Sense8: The Finale

Wolfgang is a prisoner of BPO, but his fellow sensates have taken the enigmatic "Whispers" prisoner in turn. The two sides arrange a prisoner swap in Paris, but both are eager to double-cross the other and gain the upper hand in their clandestine war. For BPO, the sensates are a weapon and a resource to be exploited. All the sensates want is freedom. The two sides are poised for a final confrontation.

Sense8 is one of the oddest shows on television, an anthology show with eight main characters in which the central character of each story can call upon the skills and advice of the other seven, despite each story being very different in tone and ideas. It's also a show that is fairly over-brimming with positivity about humanity and about life. If the relentless cynicism of the likes of Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead gets too much for you, than Sense8 is the antidote, a show in which the characters can escape murderous torture, gun down some bad guys, and then get together with their cluster for a telepathically-communicated musical throwdown to Depeche Mode. As you do.

When Sense8 was cancelled after its second season, it was the raucous reception by the fans that saw Netflix agree to commission a TV movie to round off the story. This presented Lana Wachowski with a difficult choice to make. Sense8 was envisaged as a five-season project. With more than half of that material remaining, should she chuck all of that out and craft a simpler resolution to the story, or try to cram in another 36-odd episodes worth of plot into a single special? Her conclusion was to try to do a bit of both. So the central struggle of this finale is firmly on the sensates vs. BPO, with Whispers as the key in that conflict. That's fine and focused, but Wachowski also brings in a huge number of other elements which there is simply no time to develop, such as a neutral council of sensates who have so far stayed out of the struggle but are now willing to support one side and then don't do very much. Some of this excess baggage should have been dropped.

Sense8's finale gives fans a lot more of what they've seen so far: our characters swapping skills, having emotional heart-to-hearts and a couple of musical numbers and party scenes, along with the show's standard, fantastic location filming (the use of Naples is excellent, but the actual use of the real Eiffel Tower for the grand finale is jaw-dropping). However, it also drops the characters' individual storylines to focus on the grand mystery. This is possibly unwise, as the show's central storyline of shadowy government or trans-national organisations and mysteries dating back decades always felt a bit undercooked and took too much time away from the characters (a similar problem to Orphan Black and latter-day Lost). Still, at least the finale straightens out the show's mythology and resolves it with admirable efficiency.

Possibly less successful is the decision to pay off every single character in the show. And I mean every single character. Sylvester McCoy's elderly sensate has a part to play, as does Wolfgang's Conan the Barbarian-quoting best friend, and Kala's eternally confused husband and Capheus's political team and Will's cop partner from Chicago and Riley's chill hippy dad and Nomi's transphobic/homophobic mother and Sun's Korean cop nemesis/boyfriend and that bald girl from the second season and Angelica and her cluster (despite them all being dead) and pretty much everyone who hasn't been killed off. Jamming all of these characters into the special is nice, but unwieldy, massively self-indulgent and not very logical. Even worse, the proliferation of characters beyond the central eight means that some of the main cast of characters, most notably Capheus and Lito, don't really get much to do.

The finale also has some decidedly undercooked action scenes. Sense8's action scenes have always been phenomenal, the Wachowskis relishing their relatively low budget to get back to the ground-level tricks for shooting gunfights and martial arts they haven't had to employ since the original Matrix. For the finale, they clearly had much less money and time available than normal. The fight scenes feel perfunctory and the CG in the gunfights (to simulate bullet sparks) is poorly integrated with the live action. Given there's quite a few action scenes in the finale, this is definitely a bit of an issue, but ultimately a minor one.

But these questions of logistics and over-indulgence and logic are perhaps the wrong ones to address. Sense8 was a show about eight well-drawn characters from completely different backgrounds coming together and finding commonality despite their very different origins, and overcoming the obstacles in the way. The show wasn't perfect - bum dialogue and a tendency to schmaltz dogged it from early on - but its flaws were often endearing, its characters resolutely human and its message determinedly hopeful. Hopefully we will see its like again.

Sense8's finale (****) is available to watch on Netflix worldwide now, along with the rest of the series.

CD Projekt spill the beans on CYBERPUNK 2077

CD Projekt have revealed a lot more information about their epic, upcoming CRPG Cyberpunk 2077.

The action takes place in Night City, a new conurbation on the California coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Click to embiggen. This map was taken from here.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an epic roleplaying game set in Night City, California in the year 2077. The player plays a character of their own creation. Everything about the character is customisable: their gender, appearance, "life-path" (backstory) and cybernetic enhancements. What is fixed is their handle or nickname, "V", which was chosen to make dialogue more naturalistic. All dialogue in the game has been recorded by male and female actors.

Unlike CD Projekt Red's previous game, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 will be played primarily from a first-person perspective. You will see your character in certain circumstances (most notably cut-scenes and dialogue), but the game will be predominantly played from first-person, so more like Fallout or Deus Ex.

Although the game will be set in 2077, it's an alternative timeline that diverged from our own in the 1980s. The Cyberpunk pen-and-paper game history and timeline, which began in 2013 and became most popular through the Cyberpunk 2020 game, will remain intact. Characters from established Cyberpunk lore will appear in Cyberpunk 2077, as will corporations and factions.

Night City has six distinct regions: Watson, Westbrook, Santo Domingo, Heywood, City Centre and Pacifica. Pacifica is a dangerous, lawless slum area (see the map above). Other areas are incredibly rich. The city is very vertical in orientation. The game has a full day/night cycle and numerous weather conditions.

 

Night City has several megatowers, which are basically Judge Dredd blocks. Each one of these blocks extends for many levels and has its own shops, gangs, factions and a multitude of NPCs and stuff to do, as well as the areas outside and around the city.

You can get around the city on foot, by subway, by car and by motorbike along with other vehicles that haven't been shown yet (but may include taxis, hovercars and ambulances).

There will be ranged combat, focusing on the use of guns, as well as melee. You can also hack other character's cybernetic enhancements, and use stealth to take people down. The game will include weapons that can fire through walls or fire "smart" ammo that can track targets. Combat in the game has been designed so people who enjoy "twitch" combat can dive in with ranged combat and those who are more interested in roleplaying can use smart weapons or even stealth to avoid head-on combat altogether.

There will be three very rough "classes" you can follow: netrunner, techie and solo. However, these classes are highly fluid, allowing you to mix and match skills, attributes and cyber-enhancements as you like. Other Cyberpunk classes and archetypes, like rockerboys and corporate, will appear as other characters.

Advancement will come in two formats: standard EXP is gained from completing the main story quests. Streetcred is gained from doing side missions, killing tough bad guys and even things like wearing a fashionable jacket. Improving your streetcred will unlock new vendors, fixers and contacts who can give you access to new jobs.

As you gain levels, you can improve your skills and cyberware, as well as gaining perks, special abilities you can use in and out of combat.

As with most cyberpunk narratives, the main story will focus on the inequality between the poor people in the streets and the rich people in the towers above.

Cyberpunk 2077 will be released on PS4, XB1 and PC. No release date has yet been announced.

George R.R. Martin, a ton of fans and, er, the guy who founded Craigslist helped save THE EXPANSE

It was an impossible task: to convince Jeff Bezos, the richest man on Earth, to take mercy on the fans of an obscure science fiction show on SyFy and help save it after it had been cancelled. The fans rallied, sending cakes to Amazon TV headquarters, paying to fly a plane overhead for four hours with a banner saying "#SAVETHEEXPANSE" and even sending a model of the spaceship in the show, into space on a balloon.

It all paid off. According to Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, the outpouring of fan affection certainly helped save the show (along with sending her cake), but also key was a lot of critics recommending she watch the show (Bezos was already reportedly a fan of the books), which she did, bingeing the available episodes in just a couple of days. In an amusing moment, she confirms that Bezos was also receiving emails from the likes of George R.R. Martin and Craig Newmark (the founder of Craigslist) recommending he pick up the show.

Ultimately, Amazon decided to pick up the show and did the deal for the US rights from Alcon Entertainment. This is new information, as it suggests that Amazon may not yet have negotiated the international rights (currently held by Netflix), so we'll have to wait to hear about how fans outside the US will get to watch the show. Given that it was SyFy who insisted on the very silly six-month exclusivity period, it might be that, assuming Netflix holds onto the rights, future seasons will air much more closely with US transmission.

CD Projekt unveil CYBERPUNK 2077

Whilst Bethesda were disappointing fans with the news that Fallout 76 is an online-only game and that their next single-player RPGs are still years away, Polish developers CD Projekt Red quietly dropped a nuclear bomb by unveiling the first full trailer for the long and eagerly-awaited Cyberpunk 2077.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been in development since 2012, with CDPR working on the game alongside The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its expansions. After The Witcher 3's release in 2015 (and subsequently selling more than 20 million copies), CDPR moved into full production on the game and have now unveiled their work.

Based on Mike Pondsmith's seminal Cyberpunk pen-and-paper RPG from the 1980s, Cyberpunk 2077 is set in Night City, a fictional settlement on the coast of California between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The game allows the player to create their own character and determine their name, gender, appearance and cybernetic enhancements. The game is an open-world RPG with a central storyline but also a vast array of side-quests, sub-missions and optional activities that can be undertaken in Night City. It appears the entire city and its surrounding countryside will be available for the player to traverse, either on foot or by vehicle: taxis, Trauma Teams (futuristic amublances), flying cars and a large subway system appear to be available to use, and it seems that the player can also acquire a car of their own (which bears a passing resemblance to Knight Rider's KITT).

We don't know anything about the story, but there appears to traditional cyberpunk goings-on like rich businessmen employing dodgy gangs to do deniable tasks for them, along with significant action set pieces. The game is definitely aimed at mature audiences, with some disturbing cybernetic enhancements and torture scenes shown, along with a spectacular amount of violence.

CDPR's previous game, The Witcher 3, is for my money the single finest CRPG released this century. If Cyberpunk 2077 is even half as good, it will be an essential Day One purchase.

CDPR also released a statement alongside the trailer, confirming that they are committed to the singleplayer CRPG experience, which may be taken as a sly dig at Bethesda's multiplayer focus for Fallout 76 and former RPG titans BioWare abandoning the singleplayer scene altogether in their new game, generic multiplayer shooter Anthem. That said, it's been an open secret that Cyberpunk 2077 will have an online component, but this appears to be a very minor, optional feature (if it's even still in the game).

Cyberpunk 2077 has no official release date, but it appears likely that CDPR are targeting a late 2019 release if possible. Falling back to 2020, the date of the original Cyberpunk pen-and-paper setting, would also be appropriate.

Bethesda confirm that STARFIELD and ELDER SCROLLS VI are in development

Following the presentation of Fallout 76, a controversial online-only spin-off from the popular single-player RPG series, Bethesda Game Studios also confirmed long-standing rumours that they are developing two new single-player epic RPGs.

First up is Starfield, the first new franchise launched by Bethesda Game Studios since the original Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994. Details were thin on the ground, but Starfield will be in the science fiction genre and will be set in space and on alien planets.

Long-standing rumours about Starfield suggest that the game will be set predominantly on a gigantic space station, with the player undertaking missions and solving quests in the standard Bethesda manner. At key points, the player can also leave the space station and travel to other planets to undertake extra mission objectives. This makes the game sound very similar to the Mass Effect franchise from BioWare, although presumably Starfield will use Bethesda's traditional first-person perspective and will focus more on solo play than forming parties. The same reports claim that Starfield is set in the far future of the Fallout franchise and may link that universe to the Elder Scrolls setting, although this sounds less likely, especially after Todd Howard's insistence that this is an all-new and totally new franchise.

Starfield has no release date as yet, but late 2019/early 2020 seems feasible given that the game has been in full-time development since Fallout 4's release in 2015, and was in pre-production for some years before that.

Secondly, and far further in the future (as the game is listed as only in "pre-production"), is The Elder Scrolls VI, the follow-up to the immensely successful Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which has sold approximately 40 million copies since its release in 2011, making it one of the most successful individual video games of all time. Apart from a logo, a brief burst of the series theme music and a landscape flypast, the teaser video didn't reveal very much. Fan speculation based on the landscape seems to be that the game will be set in High Rock - the southern coastal region of which appeared in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall back in 1997 - with Valenwood as an outside, alternative possibility.

Bethesda confirm that FALLOUT 76 is an online-only game, for release in November 2018

In a major showcase event at the E3 video games conference in Los Angeles last night, Bethesda Game Studios confirmed that their new Fallout game, Fallout 76 will be an online-only game set in West Virginia. The news surprised many commentators, as previous comments had suggested that Fallout 76 might still be a single-player-focused RPG with some kind of optional co-op or multiplayer component.

Fallout 76 is set in 2102, just 25 years after the nuclear war that wiped out civilisation in the Fallout universe, and long before any of the other games in the series (Fallout 4, by comparison, is set in 2287). The game casts the players as residents of Vault 76, a nuclear fallout shelter in West Virginia. The game opens on Reclamation Day, with players setting out to re-colonise the surface by building new settlements, defeating monsters and coming into conflict with one another.

A more in-depth and fleshed-out versions of the settlement-building mechanics from Fallout 4 is present, with a strong focus on players working together to build up impressive outposts, forts and possibly entire towns in the wasteland.

Something that has elected a lot of praise is the map and environmental graphics. Although still using the positively decrepit Creation Engine (originally the GameBryo Engine and first used by Bethesda for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, released in 2002), the engine has been revamped to allow for larger forests. The game map is huge, a full four times the size of the Fallout 4 map, and covering the entire state of West Virginia. Players will be able to visit the ruins of the State Capitol in Charleston in the south-west of the state, the Greenbrier Resort (which in real life has a nuclear fallout shelter in the basement) in the far east of the state and West Virginia University in Morgantown, on the far northern border of the state. Point Pleasant, the site of the mysterious Mothman sightings of 1966-67 (a creature in the game appears to have been inspired by the fictional entity), and the New River Gorge Bridge are also present.

During the presentation, Bethesda Game Studios boss Todd Howard suggested it would be possible to play the game solo, but later confirmed that there are no human NPCs in the game. Instead, everyone you meet will be another player, with the only computer-controlled entities being monsters. Apparently the game will have some quests and missions in the game, likely assigned by the Vault 76 Overseer, but otherwise the best single-player gamers can likely expect is radiant AI quests generated at settlements, as seen in Fallout 4 (of the infamous "another settlement needs your help!" meme).

The decision to make Fallout 76 an online-only game has proven controversial, especially among those who hadn't been keeping up with the rumours and had been expecting a proper follow-up to Fallout 4 in a similar fashion to how Fallout: New Vegas was a follow-up to Fallout 3. The online-only nature of the game also elicited a negative response from the modding community, as the game will likely not allow substantive modding. Previous Bethesda games have been released in a buggy or subpar state and it's fallen to modders to fix the games and add new gameplay features whilst waiting for Bethesda to release official patches.

Fallout 76 will be released on 14 November 2018 on PS4, XB1 and PC.

WESTEROS: TOTAL WAR released

After twelve years in development, Westeros: Total War has finally been released.

Westeros: Total War is a free fan-made mod for the video game Medieval II: Total War and its expansion Kingdoms. It originally started development in early 2006 as a mod for the original Rome: Total War, but quickly transitioned to Medieval II when it was released later that year. The game has been completely revamped with several whole new teams since then.

The game has been released in a beta state, meaning it is complete but some bugs may be present which should be fixed. The team hope to expand the game with new features later on, but clearly given the immense amount of time taken to reach this point this is not guaranteed.

Due to changes in the Total War game engine since Medieval II's release, this kind of "total conversion" is no longer possible for more recent games in the series (like Attila, Rome II, Warhammer II and Thrones of Britannia). You require a copy of Medieval II and Kingdoms, or the complete pack, to play the game.

HIS DARK MATERIALS TV series casts James McAvoy as Lord Asriel

The BBC and Bad Wolf Productions have tapped James McAvoy to play the role of Lord Asriel in their upcoming adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Asriel is one of the main antagonists of the novel series (although that's probably simplifying his role too much). He was played by Daniel Craig in the unsuccessful 2007 movie version of the first book.

Also joining the project is Clarke Peters, who is best-known for playing Lester Freamon on The Wire. Peters will be playing one of the masters at Oxford who raises Lyra.

As previously announced, Dafne Keen (Logan) is playing the role of Lyra and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) is playing Lee Scoresby.

The BBC and Bad Wolf Productions are collaborating on the series, which they envisage as unfolding over four eight-episode seasons. Netflix and Apple TV are reportedly in a clash for the international streaming rights.

HBO orders GAME OF THRONES prequel pilot from Jane Goldman

HBO has pulled the trigger on their plans for a Game of Thrones spin-off series, ordering a pilot from writer/producer/showrunner Jane Goldman.

The First Men and the Children of the Forest forge the Pact on the Isle of Faces, thus beginning the Age of Heroes, four thousand years of peace that would end in the chaos and horror of the Long Night. Artwork by Magali Villeneuve for The World of Ice and Fire.

The spin-off series will be set in the Age of Heroes, the time period that began with the Pact - a peace treaty - being signed between the Children of the Forest (the original inhabitants of the continent of Westeros) and the invading First Men, and ended thousands of years later in the Long Night and the first war against the White Walkers. This is an intriguing time period, many thousands of years before the events of the series, with very little "canonical" information to go on. This will allow Goldman and her team of writers to create all-new stories in a much more primitive setting.

George R.R. Martin helped brainstorm ideas for the series as part of his longterm development contract with HBO, will be credited as a producer and will get a "story by" credit on the pilot, but will not take an active role in the series as he is focusing on completing the long-gestating sixth and (apparently) penultimate novel in the book series, The Winds of Winter.

Jane Goldman's involvement is particularly interesting. An experienced writer and producer, she wrote or co-wrote the scripts for Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Woman in Black, Kingsman and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Game of Thrones producer Vince Gerardis will also work on the show as a producer, and Daniel Zelman (Damages, Bloodline) will also be working as a producer on the project. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are likely to get an executive producer credit, but will have no day-to-day involvement as they will be moving from Game of Thrones' final season to developing a new Star Wars movie series for Lucasfilm next year.

The series doesn't have a title yet (although Game of Thrones: Age of Heroes sounds like it could work, in a sort of Masters of the Universe way...actually, they should think of something better) but it does have a logline:

"Taking place thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. Only one thing is for sure: from the horrifying secrets of Westeros' history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend… it's not the story we think we know."

Game of Thrones: The First Spin-Off will likely shoot its pilot next year and, if it gets a series order, will likely air in 2020 or 2021.

HBO are continuing to evaluate no less than four other pilot pitches for series set in the same world. Previously HBO have said they are likely to only order one to pilot, but this depends on the quality of the scripts they receive.

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Earth has just discovered that it is not alone in the universe. There's a multitude of alien races out there, not all of them very nice, and they recently only just avoided annihilating one another in the Sentience Wars, a conflict driven over what races were and were not intelligent. To replace interstellar warfare, they have introduced the Metagalactic Grand Prix, essentially a world-spanning singing contest. In order to prove itself worthy, Earth must send its finest musical artists to literally sing for the planet's survival. Unfortunately, the only artists acceptable to the aliens are washed-up has-been Decibel Jones and Oort St. Ultraviolet, whose brief superstardom years earlier has left both of them in very different conditions. To save the world, they have to put the band back together.

Space Opera is a comic SF novel written by Catherynne M. Valente, inspired by Douglas Adams and the Eurovision Song Contest, that kitsch and silly musical talent show which has replaced armoured warfare as the primary means of measuring international competition on the European continent. As the book is careful to make clear, this means it should be zany, crazy, neon-drenched, glitterball-kicking fun. And to be fair, Catherynne M. Valente has a go. There's a lot of invention in this novel, various original alien species and entertainingly bananas planets that are described with inventive glee.

The problem is that the book tells you it's going to be crazy fun, but never really kicks off into being zany fun on its own merits. It also tells you that it's inspired by Douglas Adams but doesn't really learn any of the lessons of Adams' work, which is centred in a dry wit, and a lot of English restraint which occasionally cuts loose in bananas set pieces which will leave you giggling in your chair like a loon. Instead, Space Opera has to settle for generating the occasional wry smile.

The book is oddly structured. At 290 pages of both large and very well-spaced type, it's very short (which is good, as the premise is too thin to support a prolonged narrative) but bizarrely lopsided. Approximately the first 200 pages of the book are dedicated to lengthy profiles of each alien race, the history of their worlds and the history of the Metagalactic Grand Prix. We're also introduced to our two protagonists and a couple of other alien characters, who explain the situation and travel to the planet where the Grand Prix is being hosted and, er, that's it. The actual plot of the book is rounded off in a mere 90 pages, the bulk of which is taken up by a drinks reception. The actual singing competition is over in a just a few pages. A compelling narrative this does not make.

The writing is meant to be witty and funny, but this is made difficult by the book being almost entirely written in long paragraphs, run-on sentences and an inventive but nonstandard use of commas (i.e. mostly forgetting there is any such thing as commas). It feels like this book should have been written in shorter bursts which made its points more succinctly. As it stands, despite the book's short length, reading it and parsing the enormous blocks of text feels like far more work than it should be for a book that is, by design, supposed to be short, zany and disposable fun.

The character work is fine, by which I mean protagonist Decibel Jones is a monumental tool it's hard to have much time for, but Oort St. Ultraviolet is a well-motivated fellow and we get some well-defined band dynamics. Mira is by far the most interesting character in the book, but gets the least amount of development by dint of having died some time before it starts. The story is okay, but so extremely brief that I wonder if this was originally supposed to be a short story and was padded out to novel length for commercial reasons.

A fairly major problem for the well-read SF and fantasy fan will be the nagging feeling this has been done before, and much better: Terry Pratchett's Soul Music and Robert Rankin's The Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code are both amusing and finely readable musical-influenced genre novels (although neither are the author's best). In fact, I kept wondering what madcap monk-genius Rankin would have made of this premise on one of his good days. I suspect it would have been a lot more entertaining. Rick and Morty also produced a reasonably entertaining episode with a similar premise a couple of years back, which was fine (although again not one of the show's best).

Space Opera (**½) is a weirdly-paced, oddly-structured novel which is nowhere near as amusing as it wants to be, manages to raise a few laughs here and there, but is also overwritten and overwrought with a thin story. A quintessentially non-essential read. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.