Star City: Season 1

June 1969. The Soviet Union stuns the world when cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to walk on the Moon. The Americans, whose own effort is just a few weeks away, are infuriated. The Soviets plan to surprise them again with a second mission to put the first woman on the moon, but their plans are thrown off when their chosen cosmonaut is accused of treason. Cosmonaut Anastasia Belikova has to take over at the last minute without much preparation, to the consternation of mission control. The hopes for the glory of the Soviet Union are riding with the men and women of Star City.

Star City is a spin-off series from Apple TV+'s For All Mankind, set in the same alternate timeline stemming from the same instigating event (Soviet space programme guru Sergei Korolev surviving and driving the Soviet effort to the moon and beyond). However, the show is very different in tone and structure, and no foreknowledge of For All Mankind is needed. It's a taut political thriller which mixes engineering problems with espionage and counter-espionage storylines, along with solid character arcs for the main cast.

The core of the series is the Chief Designer, Sergei Korolev (though nobody is allowed to call him by his name). Played supremely well by Rhys Ifans, Korolev is a nearly-irreplaceable genius who believes in science and engineering and is angered by his security-obsessed superiors' conservatism. His superiors want to secure a space station in orbit and a base on the moon, but Korolev dreams of going further and sending a manned flyby mission to Venus. His sometimes-ally, sometimes-foil is KGB surveillance head Lyudmilla Raskova, an officiously brutal performance by Anna Maxwell Martin. Raskova is an (almost) humourless martinet but Martin plays her with just enough humanity that you start to feel sorry for her when her opponents try to set her up to fail.

One of our more direct POV characters is Irina Morozova, a young surveillance operative who shows impressive initiative in exposing a real mole at the base, causing Raskova to start grooming her as a protege of sorts. An older Morozova appears in For All Mankind, and part of the intrigue is seeing how the young woman here (played with conflicted charm by Agnes O'Casey) turns into the more cynical operative we've already met. Our other main POV characters are cosmonauts Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert), the first woman on the moon who finds her success quickly risks becoming a straitjacket, and the ambitious Sasha Polivanov (Solly McLeod), a pilot whose eagerness for action risks overriding his good sense. Another key lead is Tanya Mironova (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), a young wife whose boring life on the base becomes a lot more interesting than she'd ever feared.

It's a great cast that expands throughout the season, with the addition of a younger version of Sergei Nikulov (another For All Mankind character here shown in his younger days, played by Josef Davies) and Indian engineer Lakshmi Chadha (Priya Kansara) whose design for a new life support system sees her invited to join Star City, with the attendent scrutiny for a non-Soviet given access to a top secret installation.

The season moves quickly, spanning several years and mixing together multiple storylines. The cosmonauts are torn between seeking personal glory and making sacrifices for the motherland. The scientists are more interested in research and achievements, and find their political constraints stifling. Irina is torn between her ambition and her humanity, whilst in the close confinement of the base there is no shortage of marriages, affairs and scandal.

But the show successfully gets across an atmosphere of stifling scrutiny. The characters are wary of being spied on or betrayed. Trust is in short supply. The gap between the truth and what the government says is the truth sometimes becomes a yawning chasm. A few commentators have called the show "Chernobyl in space," as it touches on many of the same themes and uses a similar desaturated filming look to make it look more like a period piece (which even extends to the superb visual effects). It can't be quite as good as Chernobyl, and a couple of plot twists stretch credulity badly, but its most intense dramatic moments and best dialogue exchanges do recall HBO's masterwork.

The first season of Star City (****½) is, for most part, exceptional stuff. A great cast portraying complex, relatable characters in conflict situations, with taut pacing and excellent effects. Easily superior to anything For All Mankind has done since (maybe) its first season, Star City is available to watch globally on Apple TV+ right now.

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First trailer for DUNE: PART THREE released

Warner Brothers have unveiled the first trailer for Dune: Part Three.

Directed and co-written by Denis Villeneuve, the film adapts the second novel in Frank Herbert's Dune series, Dune Messiah (1969). The story takes place some years after the events of the first two movies, with Paul Atreides ruling the galaxy as the Emperor. To solidify his power, he has unleashed the Fremen of Arrakis in a vast holy war, but in the process he has caused arguably far more harm than the old Emperor and the Harkonnens ever could, leading to many to conspire against him. Caught in the crossfire are his estranged wife, Chani, his mother Jessica and his old comrade-in-arms Duncan Idaho, killed during the original conflict on Arrakis but now resurrected as a ghola, a flesh-clone created by the redoubtable Tleilaxu.

Curiously, Villeneuve has been strident in bailing from the franchise at this point, although the narrative arc begun in Dune only concludes properly in the third book in the series, Children of Dune, following which there is a 3,500-year time jump to the events of the fourth novel, the almost impossibly weird God Emperor of Dune. Warner Brothers may choose to continue adapting the remaining four books in the series, but will do so without Villeneuve, who is moving on to a relaunch of the James Bond franchise. He also has an adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke novel Rendezvous with Rama (1973) lined up.

Dune: Part Three stars Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson, Isaach de Bankolé, Charlotte Rampling, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert Pattinson, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin. It will be released on 18 December this year.

VERY STRONG RUMOUR: Obsidian Entertainment to develop a new FALLOUT game

As has been widely reported elsewhere, Microsoft have embarked on a massive restructuring of their video game business. Thousands of staff are to be laid off and around five studios are to be sold or spun off into independent businesses. Even the company's more successful studios are being reconfigured, with Obsidian Entertainment re-tasked to help Microsoft focus on its most successful IP. To this end, according to highly reliable industry insider Jason Schreier, Microsoft have commissioned Obsidian to make a new game in the Fallout series.

Obsidian Entertainment were founded in 2003 but many of the key founders had previously worked for Black Isle Studios, formerly the internal development studio at Interplay. There, several staff had worked on Fallout (1997), Fallout 2 (1998) and the original Fallout 3: Van Buren, which was cancelled when Interplay collapsed around 2003. The IP was sold in full to Bethesda Game Studios, who proceeded to develop Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout 4 (2015) and the multiplayer-focused Fallout 76 (2018). However, Bethesda partnered with Obsidian to develop Fallout: New Vegas (2010), often (but not universally) cited as the best game in the series.

In the meantime, the Fallout franchise has acquired a substantially more massive fanbase, with the arrival of the Fallout TV series on Amazon Prime Video in 2024. The show has already produced two seasons and a third began shooting this week. There have also been new tabletop games. Aside from the ongoing development of Fallout 76 through expansions, Bethesda had admitted they were still years away from starting work on Fallout 5 due to their prior commitments to Starfield (2023) and its DLC, and the in-progress Elder Scrolls VI, which will be the sequel to the 60 million+ selling Skyrim (2011). Also according to Schreier, The Elder Scrolls VI is not expected to be released before 2028 at the earliest, likely punting off any Fallout 5 to the early-to-mid 2030s, by which time the TV show will almost certainly be over.

The only Fallout game on the horizon is Fallout 3 Remastered, which has not been formally confirmed but reliable leaks suggest it is in development as a co-production between Bethesda and Virtuos Studios, who previously handled The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025).

Obsidian were acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and have since released The Outer Worlds (2019), Grounded (2022), Pentiment (2022), Avowed (2025) and The Outer Worlds 2 (2025). Grounded 2 is currently in Early Access.

Obsidian's regular release cadence has been extremely impressive by modern standards, especially compared to other Microsoft studios (in the same timeframe, Bethesda have only released Starfield). However, these games' critical and commercial success has been mixed; Pentiment was a critical darling but a low-key release that sold only moderately. Grounded is Obsidian's most successful game in its history, acquiring over 20 million players in a couple of years (shading even Fallout: New Vegas's success), but has largely gone unrecognised due to its perceived children's focus and not being in Obsidian's usual core RPG wheelhouse. Avowed did reasonably well (over 6 million players in its first month on sale) whilst Outer Worlds 2 was a major commercial disappointment, with both games reviewing only moderately. Grounded 2 has picked up some major plaudits in Early Access, but is largely being developed by an external partner studio.

As part of the strategic shift, work on Avowed 2 has been downgraded, with a small team to continue work whilst most shift to the Fallout game. An unannounced major new RPG project, claimed by ex-Obsidian founder Chris Avellone to be set in the Shadowrun universe, has been paused, again with the team expected to be redeployed to the Fallout game. Work on the DLC for The Outer Worlds 2 is expected to be completed shortly.

The new Fallout game will apparently be headed by Josh Sawyer, who was previously the director of Fallout: New Vegas. New Vegas writer John Gonzalez, as well as Fallout co-creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, are all working at Obsidian and may work on this new project as well.

No information about the game's setting or title is known, and may still be in flux as apparently this strategic decision may have only been made this week. Microsoft are likely to want to call the game Fallout 5 to capitalise on interest in the series and the length of time since the last mainline release, but whether that's the case remains to be seen.

More on this when it appears.

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER sequel movie gets a trailer

A trailer has been released for the incoming new Avatar: The Last Airbender animated film.

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is the first animated project to be released by Avatar Studios. Headed up by original Avatar: The Last Airbender creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino, they are currently working on three films and a new TV series, Avatar: Seven Havens, with the latter due to air in 2027.

The original Avatar: The Last Airbender aired in three seasons from 2005 to 2008 and became a huge hit, telling the story of Aang, the lost Avatar (the only person capable of using all four elemental forms of magic at once), and his struggle to defeat the evil Fire Lord. A sequel series, Avatar: The Legend of Korra aired in four shorter seasons from 2012 to 2014 and told the story of Korra, Aang's successor Avatar, seventy years later. Seven Havens will be set decades later and explore the story of Korra's successor, Pavi.

Avatar Aang is set much closer to the original TV series and sees the original gang reunite when another airbender is found frozen in ice. Aang learns of a mystical staff that could help restore the destroyed airbender culture, but another group called the Denied is also seeking the staff.

The film has already run into hot water, with the producers facing criticism for recasting almost the entire original voice cast from the series, despite many of them still working and their aging since the original show being appropriate since the characters are also older. The entire film also leaked online several months ago. Paramount has also annoyed fans by moving the film from a planned theatrical release to being a Paramount+ streaming exclusive.

The film will be released on Paramount+ on 25 July. Meanwhile, the second season of the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender remake recently landed on Netflix.

Murderbot: Season 1

An unstoppable killer android has decided it doesn't really want to do all that murdering any more and has decided to strike out on its own, with a personal mission to stay low and watch as much TV as possible. But the self-styled "Murderbot" is drawn into a survey mission on a planet that goes wrong, and discovers that keeping its identity a secret is going to be very difficult.

Murderbot is an Apple TV+ adaptation of Martha Wells's award-festooned Murderbot Diaries series of novellas and short novels, depicting the adventures of the titular Murderbot (note: does not do that much murdering). This first season of ten (short) episodes adapts All Systems Red, the (very short) first book in the series, but adds a lot of new material to flesh out the story.

As adaptations go, Murderbot is solid. I was wary of Alexander Skarsgård's casting as Murderbot, not because of any lack of acting skill, but because I'd always seen Murderbot as a much more anonymous character and Skarsgård has one of the most recognisable faces on television. I shouldn't have had such doubts as Skarsgård is excellent, delivering a performance that is simultaneously very human and very inhuman at the same time. The next-most-famous castmember is the splendid David Dastmalchian as Gurathin, the science team member most suspicious of Murderbot, who does a great job of making Gurathin seem like both a threat and a potential ally. But it's Noma Dumezweni's empathetic performance as Mensah that emerges as the most important, giving the team a strong moral core and Murderbot something to aspire to.

The cast is exemplerary, and this is backed up by the physical production. The show manages to feel appropriately futuristic without the generic vaguely iMac-inspired design a lot of SF shows settle on these days. Production design is impressive, and the effects are, as you'd expect these guys, very good, with a strong sense of physicality even to the all-CGI parts of the battle sequences to make them feel more real.

The show's biggest challenge might be its tone. The Murderbot books are inherently dramatic with a comedic edge to them, but the TV show perhaps leans into the comedy a bit more. This keeps the show feeling light, even its darker moments, and maybe risking being a bit too lightweight. It's again Skarsgård who helps this by ensuring the melancholic and even tragic aspects of Murderbot's situation come through.

The show's biggest comic success is its depiction of the show-within-a-show, Sanctuary Moon, in which surprisingly big hitters (like John Cho, Clark Gregg, DeWanda Wise and Jack McBrayer) get into ludicrous hijinks in short excerpts from Murderbot's favourite media. It feels inevitable at some point that we'll get to see a full episode of this madcap show.

More controversial are the short episode lengths, with most episodes only clocking in at half an hour, some less. This is an unavoidable side-effect of having ten episodes to adapt such a short (sub-150 pages) book. In retrospect it might have been better to have had five hour-long episodes, or to have binge-released the series rather than stretching it out over ten weeks, which risked becoming interminable.

The show does get better as it goes along, and the last few episodes where Murderbot has less to hide and more to sacrifice for its newfound friends, make for a compelling end to the season. But it will be interesting to see where the show goes from here, given the new few books are also extremely short.

Murderbot: Season 1 (****) is available to watch now globally on Apple TV+. A second season is in production right now for airing in 2027. Meanwhile, the eighth Murderbot book, Platform Decay, is due out later this month.

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

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

For many years the game of foot-the-ball has been played in the back alleys of Ankh-Morpork, with teams formed from street communities coming together in sporting comradeship (involving violence and pies, not necessarily in that order). But the game is starting to turn ugly, and in the spirit of maintaining civic order, the Patrician has decided to make the game legitimate, with professionally-organised teams and codified rules. The wizards of Unseen University are invited to form a team and Archchancellor Ridcully enthusiastically agrees, with new staffmember Mr. Nutt proving an invaluable asset. But the old street game isn't going to die peacefully...

Unseen Academicals, the thirty-seventh Discworld novel, was published in 2009 and bears a somewhat difficult legacy. It was the first novel in the series to be published after Sir Terry was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, a mark that would also hang over the remaining four books in the series, with melancholic (and probably futile) analyses of what impact the illness had on Pratchett's writing. From a personal perspective, it was also the last Discworld novel that I read whilst Pratchett was still with us; the four subsequent books will be all-new to me as I wrap-up this long (long) gestating reread project.

It is also the longest novel in the Discworld series at over 530 pages in paperback, making for a surprisingly chunky volume for an author who was never keen on the shelf-destroying bricks taking up shelf-space in the fantasy sections of bookshops. The length is down to two things: Pratchett trying to do a lot more in this book than he normally attempts in a single novel, and a lessening of focus in the novel's second half. The length is even more notable than it might be otherwise because the core premise is decidedly slight. The book comes off very much as a throwback to the Discworld concept of "introduce real-life idea XXX to Ankh-Morpork and see what happens," previously achieved with the cinema, theatre, shopping centres, rock music, war, guns, post office, banks, newspapers, war (again) and tourism, and in particular to the earlier books in the series which embraced that idea without getting overwhelmed by it. Moving Pictures seems to be a particular touchstone, as that novel even gets a rare continuity mention in this one.

The book opens well with football fervour already sweeping the city and the Patrician - much chattier here than normal and, decidedly overused - decides to head off an inevitable problem by regulating it. Not willing to interfere with the game himself, he fobs the idea off on Unseen University, on the grounds they are already a sporting institution (especially the sport of eating) and have rules and a hierarchy already in place. So far so good, and the first 200 pages or so of the novel are very strong. We meet Mr. Nutt, a goblin who is trying to rehabilitate his species' unsavoury reputation single-handed and who is also a fine potential football player, as well as his friend Trevor who has promised never to play again. We also meet Glenda, our typical Hypercompetent Pratchett Protagonist Who Is The Only Sane Person In The Room, a trope which might be a bit more annoying if Pratchett wasn't so damned good at executing it.

However, the book then throws more ideas into the mix than it really has time to deal with. The former Dean of Unseen University has been poached by a rival institution in Pseudopolis and is continuing his long-standing rivalry with Ridcully from a position of (according to him, anyway) equals. The UU has also neutralised the very threat posed to reality by an evil wizard/Dark Lord by giving him the one thing greater than land or gold or magical immortality: tenure. We also touch base with Rincewind and the Luggage for the first time in a very long time, though alas they are limited here to some extended cameos. We also get hints of a romance between the Patrician and another morally-questionable ruler, Glenda's best friend becoming possibly Ankh-Morpork's first supermodel, the continued rise to criminal power by a former back-alley thug, the continued misadventures of the editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times, the City Watch getting involved...this is a book not so much stuffed to the gills, but the fins and backbone as well, and even the swollen page-count can't do them all justice.

The lack of focus can be seen with the fact we are given two reasons why UU has to form a football team. The institution is enjoying the fruits of a bequest from a deceased member, but his will stipulates they need to get on top of the situation or lose access to that cash. But then the Patrician just insists they need to form a team anyway. It feels like one of these ideas should have been jettisoned at least.

The book also feels like it can't work out what to do about Nutt. Rehabilitating a single goblin doesn't even register on the radar given Ankh-Morpork is home to the Vampire Temperance League and thousands of trolls who have agreed to abide by local laws, with werewolves serving in the City Watch and golems doing a lot of work in the city. There's nothing really noteworthy about Nutt also going against the grain of his species and being trusted, and a late-book revelation about his backstory doesn't really change that at all. As a result, a lot of the tension in Nutt's story fizzles out. If this had been a book much earlier in the timeline, that storyline would have had more legs to it.

Still, when the book works, it works well. Ankh-Morpork holds a strong claim to being the single greatest fantasy metropolis ever depicted in print, and Unseen Academical's greatest strength is fleshing that out in much greater detail. We get a strong sense of life on the Ankh-Morpork street for ordinary people that we haven't seen for a long while, and for the first time a reader can feel how the city has shifted from its medieval origins in The Colour of Magic to something more Victorian, even proto-steampunk and industrial. The atmosphere of the changing city is Pratchett's greatest triumph in the latter run of novels in the series.

But the lack of focus continues to hurt the book. For a book about football, there isn't very much football in it, and I don't get the sense Pratchett is that interested in the game. What he is interested in is the impact it has on people, and how people can wrap their hopes and fears for life itself into their support for their football team. It's an interesting theme which he does explore, but maybe in not as much depth as you'd normally expect.

Unseen Academicals (***) is well-written and amusing, with superb worldbuilding, but it is also a little flabby, somewhat overlong and unfocused, and is unfortunately towards the weaker end of the Discworld series in quality.

A previous version of this review was published in 2010.

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NIVALIS gets new trailer, name and release date

Ion Lands have revealed the release date and new name for their long-heralded futuristic game Nivalis. Now retitled Nivalis Nights, the game will hit Steam on 29 September this year. They have also released a new trailer for the game.

The game is a spiritual successor to their 2020 title Cloudpunk, which saw the player driving a flying taxi cab around the city of Nivalis and gradually getting drawn into a complex series of stories involving their passengers. An expansion almost as long as the original game, City of Ghosts, followed in 2021. The game was told primarily from behind the dashboard of the taxi, but also allowed the player to get out of the car and explore some areas on-foot with some low-fi, Minecraft-esque voxel graphics.

Nivalis Nights maintains that look, but at a much higher degree of fidelity. This time around your character is running a business, starting off as a noodle bar, but can acquire more businesses and properties. The goal is to work your way up above the clouds. However, a serial killer on the loose may throw a wrench in your plans.

The game has been delayed multiple times, as it sounds like the scope and scale became significantly more ambitious.

The game certainly looks extremely impressive. Hopefully it can avoid getting swamped by all the other games launching in August and September as they seek to get out of the way of the all-consuming behemoth of Grand Theft Auto VI in November.

Widow's Bay: Season 1

Widow's Bay is a picturesque island off the coast of New England, with wonderful sea views and friendly locals. Mayor Tom Loftis is determined to make Widow's Bay the "new Martha's Vineyard," by getting a feature in a national newspaper and website. But a great many locals are convinced the island is cursed, to Tom's disgust. The tolling of the church bell for the first time in decades and the beginning of a new series of unusual events starts to make even Tom wonder if something really strange is going on.

Widow's Bay is a new Apple TV show that attempts to merge the uncanny weirdness of, say, Twin Peaks, with more comedic sensibilities. Showrunner-writer Katie Dippold (Parks & Recreation) nails the vibe of offbeat humour just perfectly, creating a show that feels like it could be a Stephen King novel with a laughter track (perhaps inevitably, King is a big fan), or maybe a TV version of the movie Cabin in the Woods.

Matthew Rhys (The Americans) stars as Mayor Loftis, the harried everyman who is trying to make the island more attractive to investment and tourism, to the disdain of his constituents who seem to simultaneously decry the state of the economy but also complain about any attempt to fix it. Loftis is a determined believer in science and rationality...up to a point. His assistant Patricia (Kate O'Flynn) still bears the scars of a close encounter with a serial killer when she was a teenager. Local eccentric Wyck Crawford (Stephen Root) claims that disaster is about to befall the island, to Loftis's scorn...until some odd events see him reluctantly seeking Crawford's advice.

The show starts off in an episodic mode, with each episode seeing a different weird event happening on the island, with Loftis investigating and scoffing at any idea there is a supernatural explanation. Early episodes end inconclusively, with it being unclear if supernatural shenanigans are to blame or perhaps sabotage-minded locals keen to keep tourists away. Eventually the show takes a stand and a more serialised storyline develops, as the backstory of the island is developed through flashbacks to 300 years ago. The show is also not afraid to experiment; one self-contained storyline about what appears to be an evil self-help book is particularly genius. The transition from episodic to serialised also works quite well.

Superb performances by leads and bit-players alike anchor the show, with O'Flynn emerging as the most impressive player, stealing scenes from out under her more famous co-stars Rhys and Root. Betty Gilpin (GLOW) also steals the entire flashback episode she leads.

Where the show falters is in two areas. The young teens of the island, led by Loftis's son, are not particularly interesting or sympathetic, making that whole storyline fall a bit flat. The show's pacing also flags on the home straight, with the feeling that maybe eight episodes would have been better than ten to tighten up the narrative. The amount of comic invention on display is impressive, but can feel a little diluted by overuse. An entire episode where one of the characters is out of their mind on drugs also falters, though the idea is handled better than in some other shows.

But it's hard to criticise the show too much. Widow's Bay (****½) is darkly comic, occasionally scary, but mostly a well-played drama and horror where the darkness comes as much from the interior of the characters and their experiences as it does from the exterior, maybe-supernatural causes. The season is available now on Apple TV+. A second season has been greenlit.

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

Russell T. Davies leaves DOCTOR WHO (again), 2026 Christmas special cancelled

Russell T. Davies has confirmed that his second stint as Doctor Who showrunner has come to an end after four years, two seasons and five specials. Bad Wolf Productions are also ending their association with the franchise, and the BBC is now looking for a new production partner and showrunner to take the show forwards. As a result, the planned 2026 Christmas special has been cancelled.

It's fair to say that Davies's second stint as showrunner has been variable at best. A small number of great-to-excellent episodes were offset by some of the weakest episodes since the franchise's relaunch in 2005 (with Space Babies arguably being the weakest episode in that time), and muddled and confusing serialised plotting. More damning is that both season finales, previously a strength of Davies, were a total mess. There was clear behind-the-scenes chaos on the show, with new companion Ruby Sunday (a splendid Millie Gibson) demoted to a recurring character between seasons for unclear reasons. Ncuti Gatwa also ended his time as the Fifteenth Doctor after just two seasons, despite previously indicating he would do at least three. Spin-off show The War Between the Land and the Sea failed to make a splash (so to speak) and co-production partner Disney terminated their agreement with the BBC after just 26 episodes produced in total. Ratings tumbled across Davies's run, and the show failed to make much of an impression on Disney+ either.

The good news is that the BBC is committed to continuing to produce new Doctor Who and enhance its international profile. They recently partnered with AMC in the United States to relaunch the show's existing library there, though so far they have not committed to any kind of co-production deal. The BBC is talking to other independent production companies to see what interest there is in working on the show, and the current plan is to bring the show back with a full season rather than a single TV special.

Bad Wolf Productions was set up by ex-BBC and ex-Doctor Who personnel from Davies's first run and have produced a series of hit shows including A Discovery of Witches and His Dark Materials. They were recently acquired by Sony. Why Bad Wolf is leaving the project - despite the name, Davies is not affiliated to Bad Wolf directly - is unclear. However, ex-Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston had previously criticised the team there with having enabled bad behaviour during his own stint on the show in 2005, and indicated he would not be interested in any future cameo appearances until they left the picture.

The cancellation of the 2026 Christmas Special does mark a historical moment, as it means that 2026 will be the first calendar year since 2004 that will see no new Doctor Who content aired at all, bringing to an end twenty-one years of continuous production, a remarkable feat in modern television and almost equal to the original show's twenty-six-year continuous production run (from 1963 to 1989).

Davies himself has won some recent critical acclaim with his new drama series Tip Toe, and is already planning future projects.

Subterranean Press to shut down

In sad news, premium genre publisher Subterranean Press is to cease operations in 2027.

Founded in 1995 by William Schafer and Tim Holt, the press is based in Burton, Michigan. The press publishes science fiction, fantasy, horror and some mystery. The press was noted for being an early adopter of the luxury/limited print book format, publishing, among others, George R.R. Martin, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, Arkady Martine, Joe Hill and Robin Hobb. Arguably Subterranean Press's success helped pave the way for the likes of Broken Binding.

According to the press release, Subterranean will continue fulfilling its 2026 and 2027 release schedule, but will terminate operations in late 2027 or early 2028 depending on the schedule being hit. Some ongoing projects will be transferred to other publishers with plans to coordinate art and design to ensure a consistency of appearance with new publishers.

Subterranean Press were due to publish three novellas by Scott Lynch in the near future to act as a prelude to his novel The Thorn of Emberlain. It is unclear how this project will be impacted.

Subterranean Press produced many beautiful editions of classic genre novels over the years, getting ahead of the rest of the game. They will be missed.

Creative Assembly unveils ALIEN: ISOLATION 2

Creative Assembly and Sega have lifted the lid on their new survival horror game, Alien: Isolation 2.

The game is, as subtly hinted by the title, the sequel to Alien: Isolation, released in 2014. That game saw the player take on the role of Amanda Ripley, the daughter of the movies' Ellen Ripley, as she is summoned to the Sevastopol space station only to find it infested with the traditional xenomorphs.

The sequel takes place planetside, at the Kurasaki Colony. A crashed ship, possibly related to the events of the original game, has unleashed at least one xenomorph upon the facility. The protagonist - Amanda's return has not yet been confirmed - takes on the xeno in the new setting. I'm assuming, like the first game, this one will de-emphasise combat in favour of stealth, horror and survival mechanics. The trailer does hint at the return of the Sevastopol androids, who provided a far more beatable enemy to go alongside the standard acid-and-claw threat of the xeno.

Alien: Isolation 2 does not yet have a release date, but based on the pre-alpha state of the footage, 2028 might be a more realistic guess than 2027.

Daredevil: Born Again - Season 1

Matt Murdock hangs up the mantle of Daredevil after a personal tragedy and so he can focus on his work as an attorney in New York City. The unexpected election of convicted ex-convict and former crime lord Wilson Fisk to the position of Mayor brings Murdock - and Daredevil - back into play.

The Netflix-Marvel collaborative series Daredevil (2015-18) was a huge success, a premium TV show featuring one of Marvel's most interesting and conflicted characters. Superb casting, including for-the-ages performances from Vincent D'Onofrio, Charlie Cox, Jon Bernthal and Deborah Ann Woll, rewarded it with a committed fanbase and a whole slew of spin-off shows, including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and team-up mini-series The Defenders, though the quality of these shows became increasingly questionable. With Marvel's parent company Disney launching a rival streaming platform, these shows entered a canonical limbo, with Disney reluctant to commit to them being official in the Marvel Cinematic Universe even after they regained the rights to air the shows on Disney+ and started using Cox and D'Onofrio in other projects.

Daredevil: Born Again, insanely, started off as a reboot of the previous show using some of the same actors (but randomly recasting others) in a new continuity. Fortunately, sanity prevailed and the entire Marvel-Netflixverse was moved into the mainline MCU canon. Less fortunately, this decision was made only some time into the show's production, resulting in substantial reshoots, some actors replaced by their original counterparts and a lot of work needing to be done to have the resulting story make sense.

Your view of Born Again's first season will likely depend on your appreciation for the above. On the one hand, that the season is as cohesive and well-acted as it is, is nothing short of miraculous. On the other, there's a distinctly off-kilter feeling in the season as it moves between newly-shot material (mostly book-ending the season) and trying to incorporate the original concept of a more episodic series with stand-alone cases. In practice this really only survives with an episode about Murdock trapped in a bank (without his  Daredevil gear) during a robbery, which ironically might be the best episode of the season. Other storylines feel a bit all over the place, with Vanessa Fisk's infidelity feeling particularly like a storyline that eats up time without bringing much of value to the series.

The disjointedness can also be found in the casting: Deborah Ann Woll's Karen Page is the heart, soul and sometimes common sense of the series, but she spends most of the season benched in San Francisco. Jon Bernthal's Punisher also makes a welcome return, but has little to do. More successful is the introduction of serial killer Muse and his pursuit of therapist Heather Glenn (Murdock's love interest for the season), resulting in a morally murky, emotionally conflicted storyline that is quite successful.

Elsewhere the season's biggest success is Wilson Fisk. That Vincent D'Onofrio has made this character his own, imbuing him with menace but also a rough charm and a romantic (ish) heart, was well-established a decade ago. Here he has to play Fisk with restraint and political savvy, as his go-to solutions of violence and terror may have worked as Kingpin, but cannot fly as Mayor. There's a whole bunch of subplots about Fisk's staff, who are won over by his charm but also scared of his reputation, which work surprisingly well. Putting constraints around Fisk and watching him try to operate within those constraints is a clever move which helps overcome the vague feeling that Marvel know what they have here and are risking over-using it (a much bigger problem in the subsequent season).

The integration of the sub-franchise into the wider MCU is also a mixed bag. Bringing in characters like Swordsman and Ms. Marvel's family are interesting moves, but with the show now fully integrated into the wider universe, questions like, "where the hell is Spider-Man?" (especially since Murdock met Parker in the last movie) feel more germane than they were during the original show, without many good answers.

The season finale is pretty strong, seeing Fisk finally deciding how he is going to use his newfound status and power, and Murdock calling on his full array of allies for help, setting up a potentially more interesting second season.

Daredevil: Born Again's first season (***½) is not the slam-dunk, home run fans of the Netflix original series may have been hoping for, with some messy pacing and side-plots that don't feel well-developed. That a large chunk of the original cast is missing is also frustrating. But some of the new characters are interesting, D'Onofrio and Cox's formidable charisma are always fun to watch on-screen and some great groundwork is laid for future seasons. The season is available on Disney+ now.

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Square confirm FINAL FANTASY VII: REVELATION for early 2027 release, completing the REMAKE trilogy

Square has confirmed that their long-gestating Final Fantasy Remake Trilogy will finally be completed early next year, with the release of Final Fantasy VII Revelation.

The game follows Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024). The trilogy retells the story of the original Final Fantasy VII (1997), a pivotal and influential title for the original PlayStation console and the biggest-selling game in the venerable Japanese roleplaying series (currently up to sixteen mainline titles). The remake trilogy expands on the original storyline by adding numerous new subplots, quests, side-quests, characters and Easter eggs, with some hints that this remake story is a parallel universe version of the original instead of a straight retelling.

Fan response to the trilogy has been mixed, with some praising the radically improved graphics and deeper exploration of areas and characters only lightly touched on by the original game, but others unimpressed by the monstrously bloated length (Rebirth alone is roughly three times longer than the original entire game), the move away from turn-based combat and changes to the original story/canon. Most annoying is the fact that a new "man in the van" character, the profoundly irritating Chadley, has more dialogue lines than anyone else in the games. Hopefully his presence in the third game has been moderated.

Another shift this time around is that the game will be a multi-platform release, launching simultaneously on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in Spring 2027.

Person of Interest: Season 5

Samaritan's power seems unmatched, with the American government now fully on-board with its operations after it brutally ends a gang war in New York City (with limited attention to due process). Howard Finch and his allies, bruised from several defeats and with one of their number missing and the Machine's power curtailed, now have to make a fateful decision: to take the war to Samaritan and try to end it forever, or accept a future where humanity's destiny is out of its hands.

Person of Interest's final, somewhat curtailed final season (with only thirteen episodes compared to previous year's twenty-plus) has a lot to accomplish. Over its lifetime, Person of Interest has built up a huge number of storylines and character arcs it needs to service if it wants to nail its ending.

Fortunately, it succeeds with unusual ambition. We still get PoI-of-the-week storylines, perhaps unexpectedly given how close to the end we are, but most of these are still connected to the main storyline in one form or another. The show's off-kilter sense of humour remains intact, with an early storyline where the Machine's facial recognition fails, making all the actors have to play one another's characters, being a highlight (alas they don't sustain it for a whole episode).

The biggest weakness of the season is having to keep the gang split up; Shaw was captured by the bad guys late in Season 4 and the show is not in any hurry to have them reunited. This does give us one of the show's finest hours, where Shaw is subjected to countless VR simulations of what would happen if she escaped, but arguably keeping the gang split up and not having the rest of the team trying to rescue her (Finch seems to think she's dead but is not fully convinced) with vigour is strange.

As the show approaches its endgame, it's refreshing to see it shed any writing or commercial inhibitions. There are some well-executed major plot swings, but the show's biggest moment is saved until the end. The show's finale, Return 0, is possibly the show's finest hour. A killer soundtrack, borrowing music from Philip Glass and the Ex Machina soundtrack, frames a non-linear depiction of the final showdown between the Machine and Samaritan, with our characters trying to swing the balance in the Machine's favour (and showing hesitancy about entrusting humanity's favour to another AI, albeit a "good" one). The episode is filmed in a style and atmosphere completely unlike the rest of the series, feeling more like a big prestige drama than a CBS procedural, and it works brilliantly.

Few long-running shows deliver a solid ending, and Person of Interest does that, making it an exception to the rule. The ending allows for the viewer to speculate about what happens next whilst also not leaving too many unanswered questions. The viewer may also feel the ending, and the show as a whole, feels a lot closer to reality now than when it originally aired a decade ago.

Person of Interest's final season (****½) maybe takes a bit too much time to regroup from the Season 4 finale before pushing the main storyline forwards, but when it starts moving, it does so with determination and focus. A superb finale, illuminated by great performances, confirm the show's position as one of the most underrated genre series of the past decade. The show is available on physical media and streaming platforms worldwide.

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

RIP Anthony Stewart Head

The sad news has broken that actor and musician Anthony Stewart Head has passed away at the age of 72, following complications developing from pneumonia. Head was known to multiple generations for numerous roles on stage and screen. However, he will almost certainly be best-remembered for playing the role of Rupert Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003).

Head was born in Camden, London in 1954. The son of documentary film-maker Seafield Head and actress Helen Shingler (as well as the younger brother of singer Murray Head), unsurprisingly he chose a career in the spotlight. He studied at LAMDA (the London Academy of Music and the Dramatic Arts) before making his stage debut in the 1970s. He made his TV debut in 1978 in the World War II drama series Enemy at the Door.

As well as acting, Head was noted for his singing voice. He spent some time in the musicals Godspell and The Rocky Horror Show, and provided backing vocals for the bands Red Box and Two Way in the 1980s.

Head made his major breakthrough in an unconventional way. In 1987 he went up for what appeared to be a small role in a TV advertising campaign for coffee company Nescafe. The campaign saw a series of adverts forming a will-they, won't-they romance between Head's character and Sharon Maughan's. Surprisingly, the advertising campaign (which ran until 1993) caught the imagination of the country and turned Head almost overnight into a sex symbol. The advertising campaign transferred to the United States, where the coffee company was known as Taster's Choice, with both Head and Maughan reprising their roles (albeit this time with American accents). The campaign opened doors for Head in the USA and he started to be offered work in American television.

In 1996 Head auditioned for the role of the Eighth Doctor for the Doctor Who TV movie, losing out to Paul McGann. Despite losing the main role, Head soon began contributing to the franchise by voicing webcasts and audio dramas.

In 1996, Head was simultaneously cast in pilots for two shows, one in the UK and one in the USA: Jonathan Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both shows went on to be long-running, smash-hit successes but Head could only be in one of them full-time. Despite the complications of filming in Los Angeles whilst his family was based in the UK, he picked Buffy, his second major breakout hit.

In Buffy, Head played Rupert Giles, the "Watcher" who trains and mentors the titular Slayer (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar), succeeding the role played by Donald Sutherland in the original film. He originally played the role as a stiff upper-lift British stereotype but as the show continued, his character's darker backstory was explored in some detail, revealing a rougher, rock-and-roll origin as a more morally dubious magic-user known as "Ripper." Head was able to use his more normal speaking voice for this version of the character, as opposed to his posher voice as the adult Giles.

Head played the role for five full seasons and into the sixth. Missing his family, Head switched from a regular to a recurring role, appearing multiple times through the sixth and seventh seasons before joining Buffy for her final battle in the series finale. Some scenes in the early seventh season were even shot at Head's actual house in the UK to accommodate his schedule. Buffy also allowed him to demonstrate his singing voice, singing The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" in a Season 4 episode before playing a key role in the Season 6 musical, Once More With Feeling.

Buffy made Head a worldwide star and he got regular job offers for both sides of the Atlantic, though he preferred to remain in the UK. Recurring roles on My Family and Monarch of the Glen followed, along with another highly memorable role playing the British Prime Minister in Little Britain, playing the straight man to David Walliams' deranged assistant. 

In 2005 Head continued his association with Doctor Who by narrating documentaries covering the return of the show to television. In 2006 he played the villain Mr. Finch in the episode School Reunion, opposite David Tennant and Billie Piper. The story was notable for reintroducing Elisabeth Sladen as Classic Who companion Sarah Jane Smith, but Head's villainous turn won praise as well.

In 2007, Head was in advanced talks with the BBC and Fox to reprise his role as Rupert Giles in a UK-set Buffy spin-off show called Ripper. The planned BBC-Fox co-production would have seen Giles investigating smaller-scaled supernatural mysteries in Britain, with the possibility for occasional appearances by his Buffy co-stars. However, the BBC and Fox could not agree on terms, particularly an episode count that would satisfy both parties, as well as debates over the tone of the series.

In 2008, Head was cast as King Uther Pendragon in the first four seasons of the BBC fantasy series Merlin. Uther is the King of Britain who is driven by an utter hatred of magic, forcing the young Merlin to operate undercover in his mission to help the young Prince Arthur achieve his destiny. The character is initially presented as a villain but Head provided him with more depth and explanation for his motivations.

Through the 2010s Head made frequent appearances in guest roles in television. In 2020 he achieved another notable success by playing the villainous role of Rupert Mannion on Ted Lasso.

It is unusual for an actor to embody one high-profile, breakout role in a career, and it is notable that Head managed to achieve so many. His coworkers seem to have been perennially unified in singing his praises as a decent and hard-working actor who welcomed collaboration and enjoyed being part of successful ensembles. He will certainly be missed by multiple generations of TV fans. He is survived by his daughters Emily and Daisy Head, both successful actresses.

RIP John Blanche

News has sadly broken that legendary Games Workshop illustrator John Blanche has passed away. Blanche is famed for establishing the look and feel of the Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy universe in the 1980s.

Blanche was somewhat vague on his personal details, allowing that he was born in 1948 on an unspecified British council estate, and gained his love of art whilst studying at college in the 1960s. He was drawn to science fiction and fantasy imagery, especially after reading The Lord of the Rings, but was told his interest would not lead to any kind of commercial success.

"Epic 40,000" (1997) depicts battles on an even more gigantic scale than standard 40K.

Staying true to his personal brand, he worked as a taxidermist in a Georgian manor house (as you do) before noting the explosion of science fiction and fantasy publishers in the 1970s, inspired by the success of Tolkien and the "New Wave" of authors spearheaded by the likes of Michael Moorcock. He relocated to London and got involved in the publishing industry with the help of artist and publisher Roger Dean, contributing to magazines and book covers, including some pieces for David Day's Tolkien Bestiary (1979).

"Amazonia Gothique" (1986) was Blanche's irritated reaction to the dominance of "bikini chainmail" and other illogical armour for female warriors in the SF and fantasy genres. This piece proved inspirational and influential on GW's Warhammer 40,000 line.

Blanche had already gotten into collecting and painting metal miniatures for wargames, so the chance to work for Games Workshop in 1977 seemed too good to pass up. He began illustrating covers for White Dwarf Magazine, and drew the localised British cover for Games Workshop's reprint of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. He continued to juggle book and magazine work with Games Workshop, but the relationship grew closer in the early 1980s. He created the cover art for the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 1983 and worked on dozens of sourcebooks and magazine articles for the game.

In 1986 he was made Art Director at Games Workshop in Nottingham and played a key role in establishing the look and aesthetic of the Warhamer 40,000 universe. He personally drew hundreds of pieces of art inspired by the setting and commissioned more as Art Director. His work for Games Workshop is notable for its sheer longevity; he only officially retired from the company in 2023.

"The Emperor of Mankind" (2008) may be Blanche's most famous single painting, a rare depiction of the Emperor of humanity sitting immobile on the Golden Throne on Terra, as he has done for ten thousand years.

His work for GW did not prevent him from working elsewhere, and he provided some iconic cover art for the Fighting Fantasy game book series as well. He also provided art for the local thrash metal band Sabbat.

John Blanche's artwork was powerfully influential on multiple generations of British science fiction and fantasy fans. His style was inimitable and his skill extremely impressive. He will be missed.

It's probably most fitting to leave on a quote from Warhammer 40,000's most notable writer of fiction, Dan Abnett:

"For me, John Blanche will always be the master. His extraordinary, grotesque vision informs everything we do."

The Witcher III to get a new expansion, eleven years after the last one

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is getting a new expansion, called Songs of the Past. This will be the third expansion for the game, following Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine. More remarkable is that this expansion will launch in 2027, eleven years after the release of Blood & Wine and twelve after The Witcher III itself.

The new expansion will once again see players take control of the witcher Geralt of Rivia and become embroiled in a new adventure. The new story will apparently bridge the events of The Witcher III with the upcoming Witcher IV, in which the player will take control of Geralt's ward/student/substitute daughter Ciri in the freezing far north of the Continent.

Alongside the expansion, CD Projekt are revising and updating the original game's system requirements, possibly as part of a revamp and mild update to the game as a whole.

CD Projekt will be unveiling more information on Songs of the Past shortly. With the expansion targeting a 2027 release date, that may indicate that CD Projekt are planning a 2028 release for The Witcher IV, but that remains speculative.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

The Death Stranding has disrupted the connection between the living and the dead, creating a strange, post-apocalyptic world where people live in isolated shelters or clustered in cities under a total surveillance state. If someone dies alone, their body turns into a ticking antimatter bomb, even more dangerously if they are killed by the undead spirits - BTs - that have drifted into our world from beyond. Certain people can see the BTs before they strike, and destroy them.

One such person is Sam Bridges, a porter who has already completed an epic journey across the former United States, linking remote cities and shelters together onto the chiral network, restoring connectivity and community to the human race. A year after he completed his mission, Sam is living in seclusion with his adopted daughter Lou when he is asked to bring Mexico onto the same network. His success in Mexico opens a portal, a "plate gate," leading to Australia. But his mission to bring the new continent back into contact with the rest of humanity is disrupted by devastating reversals and the arrival of new threats.

Death Stranding was released in 2019 as the first game by noted video game designer Hideo Kojima after his well-publicised split from Konami, after disagreements over the direction of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. A strange game about live, death, love, family and rock-climbing, the game was an acquired taste, with those who locked into its headspace loving it but others left baffled.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, is something that I don't think anyone was expecting from Kojima. It's a considerably simpler, more straightforward game than its forebear. Gone are the 20-minute cutscene TED Talks on the nature of reality, the metaphysical rules of how the game world works and characters with weird codenames talking about things you won't understand until a lot later in the game. Instead, Death Stranding 2 gets you into the action faster and cheerfully boils down the plot to, "linking cities together like last time, only now in Australia, and with monorails for some reason."

That's not to say that Death Stranding 2 drops all the weirdness and obtuseness from the game, but the denser plot elements are pushed far into the back end of the game in favour of focusing on what the first game did best: delivering parcels to people in desperate need of help.

The basic gameplay loop has Sam travelling around the open world, this time considerably larger than that of the first game, stopping at key settlements. These are divided between large cities on the edge of the map, big distribution centres at key points in the world and lots of individual small shelters, inhabited by individuals or small groups. Each settlement has goods that need to be delivered elsewhere, sometimes easy jobs with small amounts of cargo to a nearby location, sometimes a very large amount of extremely fragile cargo that needs to be taken across most of the map without breaking. Sam has a reputation with each settlement, and maximising his reputation allows him to claim more resources and build more equipment at each location. How fast he accomplishes each job and the status of the cargo in question can see him level up his reputation faster.

Traversing the world is possible on foot, using a variety of small vehicles, or using a larger truck. As with the first game, using the truck is by far the most efficient process (due to its large carrying capacity) but is stymied by a battery-limited range and mountainous terrain. You can build structures in the open world, including recharge points and even entire new shelters, and you can also build roads, which allow you to travel without using your battery. Roads are very resource-intensive to build, however. New to this sequel is that you can also build monorails, which can carry far vaster amounts of cargo and resources (not to mention you and your vehicle), but only between set locations. You can also now reactivate automated mines, which can be used to generate enormous quantities of resources.

Hardcore porters may prefer to travel on foot, using ziplines to traverse crevasses or go up and down mountains, but the game is relatively forging for the truckers, even more than the first game, with even the tallest mountain in the game being almost completely climbable on wheels.

The main story has Sam following directions on which location to visit next, usually involving taking a dangerous path through unexplored territory, dealing with bandits, the supernatural BTs or natural hazards along the way. The biggest change in Death Stranding 2 from the prior game is combat. In the first game, combat was to be avoided if at all possible, and nonlethal weaponry was encouraged since dead humans turn into ticking antimatter bombs which can blow up parts of the landscape (or cause total annihilation of the game world altogether). In the sequel, Sam now has access to stun-capable versions of machine guns and, somehow, explosive grenade launchers, able to knock enemies out or destroy BTs with the same weapons and never be in any danger of killing anyone. This feels a bit silly, removing a core gameplay element from the first game, but since the sequel throws a ton more combat at you than the first game, maybe it was unavoidable. The human and BT enemies, both of which now come in greater varieties, are now joined by strange, teleport-capable mechs, which might be more formidable foes if you didn't have access to missile launchers and grenades which render them trivial threats at best.

A story-focused playthrough of the game should take most players around 40 hours, maybe a bit longer if you decide to fix up a few roads and monorails, and unlock the hidden settlements on the map. Like the first game, the plot mostly revolves around Sam dealing with other characters (some new, some returning from the first game, and some who appear to be new but are actually characters from the first game in disguise), getting missions and updates from them and travelling to new locations. Sam seems far more taciturn in this game than the first one, to the point that you can go hours at a time without hearing Norman Reedus speak, which is a bit odd.

The biggest change to the gameplay loop is the addition of a mothership. The DHV Magellan is a huge mobile base which Sam has access to for most of the game, and can use for fast travel back to previously-visited cities, distro centres and even some shelters. If you're heading into new territory, you can only do that under your own power, but in areas linked by the network, the Magellan can remove a lot of repetitive makework from the game. You can even cleverly use it to carry an absolutely massive amount of resources (far more than any truck) to speed up construction efforts, which is a much-appreciated move. However, using the Magellan does prevent you from earning maximum reputation points on deliveries, so if you want to max out Sam's rep, you need to do it the hard way. The Magellan threads the needle of being a useful new tool without making the game too trivial. The way every single character always calls it "DHV Magellan" without fail instead of just Magellan is also curiously entertaining.

Death Stranding 2 benefits from a fair bit of humour throughout. Some of the missions are ridiculous, and undertaking missions for the enigmatic "Pizza Chef" results in a very funny cutscene. At one point, one of your companion characters gravely warns you that a very long cutscene is about to arrive. One returning character from the first game makes their arrival known via a full-on song-and-dance number (one ponders if Kojima was inspired by Alan Wake 2 here). The principle bad guy likes to use a sound-based weapon in combat that resembles a guitar, meaning he has to shred like a maniac to blow things up. One boss fight randomly turns into a Tekken-style 3D beat 'em up halfway through complete with health bars and special moves. Death Stranding 2 is notably less po-faced than the first game.

Whether Death Stranding 2 is as good as the first game is another question. It's bigger and, comparing like-for-like (solo or "connected" mode, where other players' structures may appear in your game world), a longer game than its forebear, with a much better-designed map, though maybe losing some of the tighter focus from the first game. It's definitely more straightforward, more combat-heavy and less weird, but that weirdness made the first game stand out from the crowd more. It feels like Death Stranding 2 is trying to be more conventional than the first game. That's only not a letdown because the first game was so oddball that the second game can only be more conventional in comparison. Compared to almost every other game out there, Death Stranding 2 still has a uniquely off-kilter atmosphere unlike anything else around (helped by its emotional soundtrack courtesy of Low Roar and Woodkid). Maybe more disappointing is that the second game uses a lot of copy-pasted assets from the first game, just punched up to 4K standards, with the shelters, distro centres and city entrances all being exactly the same as in the first game. Given it took three-and-a-half years to make the first game from scratch, one may ponder why it took six years to make the sequel given how much material is reused from its forebear.

Still, there's nothing else really around like this franchise, and the second game certainly benefits from being less obtuse than the first one (even if a total newcomer is still not going to have a clue what the hell is going on), with a much more satisfying, all-out epic action finale. Death Stranding 2 (****½) is an interesting game blending the survival horror, open world action adventure and crafting genres into something that can be quite compelling. The game is available now on PlayStation 5 and PC.

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