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.

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Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Moist von Lipwig has whipped the Ankh-Morpork postal service into shape and is enjoying the fruits of his success...or rather he is bored out of his mind and in danger of falling into bad old habits as he tries to stave off boredom. The Patrician hits on the idea of giving Lipwig a new task: rescuing Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint and associated bank, and turning them into a lean, dynamic operation fit for the Century of the Fruitbat. Unfortunately, the ossified staff and lunatic members of the family that owns the bank have other ideas, as does Lipwig's own girlfriend (or person adjacent to that position), whose quest to find golems and bring them to Ankh-Morpork may have succeeded rather more than she was expecting.

Making Money is the thirty-sixth Discworld novel, originally published in 2007. The book is also the sequel to an earlier Discworld novel, Going Postal. In that book, conman Moist von Lipwig was rescued from the gallows by the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, and set to work restoring the Post Office to its former glory. He succeeded handsomely.

Making Money opens a year later. The Post Office is a roaring success, but Moist is feeling a little bored, and has taken to breaking into his own bedroom to keep his skills fresh. The Patrician seems to have concluded that Moist would make an excellent troubleshooter to sort out Ankh-Morpork's other failing public services and tasks him with getting the Ankh-Morpork Bank back on its feet after the former chairwoman passed away, leaving her dog, Mr. Fusspot, to inherit the role of chairman. Moist is initially reluctant, but soon relishes the new challenge. Unfortunately, a family who own a share in the bank, the Lavishes, are not so keen on Moist's appointment and are soon digging into his dirty past to find something to use against him. Thrown into the mix are lots of golems, an undead necromancer with an eye for the ladies, a very dedicated bank clerk and a lot of clockwork items of an intimate nature.

As usual, the book is an effortless read. Pratchett's prose sparkles and flows as easily as ever, although careful reading is required to catch every observation and piece of satire as it flies past. Pratchett's typical approach of standing back, putting a mirror in front of something we take for granted (banking, in this case) and saying, "Look, this is a really daft system on quite a few levels," is again quite successful here. As with the other later Discworld novels, the broad out-and-out humour takes a back seat to more wry observations, although a comical interlude involving a dog becoming attached to a new "rubber chew toy" that in this case has fallen out of a cupboard of erotica, and then playing with it in polite company, shows that Pratchett still has time for a good old-fashioned piece of outrageous farce. That said, as with a number of other Pratchett novels the ending is somewhat contrived and the characters get out of the various fixes they're in with some fast-talk, handwaving and a nod from the Patrician, which is a resolution that has perhaps been used a few too many times in this series.

On the other hand, the book does feature Pratchett providing a wonderful take on how the advent of AI (or here, the golems) will impact the standard capitalist model of Ankh-Morpork, which is presented in both a funny and thought-provoking way. One could perhaps accuse Pratchett of jumping on the bandwagon, save he was doing this sixteen years before the release of the first commercial LLM models. Pratchett's prescience is, not for the first time, impressive.

Whilst it's not up there with the series at its best, and the tendency for characters who are intelligent and forthright in their own books to come across a bit as bumbling when appearing in cameos outside them (in this case various members of the City Watch) is a bit overdone, Making Money is a solid addition to the series and adds a lot to the evolution of Discworld and Ankh-Morpork (which is now starting to get its own underground rail network, the Undertaking), which by this point is firmly establishing itself as the most well-explored and established city in the entire fantasy canon (or at least up there with Lankhmar, Waterdeep, Sigil and Minas Tirith).

Unusually for the series, the book also has an ending setting up a future Lipwig adventure, Raising Taxes...though Pratchett could never figure out how to make a book about taxes funny, so instead pivoted to the railways with Raising Steam later on. Perhaps more regrettably, this was the last book Pratchett completed before received his medical diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's, the shadow of which would hang over all the subsequent books he wrote.

Making Money (****) is an enjoyable addition to the Discworld mythos, even if it doesn't do anything too spectacularly new.

A previous version of this review was published in 2008.

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Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu

Din Djarin, famed as "The Mandalorian," and his diminutive ward Grogu are working for the New Republic, bringing down Imperial warlords and war criminals in the lawless Outer Rim. His latest commission sees him reluctantly working with the Hutts to rescue the lost son of Jabba the Hutt so he can get information on an Imperial fugitive. Several reversals of fortune see Djarin with a bounty on his head from the most powerful crime lords in the galaxy.

The Mandalorian & Grogu is the first Star Wars movie in seven years, since the critical misfire of The Rise of Skywalker, despite multiple attempts to bring different projects to the screen in the interim. The film started as the fourth season of The Mandalorian, the hit TV show that established Disney+ as a serious player in the streaming wars, but was condensed down by director-writer Jon Favreau and writer-producer Dave Filoni at the behest of Lucasfilm and Disney, who were rather desperate to get a new Star Wars project on the screen, no matter the cost.

I suspect that as the fourth season of The Mandalorian, we'd have seen more extensive tie-ins with the established lore, a return for key characters and a furtherance of the show's main story arcs. As a stand-alone movie that cannot assume anyone watching it has seen even a single minute of The Mandalorian, the film has to jettison anything that even risks being vaguely confusing to create a perfectly stand-alone adventure. The result is a film that takes no risks and, more than once, made me ponder if some of the dialogue, visuals and pacing had been created by AI.

The Mandalorian & Grogu is the safest of safe choices, a perfectly adequate succession of action set-pieces, daring captures and escapes, and choice deployment of nostalgia bombs to make viewers giggle because a character has dropped a key catchphrase or deployed a fan-favourite vehicle. The amount of bombast on display is sometimes impressive, and those complaining the movie feels like an episode of the TV series may need to revisit the TV show to realise just how relatively constrained its action set pieces could be. Here, unshackled by such budgetary considerations (though this is still the cheapest Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi, adjusted for inflation), we get an at-times exhausting succession of gun battles, fights with creatures, fights with droids and, er, WWE-style pro-wrestling scenes with Hutts.

The sheer volume of action and CGI set pieces is there to disguise the thinness of the plot. The Mando goes to one place to rescue one guy and then goes somewhere else to capture someone else, but annoys some other guys who try to capture him etc etc. To mimic the TV show, dialogue is stripped-back but the writers confuse minimalism with triteness, with the film featuring some of the weakest dialogue of any Star Wars movie to date. Rotta the Hutt gives almost the exact same speech about being his "own man" (despite being a giant space slug, albeit an absolute ripped one, guy is shredded) twice, for no apparent reason. Virtually every utterance in the movie is either an intended zinger (landing with the accuracy of a drunk stormtrooper) or rote exposition. This may be the least-quotable Star Wars movie to date...which given the competition includes the prequel and sequel trilogies, and Solo, is really saying something. The lack of good dialogue is also a problem for the actors: Pedro Pascal is at least used to being taciturn and Sigourney Weaver is too much experience to let it throw her, but Jeremy Allen White has nothing to work with as Rotta and turns in such a flat performance it feels like placeholder dialogue. The colour grading is also poor, making this easily the flattest and least-dynamic-looking Star Wars movie of them all.

Still, there's something to be said for the straightforwardness of the film at a time when a lot of films seem to get tripped up on convoluted storytelling or lore density. There are some nods at other media - a bunch of the X-wing pilots from The Mandalorian show up, alongside Zeb from Star Wars: Rebels and Rotta himself from the Clone Wars TV show - but nothing too outrageous, and the film does not outsay its welcome, even if a couple of action set-pieces and an overlong recuperation sequence could have been jettisoned to make for a tighter movie. One thing the film does do well is further the characterisation of Grogu, who here is shown to be more capable of understanding the Mandalorian's instructions and is a lot more capable of undertaking his own solo adventures. He has more to do here than simply stand around looking cute, which is a relief.

Watched as a standalone Mandalorian adventure, this is perfectly serviceable. As the next great hope for Star Wars in the cinema, it whelms at best. But maybe after the commercial and creative misfires of Solo and The Rise of Skywalker, that's just what Disney wanted.

The Mandalorian & Grogu (***) might be the most serviceable slice of Star Wars yet made, a perfectly adequate way of wasting two hours that is rarely outstanding, occasionally mediocre, but mostly inoffensive. Young children may enjoy the film more for Grogu's antics. I would definitely wait on Disney+ for this one.

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The world's most expensive video game - Star Citizen - crosses the billion dollar mark

The world's most expensive video game has gotten even richer. Star Citizen's funding yesterday crossed $1 billion, making it the first video game in history to - formally - accomplish the feat.

Star Citizen commenced development in 2011 and was revealed to the public via a Kickstarter campaign in the autumn of 2012. The initial Kickstarter campaign drew in $2 million, but Cloud Imperium Games kept their own crowdfunding page open and allowed fans to directly back the game in return for in-game rewards like new ships. Funding reaching $65 million in late 2014, $127 million in September 2016 and $500 million in September 2022.

Star Citizen is a massive, online space simulator video game designed by Chris Roberts, the noted British creator of video games like the Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer series, as well as having worked in the movie industry. Roberts' funding scheme has allowed him to pursue the space game of his dreams, unencumbered by stifling corporate oversight, release windows, marketing synergies or - his harsher critics might say - common sense and disciplined design.

The game, originally mooted as a tight trade/combat experience similar to Elite: Dangerous or the X series, has since sprawled to a huge behemoth of a title where players can walk around densely-populated cities with an ingame avatar that can also pilot multiple ships, crew larger vessels, take part in boarding actions or engage in zero-gee combat. A recent common saying is that Star Citizen is actually trying to be the game that Bethesda's Starfield promised it was going to be but fell short. It's also showing why that's incredibly difficult, complex and expensive (Star Citizen has easily raised at least four times Starfield's production budget, probably more).

Star Citizen can actually be played right now as an early build which shows a lot that is extremely impressive has been accomplished, but a lot remains to be done in terms of optimisation, bug-fixing and creating a less daunting introduction to the game.

The main focus of Cloud Imperium Games is now releasing Star Citizen's single-player component, Squadron 42, a story-driven space opera epic featuring actors like Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill and Gary Oldman. Squadron 42, which has been helmed by Chris's brother Erin (noted for StarLancer and the various Lego video games). CIG is hoping to release Squadron 42, which they declared feature-complete three years ago, in the near(ish) future.

Star Citizen is now the most expensive video game ever made - at least officially - and has been in continuous development almost the longest, with only Beyond Good & Evil 2 (officially announced in 2008, and apparently in development before that, with recent updates confirming the game is still being worked on) shading it. Half-Life 3 has technically been in development longer, but that game was internally cancelled and later remounted several times as two distinct projects (Half-Life 2: Episode Three and now Half-Life 3).

The only game to challenge Star Citizen's budget is Grand Theft Auto VI, which has been in development at Rockstar Games since around 2018. The game has a much larger, international staff with a development budget at least in the high hundreds of millions. Some industry analysts have suggested that with marketing included, the game will likely top $2 billion in total costs, though others think this is too high. GTAVI is currently scheduled for release on 19 November this year.

No release date has been set for Star Citizen or its Squadron 42 component, though apparently the hope is the latter launches before the end of 2027 (apparently a 2026 release date has been nixed by GTAVI's impending arrival).

Brandon Sanderson & Joe Abercrombie talk fantasy in London

I travelled down to London this evening to see fantasy authors Joe Abercrombie and Brandon Sanderson in conversation. I don't get out to these events as much as I used to, but this was too interesting an opportunity to pass up. Waterstones hosted the event at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster.

Joe and Brandon are a similar age and launched their careers relatively close together, with Brandon's debut novel Elantris released in 2005 and Joe's debut The Blade Itself following a year later. Both have been highly successful, with Joe moving close to 10 million books and selling his latest novel The Devils to James Cameron for a movie adaptation, whilst Brandon has sold over 50 million books and is writing the screenplay for a Mistborn movie for Apple.

Brandon went over his career in some detail, such as writing thirteen novels before he got published, a good way of getting acquainted with failure and honing his skills of characterisation before hitting the big time. They contrasted their different takes on writing, with Brandon's big picture, pre-planned approach versus Joe's more instinctive approach.

Sanderson confirmed that he is deep in writing the first draft of the Mistborn movie and after that is completed, will work on a pilot script for Stormlight Archive, which Apple wants to adapt as series of 10-episode seasons. He also briefly discussed the adaptation of Skyward, but notes he may only be able to write some scenes or a single episode for that, as he doesn't have the time to be more directly involved.

There was also discussion on how Brandon has expanded his writing career into owning a publishing company that now has 65 staffmembers, more than some moderately-sized "proper" SFF publishers. Sanderson noted that many of the ideas he suggested 10+ years ago in terms of special editions, merchandise, extras etc are now commonplace in the field but it took a long time to get traditional publishers on board. 

There was also a Q&A and some interesting answers. Brandon noted he has his own private wiki, maintained by a full-time continuity editor, to keep all the lore straight. He notes his own memory is pretty good, but one weakness is that he sometimes forgets to remember the "new" version of lore he develops in rewrites, meaning that in writing the sequels he can sometimes use outdated terms (in his example he noted using silver instead of tin in writing the new Mistborn books and had to change that when he realised). Both authors had advice for a 16-year-old in the audience working on his first novel: Brandon's key advice was don't be afraid to throw things out that aren't working and starting again (including the whole thing if necessary).

The authors also discussed the cycles of the industry, with Brandon noting a 20-year nostalgia effect in the field, which made Joe excited to realise the pendulum was about to swing back towards sword-based gritty fantasy. We'll see if that happens!

It was a fun evening, Joe and Brandon made for great conversationalists and the audience got some interesting questions in.

ETA: Skyward is not in development with Netflix directly, but with the production company who handled One Piece for Netflix.

RIP Michael Keating

British actor Michael Keating has sadly passed away at the age of 79. Keating was best-known for playing the fan-favourite character of Vila in classic British science fiction series Blake's 7.

Michael Keating (far right) as Vila Restal in Blake's 7, alongside fellow late castmembers Paul Darrow (far left) as Kerr Avon and Gareth Thomas (centre) as Roj Blake

Born in Edmonton, Middlesex in 1947, Keating started acting as a teenager. After some early stage appearances, his screen debut was in a 1969 episode of Special Branch and he made occasional guest appearances in British dramas through the 1970s. At the end of 1977, he appeared in Doctor Who, playing the role of Goudry in the memorable serial The Sun Makers, alongside Tom Baker.

He was near-simultaneously cast in the role of Vila Restal in Blake's 7. Vila was a shrewdly conniving conman and thief, a petty criminal who is rescued more by default than design and becomes a founding member of Roj Blake's crew of freedom fighters on the starship Liberator. Vila is arguably the most reluctant crewman and initially held in disdain by his fellows (especially the ruthless Kerr Avon) until his supreme skill with computerised lock systems and his handiness in a fight (even if only in ambushes or attacking from behind) becomes apparent. Vila is, despite himself, inspired by Blake's cause and becomes a loyal member of the crew. He ultimately becomes the only character to appear in all fifty-two episodes of the series, airing from 1978 to 1981. Ironically, Vila was nearly killed off several times as the producers pondered which character was for the chop next, but was saved by other actors choosing to leave of their own accord and the growing sense he was one of the more popular characters for his mordant wit. 

Keating went on to make guest appearances in other British shows through the 1980s and 1990s until he was finally cast as Reverend George Stevens in popular British soap opera EastEnders, a recurring role from 2005 to 2017.

Keating returned to the role of Vila for Big Finish's line of Blake's 7 audio dramas, appearing in intermittent releases from 1998 to 2022.

News of Keating's passing elicited a large amount of sympathy from the Blake's 7 fanbase, as well as friends and fans of his work on other projects. The show had recently received a burst of new publicity with well-received HD remasters and Blu-Ray releases of the original show, and news that a possible reboot was in development.

Peter Jackson hints that films based on Tolkien's SILMARILLION may be possible

Peter Jackson has suggested that, for the first time, the Tolkien Estate may be amenable to allowing films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion to be made. The Silmarillion tells nothing less than the entire epic prehistory of Middle-earth, spanning thousands of years of history and backstory, setting the scene for the better-known events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

This marks a substantial shift in the Tolkien Estate's position. J.R.R. Tolkien himself sold the film rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in 1969 to generate funds for his grandchildren's education. Tolkien had despaired after earlier approaches for a film version of varying degrees of daftness, adopting a "cash or kudos" approach: either a highly respectable, artistic film or a huge amount of money. The animated Hobbit and Lord of the Rings adaptations, and Peter Jackson's two movie trilogies, were derived from these rights. He did not sell the rights to The Silmarillion since it was unfinished and unpublished; in the event, it was not published until 1977, four years after Tolkien's passing.

However, the Estate, under the stewardship of Tolkien's youngest son Christopher, stridently opposed approaches for additional rights, meaning that The Silmarillion and later books using Tolkien's hitherto unpublished writings, like Unfinished Tales and the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth series, were off-limits. Back in 2017, Christopher Tolkien retired and the Estate relented enough to allow additional, small rights (such as material related to the island kingdom of Númenor) to be licensed by Amazon for their Rings of Power TV series. Since Christopher Tolkien's passing in 2020, it appears that the Estate may have become more amenable to discussions.

To be clear, no new deal has been signed and Peter Jackson has only committed to saying that discussions have and will continue to happen, with the new composition of the Estate (including family members who actually appeared in Jackson's movie trilogy in cameo roles, earning some ire from the older members in the process) more open to at least discussing ideas. Warner Brothers have also gotten involved in some of those discussions.

The Silmarillion is unlikely to ever be adapted in full itself, being too dense and vast in scope, but one can easily imagine pulling episodes out and expanding them into films. Indeed, Tolkien himself did this with several narratives that his son Christopher later published as discrete books, resulting in the volumes The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin.

If it came to pass, it might address a major problem for Warner Brothers in trying to create more Middle-earth films. The Lord of the Rings is, by far, the meatiest thing Tolkien ever wrote. Splitting the far slimmer Hobbit into three big movies resulted in an overlong and tedious work lacking much of the charm of the original book. The in-development movies The Hunt for Gollum and The Shadow of the Past sound mildly ridiculous, taking very short episodes from Lord of the Rings (one mostly occurring off-page as well) and trying to make full movies out of them. And Amazon have likewise found with Rings of Power that trying to fill a lot of screen-time with a paucity of source material can easily backfire on you.

The Silmarillion wouldn't necessarily be a slam-dunk success either. The work is tragic and bittersweet, with the "good" guys frequently losing battles against the evil, original Dark Lord Morgoth (of whom Sauron is a middling-at-best servant), and the "good guys" often riven by internal conflicts against one another rather than the true foe. There are also, very strictly, no Hobbits in the work, and humans do not play a major role until halfway or more through the narrative. This might be a harder sell than the original Lord of the Rings. Still, at least it would be a more sensible idea than some of the other attempts to make more Middle-earth material. More developments as they are reported.

Warhorse Studios confirm they are making an open-world Middle-earth video game

Warhorse Studios have confirmed long-bubbling rumours that they are working on an open-world, single-player RPG set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium.

Er, that's about it. Aside from confirming the game is on its way, Warhorse haven't shown anything else from the game. However, for the announcement they showed a classic map of Middle-earth depicting Gondor, Mordor and Rohan, hinting that the game will be set during the War of the Ring or perhaps the centuries leading up to it.

Warhorse also confirmed that they will also be releasing a new Kingdom Come "adventure," which isn't as firm a commitment to a full-scale Kingdom Come: Deliverance III. Warhorse isn't the largest studio in the world, so perhaps making two full-scale RPGs is a bit much. Warhorse may also be teasing further expansions or spin-offs from its bestselling, critically-acclaimed 2025 RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.

Expect more information on both titles in the future.