HARDSPACE: SHIPBREAKER to get full release on 24 May

Blackbird Interactive has confirmed their spaceship-dismantling game Hardspace: Shipbreaker will get its full release on 24 May this year. This game has been in Early Access since June 2020 and attracted considerable acclaim since then.

The game is played from a first-person perspective and sees the player take on the role of a shipbreaker working for Lynx Corporation. The player must salvage useful materials from derelict and decommissioned spacecraft to pay back the massive corporate debt they owe Lynx at the start of the game. They have various tools to break open the derelict ships, but also must be wary of hazards such as oxygen and fuel tanks, which can explode if the shipbreaking is not done carefully, as well as explosive decompression. However, players must also balance the needs to do their jobs carefully with a need for speed to keep their debt ticking down at a steady rate. Players must also manage their own resources, such as oxygen and thruster pack fuel.

The full release will include a story mode where the player discovers new information about the corporation and the ships they are dismantling as they progress, and become embroiled in a conflict between the company and a union which is trying to get better conditions for their workers.

Blackbird Interactive derived the game from their original plans for Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (2016). Earlier in development, before reacquiring the Homeworld IP (many of the team worked on Homeworld  and Homeworld 2 at Relic Entertainment), the game was called Hardware: Shipbreakers and was set in a different universe with a much stronger focus on dismantling wrecked ships on a desert planet. After the sale of the Homeworld IP to Gearbox, Blackbird worked with them to pivot the game into the Homeworld universe, initially called Homeworld: Shipbreakers before switching the title to Deserts of Kharak.

Blackbird always liked the name and idea, and realised they could still use it in a different fashion after the idea of a "ship dismantling game" game up during an internal game jam at the studio.

The game has been warmly received during its Early Access period and its full release is certainly something to look forwards to. The game will release initially on PC via Focus Entertainment, to be followed by Xbox and PlayStation versions at a later date.

In addition to Hardspace, Blackbird are also working on Homeworld 3 for Gearbox for release later this year and Crossfire: Legion for Prime Matter.

Bayle Domon cast for WHEEL OF TIME Season 2

Welsh actor Julian Lewis Jones (Invictus, The Eagle, Justice League) has been cast in the fan-favourite role of Bayle Domon in the second season of The Wheel of Time.

The character of Bayle Domon actually debuts in the first Wheel of Time novel (which formed the basis of the first season, which aired last year) but his debut was delayed in the TV show until he had more substantive material. In the second novel, The Great Hunt, Domon commands a ship called the Spray which he takes to the west coast of the continent to start a new trade run only to run into unexpected complications, which eventually lead him to cross paths with the main characters. Domon becomes an occasionally recurring character in the books until the very end of the fourteen-volume series. He is noted for his thick Illianer accent and his (oft reluctant) bravery.

Season 2 only has four confirmed new castmembers: Donal Finn as Mat Cauthon (replacing Barney Harris, who left during the filming of the first season), Ceara Coveney as Elayne Trakand, Arnas Fedaravicius as Masema Dagar and Gregg Chillingirian as Ingtar Shinowa. They will be joined by Natasha O'Keeffe and Meera Syal in unconfirmed roles.

Season 2 of The Wheel of Time, which is wrapping up production now, is expected to air either in very late 2022 or early 2023.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

"Murderbot" is once again in hiding after its last escapade, but lingering guilt over how it resolved an earlier adventure leads it to investigate, taking it to a remote, secretive station and an abandoned terraforming project. Murderbot allies with a local droid to protect a bunch of humans who are, once again, in over their heads.

Rogue Protocol is the third volume in Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries, the multi-Nebula and Hugo Award-winning series about a former security android which has broken free of its programming and become an independent entity, passing for human and addicted to TV shows between security jobs.

Once again, Murderbot is on a mission it didn't really want to do, aided by an allied artificial intelligence, this time a non-combat droid called Miki. The story here ties in with the first novella, All Systems Red, and Murderbot's decision to escape from the well-meaning humans who discovered its status. However, watching the fallout from that story on the news, it becomes clear that this may have been a mistake and it now decides to help out by tracking one line of evidence to a new location, with mayhem resulting.

Rogue Protocol is great because it exemplifies the best qualities of the first two novellas: a knowing sense of humour, some great characterisation and a gift for both knotty plotting and chunky action. If it has a problem, it's that in terms of structure we are getting the same thing we've seen before. Mystery, explosions and a semi-resolution which leads into the next novella in the series, Exit Strategy. It's hard to complain because Martha Wells does this stuff so well, but it's also hard to be too surprised or blown away because this is very much More of the Same (including the full novel cover price for a story that's just 150 pages long), with a few twists. For example, the relationship between Murderbot and another AI was exemplified by the starship AI called ART in the previous story, with Murderbot as the junior partner, but here Murderbot allies with Miki, a servitor droid treated like a pet by its owners, with Murderbot as the senior partner. This leads to some interesting characterisation and ideas, but it does feel like we've been here before.

The finale of the novella is a very effective, extended action sequence as Murderbot takes on a hugely superior force and has to pull out every trick in the book to survive (hopefully that's not a spoiler for Book 3 of a six-book series so far, with more planned), which is great fun.

Rogue Protocol (****) is short, fun, pacy, witty and engaging, overcoming some repetition of structure with sheer readability and a nice line in crunchy SF action. It is available now in the US and on import in most other territories.

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FOR ALL MANKIND to return on 10 June

Apple TV+ has confirmed that the third season of For All Mankind will debut on 10 June this year.

The first two seasons of For All Mankind were excellent television. Set in an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union beats the USA to the moon in 1969, the USA responds with a Space Race that is far more ambitious than in reality. By the 1980s (the setting for the second season) both the USA and Soviet Union have bases on the moon and are ploughing ahead with advanced spacecraft programmes that they will hope take them to Mars. Season 3 will primarily take place in 1995, by which time humanity has indeed reached the Red Planet. It is unclear what other changes to the timeline have taken place by this point.

Rockstar and Remedy to collaborate on MAX PAYNE remakes

Remedy Entertainment are remaking the two games that brought them to widespread public attention in the early 2000s. They are rebuilding Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne in the Northlight Engine which powered their previous two games, Quantum Break and Control. The remakes will be published by Rockstar Games, who have owned the Max Payne IP since the mid-2000s.

Max Payne was originally released in 2001 and was highly praised for its stylish action and its use of "bullet time" to slow time down and allow the player to precisely control where their shots went. It was also applauded for its ridiculously over-the-top narration, dialogue and storytelling, which mixed graphic novel and video game tropes with meta-humour. Max Payne 2 was released in 2003 and was an impressive technical achievement as one of the first video games to implement a full physics engine. The game was also praised for its even tighter storytelling, better action, stronger writing and being one of the very few good examples of a video game romance story. I have a full retrospective on the games here.

Max Payne 3, released in 2012, was developed internally by Rockstar and was considered something of a letdown, with strong action but poor storytelling and, in particular, endless cutscenes that got in the way of the gameplay. The franchise has been on hold since then, with Rockstar working on their Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises instead.

Remedy have only just started work on the remakes, but the current plan is to combine the two games into a single title. They note they presented Rockstar with the proposal for the remakes and Rockstar agreed to fund and publish the title, assigning a budget in line with their top-tier games. Fans will no doubt hope this also increases the chances of a Remedy-developed Max Payne 4 should the remake be successful.

Remedy are also currently developing Alan Wake 2 and Control 2.

Brothers of the Wind by Tad Williams

Mortals have come to Asu'a from the west with dire news: the dragon Hidohebhi has descended from the mountains to wreak destruction and death on innocent farmers and settlers. The immortal Sithi usually pay little heed to the doings of mortals, but, recognising that the dragon presents a threat to everyone, the fiery and proud young prince Ineluki rides out to confront the beast. His steadier, calmer brother Hakatri rides with him, but the power of the dragon is greater than they could have feared. Their quest to slay the beast takes them far across the lands of Osten Ard, and their adventure is chronicled by Pamon Kes, Hakatri's faithful servant.

Brothers of the Wind is a stand-alone prequel to Tad Williams' masterwork of epic fantasy, the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy, and its currently ongoing sequel quartet, The Last King of Osten Ard. Set more than a thousand years before the previous books in the series, it chronicles an important event from the backstory to those novels. It is also a short, self-contained work which can be read as a standalone.

Williams is best-known for his immense doorsteppers of books. Case in point, the final Last King of Osten Ard novel was recently deemed unpublishable in a single volume and has been split in two. However, Williams is also a skilled writer of shorter fiction, in which his always carefully-crafted prose and finely-honed characterisation is also given an impressive sense of pace and focus. That could be seen in The Heart of What Was Lost, his 2017 short novel released as a prequel to The Last King of Osten Ard, and can be seen even more here.

Brothers of the Wind can be read as a tragedy. It has two lead characters, Hakatri and Ineluki, both seen through the eyes of Hakatri's servant Pamon. We get a much clearer view of Hakatri, whilst Ineluki - destined to become the Storm King of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - is a more transient figure, flitting in and out of the story according to events and his changeable mood. Seeing mythical characters from one series, described in awe or terms of legend, as real flash-and-blood characters in another can be deflating, but the POV device Williams employs here lets us both get to know Ineluki better without damaging or reducing his mythic power.

The novel is divided into several parts. In the first part, the brothers seek out the great dragon to slay it, only to be comprehensively defeated. They find themselves wandering western Osten Ard in search of allies, lore or weapons that can help them in their quest. This part of the book is fascinating, as we see lands we know much better from the earlier novels in a more primitive state of existence: the people of Hernystir before the kingdom becomes known as that, and many more areas where the Sithi are still extant. Williams is a great travelogue writer and worldbuilder, and his skills here are put to good use, painting this earlier era of Osten Ard's history in as much colour and detail as his larger books.

In the latter part of the novel, the great dragon is once again confronted, but the consequences of that confrontation have wide-ranging affects. Those who have read the other books will get glimpses of the path that Ineluki sets out on that will lead to the events of the Storm King's War, but others will be more concerned with the relationship with Pamon and Hakatri, which takes an interesting turn. The story turns into one of a servant caring for his master and having to make hard choices on behalf of another, sometimes in ways that hurt himself.

The sheer size of the average Williams novel allows for a relaxed pace, sometimes too relaxed (the very first Osten Ard novel, The Dragonbone Chair, famously takes the better part of 200 pages to get moving), but Brothers of the Wind (****½) moves faster and with greater focus. It starts off as an adventure and gradually turns into a tragedy of genuine moving power, as well as foreshadowing events in the other books in the setting. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

The third volume in The Last King of Osten Ard, Into the Narrowdark, is due for publication in July, and should be followed by The Navigator's Children.

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WHEEL OF TIME video game re-released

The Wheel of Time video game is available again for the first time in many years. Gaming service GoG has made the title available again at a low, low price.

Developed by Legend Entertainment and published by GT Interactive, the official tie-in Wheel of Time game was released on 11 November 1999 and was a cheerfully-greeted failure, selling less than 30,000 copies in its first three months on sale. The game attracted so-so reviews, with particular praise for its graphic and level design but criticism of the game's genre as a first-person shooter, rather than a roleplaying game. The game's position in the canon is ambiguous, with it appearing to take place in an alternate reality (one of the Portal Stone worlds) rather than main timeline where the books take place.

Despite the oddity of switching between different, weaponised ter'angreal instead of guns, there is fun to be had in fighting Trollocs in the White Tower, Whitecloaks on a remote highway and evading Mashadar on the superbly-realised streets of Shadar Logoth. The female protagonist (you play an Aes Sedai sister) was also unusual for an FPS at the time.

The game does occupy an interesting place in technical history: it was the second-ever game to be made in the Unreal Engine (after Unreal itself). The success of licencing the engine landed Legend the job of making Unreal II itself, and led to the creators of Unreal licencing the game to everyone under the sun. Twenty-three years later, the latest version of Unreal Engine is the most powerful and popular third-person engine in video gaming, being used for everything from Fortnite to the next Witcher game to helping with the vfx for the various Star Wars TV shows.

I have a fuller retrospective on the game here. It'll be interesting to see how well (or not) it has aged.

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION crew to reunite on the final season of PICARD

The main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation is to reunite for the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.

LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge), Michael Dorn (Worf) and Gates McFadden (Beverly Crusher) will return to the franchise for the first time since 2002's feature film, Star Trek: Nemesis. Jonathan Frakes (William Riker), Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) and Brent Spiner (Data) previously appeared in the first season of Star Trek: Picard, with Frakes and Sirtis also reprising voicing their roles on Star Trek: Lower Decks.

It is unclear if Spiner will be playing the destroyed Data, his evil twin brother Lore, android B-4 or the human character Altan Soong, whom he played in Picard's first season.

Recurring Next Generation actors Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan) and John De Lancie (Q) are appearing in the currently-airing second season of Picard.

So far it has not been confirmed if other former Next Generation regulars like Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar/Sela) or Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher) will return.

Filming recently wrapped on the third season of Picard, which is expected to air in 2023.

An official new MONKEY ISLAND game is coming from its original creators

Adventure game legends Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman are returning to their best-known series for a new game.

Return to Monkey Island is set for release later this year and picks up after the events of Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge.

The series began with The Secret of Monkey Island in 1990, which saw trainee pirate Guybrush Threepwood pitched into battle with the evil ghost pirate LeChuck after he kidnaps Guybrush's would-be girlfriend, Governor Elaine Marlee of Melee Island, and imprisons her on the titular Monkey Island. Guybrush gathers together a crew to help rescue her. The story continues in Monkey Island II (1991), where Guybrush is in search of the fabled treasure of Big Whoop, but once again comes into conflict with LeChuck, now resurrected as a zombie.

Gilbert and Grossman developed the first two games alongside Tim Schafer. LucasArts subsequently released two more games without the trio's involvement: The Curse of Monkey Island (1997) and Escape from Monkey Island (2000). The IP was licensed to Telltale Games, who released Tales of Monkey Island in 2009.

The canonical status of the new game is unclear, save it is a sequel to Monkey Island II and will address that game's infamous cliffhanger (which The Curse of Monkey Island kind of sidesteps). Whether Return to Monkey Island is an interquel set between II and Curse, or an alternate universe kind of sequel, remains to be seen.

The game is being published by Devolver Digital and developed by studio Terrible Toybox, responsible for Gilbert's last game, the splendid LucasArts throwback game Thimbleweed Park.

UPDATE: Ron Gilbert has clarified that the new game takes place between Monkey Island II and Curse of Monkey Island, and will not remove Curse from canon.

Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

Kithamar is a great city-state, an economic power ruled over by a prince. When a new prince rises to power, it marks the beginning of a year of tumultuous events in the city. During this year, there will be intrigue and conflict and the lives of thousands will be impacted in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. When Alys's brother is murdered, she vows to find who is responsible and why. Helped by her friend Sammish, her investigation will take her from the lowest slums of Longhill to the highest heights of the royal palace, and the discovery of ancient, terrifying secrets.

Daniel Abraham is better-known these days for being one half of the gestalt entity James S.A. Corey, the authorial unit of The Expanse (both novels and the TV series). Before that, he was known for his solo work, especially his moving, beautifully-characterised Long Price Quartet and his mercantile series, The Dagger and The Coin. Abraham is a skilled writer of character-based fantasy, and a new series by him is a mouthwatering prospect.

The Kithamar Trilogy has a structurally interesting idea. Borrowing from Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours film trilogy, which consisted of three completely independent stories which just take place in the same world, with characters from one film occasionally showing up in the others, Kithamar tells three independent, stand-alone stories which just happen to take place in the same year. Some characters will cross over, although of course in this first novel it's impossible to tell which.

The story in this book revolves around a murder mystery. A young man from the slums has been killed, but his sister finds an unusual amount of money in his room and a mysterious dagger. With the help of her friend Sammish, she tracks down those who her brother was working for, whilst Sammish finds those who are opposed to that group. Both groups claim to be working for the greater good, and Alys and Sammish are torn between new loyalties and their own friendship. The result is a game of intelligence and counter-intelligence as the two friends try to decide how much they can trust the other, and what information they can can share.

Both characters are written with depth and complexity, as you'd expect from Abraham, and the ultra-tight focus on the two protagonists for most of its length gives the novel a pacy feel. However, as the book develops, other POV characters appear with varying degrees of prominence, which feels like it does mix up the flow at times. The plot does also eventually tell us that one of the two sides in the story is the unambiguous faction of black hats and which is the unambiguous faction of white hats, rather than trying to present both sides as deeper and more complex, perhaps with good reasons for doing what they're doing. This feels refreshing - moral murkiness may be more realistic, but it also feels a bit overdone at this point - but also feels like it runs counter to the idea of Alys and Sammish being friends divided by a cause; when they realise which cause is good and which is bad, the central conflict effectively vanishes.

Still, Kithamar is a fascinating city. Abraham describes each ward of the city in some detail, with the close but poor community of Longhill standing in contrast to the rich, privileged nobility living west of the river. It's a vivid fantasy metropolis, and I look forward to exploring it more in further volumes.

Age of Ash (****) is a striking fantasy novel with a rich atmosphere and excellent characters. The central conflict of the book lacks the moral complexity more common in recent fantasy works, but makes up for it with Abraham's trademark excellent prose and thoughtful descriptions. Plus it threads the needle of both being an excellent stand-alone novel and the opening of a longer, more interesting story. The novel is available now in the UK and USA. The second volume is expected in 2023.

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