere of uncanny sparseness.

The map is massive, which I ended up having mixed feelings on. Having an accurate-ish size of map for the relatively small area of countryside the game is covering makes it feel realistic in terms of scale (Ghost of Tsushima, which had a massive map for a relatively constrained 40-mile-long island, achieved something similar), and early missions are very well-constructed for how they get you to explore new areas of the Zone. However, after a while missions start sending you from side of the Zone to the other, which is a fairly formidable undertaking requiring you to load up on weapons and supplies (recalling that Skif has the carrying capacity of an elderly nun with a back complaint), travel in a straight line for about 15 minutes and will probably result in you fighting off a mutant with two heads and two arses, a plague of rats and a ghost who inexplicably throws buckets at you, along the way. There is a fast-travel-ish system in the game via "guides" who can teleport you from one base to another base, but this doesn't always help much since bases are relatively few and far between. It's also astronomically expensive. Still, the atmosphere is so great that mostly you won't mind taking long hikes to your destination, aside from potentially wearing out your screenshot button.

The in-game economy is also pretty busted, with weapons and ammo being quite expensive, repairing your battered equipment is ludicrously expensive, and you usually spend your hard-earned cash on upgrading your armour to include more carrying capacity or deploying more artefacts about ten minutes before you find a much better suit of armour in a shack in the middle of nowhere, and have to start upgrading again from scratch. Sigh.

Voice acting, in Ukrainian, is also excellent (or so it seemed to me) and the minimalist musical score, backed up by dozens of original and licensed songs in certain areas, is also very good. The English voice acting is frequently terrible though, with a bizarre variety of accents that makes the Zone feel like it's Camden Market on a Saturday afternoon. Switch on Ukrainian voices and subtitles, it adds a ton to the game's atmosphere.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl (****) is possibly the most stunningly atmospheric video game available at the moment, with excellent combat, characters and exploration, with a solid (if occasionally obtuse) story. Mutants are a pain in the backside and the massive map can be occasionally frustrating, whilst a plethora of small bugs can occasionally disrupt gameplay, though a steady patching schedule has already fixed a lot of problems. The game's rejection of modern open-world filler is refreshing, and it manages to be a more challenging experience than most modern games whilst not being totally off-putting to newcomers. There's certainly room for improvement, and with two big DLC expansions on the way it will be interesting to go back to the Zone and explore it further.

The game is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.

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CD Projekt Red formally announces THE WITCHER IV

CD Projekt Red has formally confirmed the existence of The Witcher IV with a CG trailer at the Games Awards. They had acknowledged that the game existed previously, but this is the first time they've confirmed that it would be called The Witcher IV (rather than The Witcher Colon Subtitle Something) and it will focus on the character of Ciri.

The game follows The Witcher (2007), The Witcher II: Assassin of Kings (2011) and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (2015) and sees a change of protagonist. The first three games, which acted as an unofficial sequel to the nine-volume book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, saw you playing Geralt, the titular Witcher, as he grappled with various threats to the Northern Kingdoms. In The Witcher III he earned a pleasant retirement by saving Ciri, a young girl with impressive powers, who was destined to save the world. The game also saw you playing Ciri at several key points in the narrative. The game ended with Ciri in various possible states, including becoming the Empress of Nilfgaard, dying, or entering Witcher training.

The Witcher IV suggest that, whichever ending you chose, by several years later Ciri has circled back around to becoming a Witcher in her own right, wielding magical powers of the Cat School. Some fans had speculated that the game might allow you to create your own Witcher protagonist, in the vein of CDPR's other big video game adaptation, Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), but CDPR seemed to prefer to stick to the idea of using a pre-existing, firmly-established character.

The game entered development after the release of Cyberpunk 2077, although early work was slowed by the urgent need to patch and fix that game after its rough launch window. As a result, it's hard to know how far along The Witcher IV is; CDPR only recently confirmed that the game was entering full-time development, and Cyberpunk 2077's first trailer preceded the release of the game by a startling eight years. CDPR hope to speed The Witcher IV's development by using the more widely-used Unreal 5 Engine to speed onboarding of new staff. I'd be impressed to see this game released much this side of 2028 though.

As well as The Witcher IV, itself projected as the start of a new trilogy, CDPR are working on a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, a game in a totally new IP and a remake of the original Witcher game from 2007.

Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier

In 1991, three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles, founded Silicon & Synapse, a video game development company. Starting off porting games from one system to another, they broke into original development with Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings in 1993. Following several name changes, they released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994, their first game as Blizzard Entertainment. The game was a smash-hit success, building on the formula from Westwood Studios' real-time strategy game Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis.

Blizzard released Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness in 1995 and, after acquiring Condor Studios (renamed Blizzard North), action-RPG Diablo in 1996. Both games were major hits, selling millions of copies at a time when just 100,000 sales was deemed a win. Things went to another level with StarCraft in 1998, originally envisaged as a light sci-fi reskin of Warcraft II, the game was rebuilt into a multiplayer phenomenon, becoming the best-selling real-time strategy game of all time and a surprise success in South Korea, where it became a national phenomenon. Diablo II (2000) and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos in 2002 furthered Blizzard's reputation for quality, high production values, and an emphasis on gameplay and fun.

In 2004 Blizzard ascended to another level of fame by releasing World of Warcraft, the most successful massively multi-player online roleplaying game of all time. The game's success was such that it was featured on TV shows like South Park, and its sales exploded to tens of millions of copies. Even the game's expansions broke all-time sales records for the fastest-selling video games. Blizzard was now a company generating billions of dollars of revenue.

This success saw video games mega-corporation Activision acquire Blizzard in 2008...which is where the problems began. The company continued to see success through the likes of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (2010) and two expansions, Diablo III (2012), Hearthstone (2014) and Overwatch (2016), but the company started scoring PR own goals. Activision's drive to constantly monetise their games through nickel-and-diming players started infesting Blizzard's games, to the annoyance of fans, and the company seemed to lose track of their once tight relationship with their fanbase. The company also saw major problems behind the scenes, with old hands leaving in droves as they saw corporate interfering in their development processes. The company soon became embroiled in repeated scandals, first for allegedly censoring a player during a tournament event and then for a series of sexual harassment cases. Even the company's reputation for quality started taking hits, through the disappointing WarCraft III Reforged (2020) and the underwhelming Overwatch 2 (2023). Finally, Microsoft purchased Activision-Blizzard for $69 billion, the largest merger in corporate history, giving the company hope that maybe things were changing...just before hitting them with massive lay-offs.

The story of Blizzard Entertainment is undeniably fascinating. There's a distinct arc here which may be familiar - plucky little company becomes huge, morphs into the very thing it hated - but in the hands of veteran video game journalist Jason Schreier (who may have "blacklisted by Todd Howard" on a T-shirt somewhere), the story is well-told. Schreier draws on decades of experience and a formidable rolodex of contacts to tell the story from multiple angles, with senior developers, artists, quality assurance teams and those on the corporate side of things all giving their perspective on the story. He tries to be even-handed, noting that the sexual harassment scandal applied to all of Activision, with some of the highest-profile cases occurring on that side of the company, but the media focused almost entirely on Blizzard. He also notes the rapidly growing costs of video game development are causing problems for the entire sector, but Blizzard may be more badly impacted because their exacting quality standards mean their games were already taking forever to come out, and these issues are making delays even more notable.

The book features a ton of trivia, some well-known, some brand new. I was intrigued to learn they named StarCraft's spec-ops character "Kerrigan" in response to Command & Conquer: Red Alert's "Tanya," drawing on a (misspelled) real-life rivalry, whilst Dune II art was used as a placeholder on the original build of Warcraft, which they swapped out before release only to realise with horror that they'd left Dune II's iconic font in place. What is interesting is the degree to which internal battles at Blizzard mirrored heated debates in the fandom: a subset of Blizzard developers was constantly urging for a new RTS game to be put into development after work on StarCraft II's expansions wrapped in 2015, with proposals for StarCraft III, Warcraft IV and even a Call of Duty RTS all floating around at different times. News that Netflix had TV adaptations of Overwatch, Diablo and StarCraft all in development at one time or another is also surprising.

At 370 pages, the book is already on the long side for a non-fiction tome about a video game company, but it's a tribute to Blizzard's packed history that it feels like a lot of elements are given short shrift. World of Warcraft's infinite roster of expansions is mentioned only in passing, and it feels like the nuts and bolts details of each game are skimmed over, presumably for reasons of space. There's also maybe a feeling that some stories have been told so often, such as the details of what happened to doomed spin-off game StarCraft: Ghost, that they don't need repeating here. One potential criticism is that the book doesn't give us a good handle on what the abandoned MMORPG Titan was supposed to be like (save that Overwatch recycled some art and ideas from it), but given that Blizzard cancelled the game because they didn't have a good handle on it, that's unsurprising.

On the plus side the book does give us a lot more info on other things, such as the hellish development of Diablo III, and that chapter provides nice companion to Schreier's earlier book, Blood, Sweat and Pixels.

Play Nice (****) is an invigorating, fascinating read. It feels like some elements could have been explored in more detail, perhaps as a two-volume project, but I get that's a tough sell for a non-fiction book about video game development.

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

Glen Cook to publish four new BLACK COMPANY novels

Glen Cook is returning to the world of his seminal Black Company military fantasy series with a new arc, A Pitiless Rain, consisting of four books. The first, Lies Weeping, will be published on 4 November 2025. Cook has completed the first three books in the arc and is working on the fourth.

Lies Weeping will be followed by They Cry, Summer Grass and Darkness Knows.

Cook published The Black Company in 1984, about a band of war-weary mercenaries fighting for various shades of evil during a bleak war, before discovering a new purpose. It was followed by Shadows Linger (1984) and The White Rose (1985), completing the Books of the North trilogy. A semi-standalone, The Silver Spike (1989), followed, along with the Books of the South duology: Shadow Games (1989) and Dreams of Steel (1990). The Books of Glittering Stone quartet then completed the initial batch of releases: Bleak Seasons (1996), She is the Darkness (1997), Water Sleeps (1999) and Soldiers Live (2000).

The saga was later collected in four omnibus editions: The Chronicles of the Black Company, The Books of the South, The Return of the Black Company and The Many Deaths of the Black Company. A stand-alone interquel, Port of Shadows, followed in 2018.

Also in 2018, actress Eliza Dushku and producer David Goyer optioned the books as a TV series, but sadly failed to find interest from a production company.

Cook has also confirmed that he has a completed new Garrett, PI novel with his agent, under the tittle Last Metal Romance, and has a further book in that series planned, Deadly Diamond Daydreams. A new Black Company roleplaying game is also in the planning stages from Arcdream.

The Black Company has been hailed as a classic of fantasy and was hugely influential on George R.R. Martin and (especially) Steven Erikson.

Games Workshop and Amazon agree to proceed with a WARHAMMER 40,000 screen project

After an exhaustive and unusually public two-year discussion process, Amazon Studios and Games Workshop have agreed to move forwards with a screen project set in the latter's Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy universe. As previously announced, actor and noted geek ambassador Henry Cavill will star in and produce the project.

Amazon and Games Workshop announced plans to work together and with Cavill on the project two years ago. One year ago, they moved to the position of formalising contracts, but also announced a twelve-month consultation process where they would agree on the terms of the adaptations. That consultation process has ended with both companies happy to proceed.

That means that the first project, details unannounced so far except it will be a TV series, not a movie, will now go into early development, with scripts to be written. Cavill has confirmed his continued involvement.

Warhammer 40,000 is a science fantasy franchise set 39,000 years in the future and incorporates elements of space opera, horror, military fiction and dark, satirical comedy. The ruthless Imperium of Man controls a vast swathe of the galaxy, but is beset on every side by external alien threats: the brutish Orks, the scheming Tau, the ancient Necrons, the hive-minded Tyranids and the arrogant Eldar, amongst others. The Imperium is also weakened from within by Chaos cults, worshippers of the dark Chaos Gods who dream of turning the Imperium into a charnel house of worship of the Ruinous Powers. Originating as a tabletop wargame in 1987, the franchise has expanded across some 600 books, short story collections and audio plays, alongside dozens of video games, numerous spin-off board games and hundreds of wargame sourcebooks and tabletop roleplaying rulebooks.

The lengthy discussion process has probably been down to Games Workshop's exacting standards of quality control. Previous proposed film and TV projects foundered on Games Workshop requiring to maintain creative control over all visual elements of the setting, since their bread and butter is the massive range of miniature models and accompanying artwork based on them. Most TV adaptations seem to want to change elements (sometimes for practical reasons, sometimes just changing things for the sake of change), which Games Workshop likely would like to avoid to prevent any disputes over the ownership of visual elements of the franchise.

Back in 2019 Games Workshop partnered with veteran US screenwriter Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files, The Man in the High Castle) on a potential adaptation of the classic 40K novel trilogy Eisenhorn. No broadcaster was attached, but Spotnitz worked with Amazon The Man in the High Castle. Whether that project had any bearing on this one is unclear.

More news on the first project is expected next year. Both companies have clarified that the current deal is for Warhammer 40,000 alone, but the deal could incorporate fantasy franchises Warhammer and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar further down the line.

The History of the World Begins in Ice by Kate Elliott

Kate Elliott has always been one of fantasy's more interesting voices, shifting her tone and voice to explore different ideas. Her Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, Cold Steel) has always felt a little underrated, as it's probably the most light-hearted of her adult fantasies, a comedy of manners set in an icepunk alt-history Europe populated by feuding mages and dinosaur lawyers. This companion volume encourages a welcome re-appraisal of the original trilogy.

The History of the World Begins in Ice collects together eleven short stories and eleven essays about the worldbuilding and character-crafting of the Spiritwalker Trilogy. Familiarity with the trilogy is an advantage, otherwise you might not catch all the references, although most of the stories (many published previously in unrelated anthologies) do stand alone to a degree, and some work as even a good sampler or intro to the main series.

The Spiritwalker books walk a tightrope between being funny, dramatic, romantic and tragic, and the stories in the collection reflect that. "The River-Born Child," about a young boy with a strange origin who does not believe that should impact his right to happiness or friendships, is maybe the most tragic of the stories but has a redemptive ending. "Bloom" and "A Compendium of Architecture" are entertaining tales serving as origin stories, to some extent, for characters in the main trilogy, but work well enough here as standalones. "To Be a Man" revisits one of the more entertaining side-characters from the trilogy in a particularly lusty and comic tale.

Beatrice, who in another universe was the main protagonist of the trilogy before narrowly missing out to her cousin Cat, gets both her own long narrative (annotated with literary criticism of wildly varying credibility by Cat) and a long-form poem. Cat and Andevai, the star-crossed lovers of the main trilogy, get another story to expand on their romance, "The Courtship," which is entertaining, despite the feeling that their romance got a lot of screen-time in the main trilogy. Andevai's sartorial choices, which I remember forming about a third of his characterisation in the main sequence, are fortunately downplayed here, but do make return appearances in later stories (few phrases in all of fantasy make my heart sink more than the words "dash jacket," but I try to bear it here with equanimity).

The highlight of the collection is "I am a Handsome Man," where it feels like the star of his own, equally worthy novel series, Apollo Crow, crashes headlong into the misadventures of the trilogy's main cast and they have to figure out who the real good and bad guys are. I'd read a lot more about this hero (?) and his adventures. "A Lesson to You Young Ones," is the shortest story in the collection, which is unfortunate because it's also the only one to really focus one of the signature concepts of the setting, the surviving humanoid dinosaurs. These are both a really cool concept (not totally original, obviously) and one that's not really made enough of in the trilogy or this story collection.

"Finding the Doctor" is the longest story in the collection and also the most like the main trilogy, featuring as it does cold mage Andevai and the redoubtable Cat joining forces to take on a hazardous mission, this time behind the lines of the Roman Empire as it resurgently tries to advance beyond the Alps, threatening Cat's plan to find a reliable midwife for her cousin. The mix of drama, geopolitics, romance and restrained comedy is the trilogy in miniature, and a good sampler if you're pondering taking on the main series.

The concluding story, "When I Grow Up", is one of the best as it tackles the next generation of characters, as the main cast of the trilogy gets older and their children seem poised to succeed them in a story that's both heartwarming and bittersweet.

The essays in the collection are also fascinating as Elliot ponders her ideas for the trilogy: a world that recalls the geography of Europe during the last Ice Age, with Britain and Europe joined by Doggerland, much larger islands in the Caribbean, and the endurance of the Roman Empire, with no Germanic tribes overrunning Europe, thus leaving Europe divided between the Romans, Celts and the Mande tribes of west Africa, displaced into Europe by various events. Further essays discuss how the Creole languages of this alt-Caribbean were created, and how each of the main characters was created. Elliott notes how by placing emphasis on trivial character tics (like Cat's appetite) she was able to make characters more rounded, at the expense of readers sometimes wondering if that was a hint at some greater mystery.

The History of the World Begins in Ice (****½) is a splendid volume by one of fantasy's more underrated but consistently excellent voices. Part short story collection, part behind-the-scenes glimpse at how you build a fantasy world and inhabit it with interesting people, it's a compelling read, and both a solid introduction to the Spiritwalker world and a welcome continuation of it. The book is available now.

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Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1

Los Angeles, 2010. Life for Californians is going on as normal, despite growing concerns over an illness that has been spreading through the world for several months. A sudden spread in cases and growing social media reports of soldiers shooting the infected starts to cause panic. The Clark-Manawa family make preparations to flee the city, but the US military, and the infected, have other ideas.

Back in 2015, AMC launched the first of numerous spin-offs from it's mega-hit zombie show, The Walking Dead. Fear the Walking Dead's premise is, at first glance, not the most compelling: "what if the original show, but in California?" But it does add another tweak by showing the initial zombie outbreak as it happens. In the original show, Rick Grimes missed the outbreak itself by virtue of being in a coma, whilst this spin-off depicts the collapse as it happens.

This makes for an interesting show as the characters don't know what's going on and they don't know the rules of how the walkers work, which leads to some fairly obvious mistakes in dealing with the crisis. However, there's also a bit of a "back to basics" feel as the show can't help but retread old ground. We've already seen characters discover and are then horrified by the idea that everyone is infected by the disease and are doomed to turn whenever they die of any cause, so seeing it again can feel redundant.

Where the show has to stand or fall is with its characters and they are a mixed bag. Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis) is well-meaning but a bit too beige and too much of a people-pleaser to make tough decisions. A reliably excellent Kim Dickens impresses more as Madison Clark, the sort of no-nonsense pragmatic series lead you need in a show like this (and probably the closest analogue of The Walking Dead's Rick). Alycia Debnam-Carey is decent as Madison's daughter Alicia, but Frank Dillane is a very weak link in the cast as Madison's son Nick, whose characterisation seems to revolve around him being a drug addict and little else, whilst Dillane's performance is insipid.

More formidable is Ruben Blades as Daniel Salazar, a shopkeeper whom the family finds refuge with who initially appears mild-mannered but turns out to be a former fighter from El Salvador who knows how to get stuff done, and the charismatic Colman Domingo as conman Victor Strand. Both characters are more morally grey and add some much-needed tonal variation to the show.

With just six episodes in this first season - like The Walking Dead before it - the show is relatively fast-moving. The initial episodes show the gradual onset of the crisis, but we quickly move to a new storyline where the family's suburb is walled off to become a safe haven. This leads to a brief interlude that feels like a riff on Octavia Butler's classic dystopian novel Parable of the Sower, with people trying to keep their old lives going in the face of all evidence that it's gone forever. The final episodes switch to a more epic, action feel as the city is overrun by walkers and our characters have to flee.

This makes the season more dynamic and fast-moving, with less time to bog down in repetitive characters beats separated by too many episodes of not much happening (a repeated criticism of the mothership show, with varying degrees of accuracy based on the season). This is good. But the show doesn't entirely make a good case for its existence. We see characters learning to deal with the walkers, we see groups forming with various people trying to take leadership of them. We see arguments about being too harsh or too gentle to deal with the situation. This is all stuff we've seen before. The fact it's happening in the bright Californian sun with Los Angeles in the background rather than the dusty backroads of Georgia doesn't necessarily make enough of a difference to justify retelling these tropes.

Still, the production values on Fear the Walking Dead's first season (***½) are higher than back on The Walking Dead in its first season, the CG is much better, allowing for some epic shots of the city falling to the undead. The character drama is serviceable, though Nick's entire storyline is tedious beyond the extreme, and the actors mostly do a solid job. There's enough here to make continuing into the second season a reasonable prospect, but the show needs to do more to differentiate itself from its forebear.

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

Blogging Roundup: 1 September to 1 December 2024

 

The Wertzone

News

• Battlestar Galactica, Skyrim & Fallout: New Vegas actor Michael Hogan makes first convention appearance since serious injury
• I'm on BlueSky!
• Subnautica 2 gets a full trailer

Reviews

• The Walking Dead: Season 8
• The Walking Dead: Season 7
• Starfield: Shattered Space
• MechWarrior 5: Clans
• Slayers & Vampires: The Oral History of Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel by Edward Gross & Mark A. Altman
• Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew
• Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
• So Say We All: The Oral History of Battlestar Galactica by Mark A. Altman & Edward Gross

Articles

• Half-Life 2 turns twenty years old
• RIP Tony Todd
• 15 years ago (somehow) I visited Belfast whilst they were filming the Game of Thrones pilot
• RIP Jeri Taylor
• Franchise Familiariser: Cyberpunk 2077 / Red / Edgerunners (2024 Edition)
• Happy 20th Anniversary to Lost
• A Timeline of Battlestar Galactica
• RIP James Darren

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

The Walking Dead: Season 8

The communities of Alexandria, Hilltop and the Kingdom have joined forces to oppose the Saviors, but they have been betrayed by one group of potential allies whilst another, Oceanside, tries to stay out of the fighting. An early victory isolates the Sanctuary and allows Rick's forces to go on the offensive against the isolated Savior secondary bases, but Negan remains a dangerous and resourceful foe. As the tides of war ebb and flow, the outcome remains unpredictable.

The eighth season of The Walking Dead optimistically promises "all-out war!" as it adapts the story arc from the comics of the same name. The early episodes lean into this, with an almost constant stream of battles, sieges, cunning stratagems and unexpected reversals. Neither side consistently wins or consistently loses (although the number of Savior losses in the opening episodes makes their later resurgence seem improbable), a nice change from most media accounts of conflicts where the good guys keep losing until the last second and then pull off a single win and win everything and hit the jackpot.

The battles in the opening episodes make for an exciting start to the season, but are a bit overwrought. Given the show's shock-jock tactics of killing two fan-favourite characters in the Season 7 opener, almost everybody develops thick plot armour and almost nobody of consequence dies (no, Alexandrians who may have been around for three seasons but only have five lines of dialogue in their entire tenure of the show do not count). This makes the stakes feel a bit undercooked. Instead we have a lot of battles - consisting of characters pointing weirdly recoilless guns at one another with CG muzzle flashes, sometimes with allies running right in front of them whilst they're firing - without much in the way of stakes to them.

The show does try to get around this by aiming for character-rooted emotional arcs: Ezekiel suffers a crisis of command after losing too many of his people in the war; Morgan being torn between not killing and protecting his friends causes a mental health crisis; Carl, recognising some proto-Negan-ness in his own character, decides to become a better person; Eugene trying to work out if Negan or Rick will better appreciate his skills; Gabriel rediscovers his faith in adversity, and so forth. Some of these character arcs are satisfying, others just feel they're there to help the show spin its wheels.

Yes, the greatest enemy of The Walking Dead is neither Negan nor the walkers, but the show's problematic pacing. A relentless foe of the franchise since it made the entire second season take place on a farm, it drags Season 8 down into the mud. Making the war last the entire season, sixteen episodes, after last season's sixteen episodes of scene-setting, was a huge mistake, resulting in several episodes where not much materially changes, even as bullets are flying. The show really feels like it doesn't have a clue what to do next when it sends the characters back to the Junkyard, again, to try to win over the Scavengers, again, only for them to betray our heroes, again. At eight episodes to end the war, perhaps with another eight exploring the aftermath (here relegated to a very abrupt-seeming vignette at the end of the season finale), the storyline would have been much tighter and more satisfying.

The season does have a few stronger elements. Dwight trying to balance his survival against being the mole inside Negan's organisation is a fun storyline, and Steven Ogg (best known as Grand Theft Auto V's redoubtable Trevor) arguably steals the season as Simon, whose charismatic backstabbing is highly entertaining. This all makes up for a subdued Jeffrey Dean Morgan, whose undeniable charisma and acting talent feels a bit let down by the inconsistent quality of the scripts for Negan. When he brings it, he's great, but when he doesn't, his story falls flat.

Mid-season the show does dispatch one long-term regular to try to up the ante, but the choice of character to kill is illogical, badly-handled and feels like a bit of a slap in the face of the actor (who famously had just bought a house near the studio because they'd been assured they'd be around for a while longer) and also comic fans, where the character in question survives all the way to the end of the saga. They do try to make the sacrifice have some weight and long-term impact on the story, but it's badly-conceived.

The season finale is also a bit of a damp squib, with the plan to win the day being incredibly illogical and desperately dependent on absolutely nothing going wrong, and the rapidity with which the losing side gives in to the winning side feels a bit implausible. One decision by Rick is also laughably unconvincing: I get what they were going for, but I do not buy at all that Rick of all people would make that choice. That said, Maggie does benefit from this storyline, coming across as a stronger and more decisive leader, and potentially setting up a conflict between her and Rick which could be genuinely interesting.

Season 8 of The Walking Dead (***) is not terrible, but it is badly-paced, overdrawn and overwrought, with some curious character choices and unconvincing plot decisions. There is, however, a lot of half-decent action, and the ebb and flow of the conflict is more interesting than how wars are usually depicted in fiction. This is possibly the weakest season of the show, but those who have settled in for the long haul should find enough here to just about keep going (along with the promise of a better final three seasons coming up, although that is debatable). The show can be seen on multiple streaming platforms worldwide, right now.

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HALF-LIFE 2 turns twenty years old

November 16th marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2, one of the most iconic and influential video games of all time.

The original Half-Life had come out in late 1998 and established new standards for first-person shooters. The game focused on total immersion, with the protagonist, Gordon Freeman, never speaking and the player never seeing outside of Gordon's POV, even in cutscenes (which were fully interactive, with Gordon able to walk around during them). The game had very sophisticated AI for the time, and ferocious combat with both alien creatures and cunning enemy soldiers. The game was noted for its bonkers ending, which saw Freeman recruited by the mysterious "G-Man" to work for him in some unspecified fashion.

Valve subsequently published two expansions, Opposing Force (1999) and Blue Shift (2000), which focused on other characters during the events of the original game, as well as revising and expanding the original for ports to the Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Valve also welcomed the activities of modders, commercially releasing the multiplayer titles Team Fortress Classic (1999) and Counter-Strike (2000), as well as the single-player Gunman Chronicles (2000), which all came from the modding community.

Most fans were clamouring for a direct sequel but Valve remained tight-lipped on the subject. In the spring of 2003 they confirmed that yes, Half-Life 2 was real and would be released that year. But, famously, Valve were hacked and an early build of the game was leaked onto the Internet. Valve furiously reworked almost the entire game in response, rebuilding it from the ground up over less than a year, something that was hugely expensive and annoying, but later was credited with making the game better.

Half-Life 2 finally released in November 2004 and, despite the backlash over the required use of the Steam software (see below) to authenticate and play the game, the game was a huge success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in its first few days on sale. That may not sound like much by modern standards, but by 2004 the PC platform was starting to slide into sales decline, and a PC-only action game requiring an Internet connection and a reasonably robust graphics card was a fairly challenging requirement, so its success was impressive. Sales would dramatically accelerate over the following years, with over 12 million copies sold by 2011 and more than 30 million of the entire franchise by 2020. The game also achieved immediate critical acclaim, with PC Gamer awarding it 98%, a score that would not be equalled until the release of Baldur's Gate III in August 2023. Maximum PC magazine memorably gave the game 11/10.

Half-Life 2 is also notable the first (and, for several years, only) release requiring the installation and use of the Steam distribution platform. Steam itself had launched a year earlier but the release of Half-Life 2 introduced it to vast numbers of people for the first time. Valve's use of Steam was highly controversial, especially with people who only planned to play Half-Life 2 offline for the story and campaign, but still had to authenticate the game online.

The game's critical reception was down to its incredible sense of atmosphere, its moody restraint with moments of quiet punctuated by satisfying action set-pieces and moments of visceral horror (Half-Life 2 is as much a horror game as it is an SF action blockbuster, sometimes that tended to get overlooked at the time). The setting was incredible, with a sense of melancholy bleakness you'd be hard-pressed to find in any modern shooter. The story was low-key but solid and the supporting cast of supporting characters incredibly popular, with Valve using cutting-edge tech to help them emote and act more believably like real people (well, by the standards of the day). The game did have some tough competition from the recently-released Far Cry, which had far superior environments and use of vehicles, but Half-Life 2 boasted a better story, more interesting characters, stronger music and a more unsettling atmosphere.

Half-Life 2 ended on a huge cliffhanger, one that was swiftly resolved in Half-Life 2: Episode One, released in mid-2006, and then Half-Life 2: Episode Two, released in late 2007 as part of a compilation called The Orange Box, alongside legendary multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 and the experimental puzzle game Portal (which not so much stole Episode Two's thunder as also had its lunch and then tapdanced on its head). Episode Two ended on a cruel humdinger of a cliffhanger, with Valve assuring fans that Half-Life 2: Episode Three was in development.

Except, infamously, Episode Three never appeared. Valve would periodically say it was on its way but instead released other games: Left 4 Dead (2008), Left 4 Dead 2 (2009), Alien Swarm (2009), Portal 2 (2011), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012) and Dota 2 (2013). Steam, that much maligned online launcher, had started generating insane revenues for Valve, rising to billions of dollars a year within a decade, removing the financial impetus to release a new Half-Life title. Eventually Valve acknowledged that Episode Three was dead, with instead the story more likely to continue in a Half-Life 3, but that was never formally announced or confirmed to be in development either.

In 2020, Valve abruptly announced a new Half-Life game. Half-Life: Alyx would be an interquel set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, and focusing on the popular side-character of Alyx Vance. The game would be VR only, upsetting long-term fans of the franchise who could not afford a VR setup or could not use one for medical reasons. The game had a surprise ending, which revisited the ending of Half-Life 2: Episode Two from a different perspective and seemed to finally hint that a proper, full sequel was possible.

Four years on, there has been no further news on that front, although Valve have released Counter-Strike 2 and have announced a new hero shooter game, Deadlock. But still, hope springs eternal.

To celebrate Half-Life 2's 20th Anniversary, Valve have released a new documentary about the making of the game, an update to HL2 revising some of the level design quirks they'd been meaning to fix for years and updating the game's lighting, and announced a new edition of the iconic Raising the Bar book about the making the game. The new edition of Raising the Bar launches in early 2025 with new sections about the making of the episodes.

Oh yes, and you can get Half-Life 2, Episode One and Episode Two for free for the whole weekend, which is a very good price for total gaming classics.

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