That is the title of a short, but really interesting, Financial Times piece on virtual economics (free registration required). For years I’ve wanted to see the mainstream media pick up on the “giant social sciences lab” nature of games such as EVE Online, and now my wish has come true! Well worth a look if you’re interested in the subject.
MOTOKOOOO: Ghost in the Shell: Arise trailer
There is now a trailer for the new Ghost in the Shell prequel, Ghost in the Shell: Arise! Here it is:
Notably, protagonist Motoko Kusanagi has a new design as well as a new voice actress — Maaya Sakamoto, in lieu of the iconic Atsuko Tanaka. Arise will comprise four fifty-minute instalments, the first of which is due out in Japan in June. Sadly, Arise does not seem to be part of the Stand Alone Complex continuity. (It’s been almost nine months, and I still need to write that SAC retrospective!)
Further details around the Web, including at Siliconera and Anime News Network. Hat tip to sfsignal for alerting me to the trailer.
At the Gates Q&A with Jon Shafer!
Civilization V designer Jon Shafer has unveiled his latest project on Kickstarter: At the Gates, a 4X strategy game that casts the player as a barbarian chief out to pick the carcass of the crumbling Roman Empire. The game sets out to fix one of the biggest problems in strategy gaming, the boring middle/late game, and its promised features include:
1. An emphasis on supply: armies will have only a limited capacity to live off the land, making them reliant on supply trains and friendly cities;
2. A dynamic map: resources will deplete over time (placing players under greater and greater pressure as the game goes on); seasons will affect the map as rivers freeze and food stockpiles dwindle during winter;
3. Asymmetric non-player factions: the Romans are still on the map, play by different rules to the barbarians, and won’t give up without a fight.
This all sounded very interesting to me, and Jon was kind enough to sit down for an email interview. Read on:
Be part of my Age of Wonders III Q&A!
Age of Wonders is a long-running and much beloved fantasy strategy game series, and last week, many of you guys would have seen Triumph Studios’ announcement that it should release Age of Wonders III later this year. I reached out to Triumph to secure an interview, and designer Lennart Sas said we can submit up to five questions! I’m coming up with a few of my own, but it’s been a long time since I played an AoW game (notwithstanding I recently reinstalled the most recent, Shadow Magic), so this is your chance. If you have any good questions in mind, please leave them in the comments below, and I’ll pick the best to send across!
Xenoblade Chronicles impressions: The Force is strong in this game
Of all the magic woven by storytellers, immersion has to be one of the most precious threads. How wonderful it is that we can pick up a book, or play a game, or sit in a cinema, and be transported into another world! The people who write bullet points for video game boxes know this, which is why “immersive” is one of their favourite buzzwords. So is “visceral”, which I find telling. To be immersive, it seems, a work should have us on the edge of our seats: tense, excited, ready to feel its characters’ pain as if it were our own. But there’s also another kind of immersion – think of the proverbial warm soak. An immersive world can be utterly relaxing, an invitation for us to kick back and lose ourselves for an hour or two. Nearly 20 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles, I can say it exemplifies the latter.
Xenoblade is an RPG for the Nintendo Wii – a platform exclusive, as a matter of fact. It’s a party-based JRPG that bears a striking similarity to 2006’s Final Fantasy XII, in that there are no random encounters and no distinction between an overworld, area maps, and combat screens. Rather, like a Western RPG, monsters are clearly visible – and combat takes place – in the field. Combat is real-time, and the player only controls one party member at a time, chosen before battle starts; the rest of the party is controlled by a generally competent AI. Since the chosen character will auto-attack enemies, the player’s job is to manage aggro, special abilities, and cooldowns. (Not items; there are no potions, stimpacks, antidotes, or the like in this game.) I’ve heard this compared to MMO gameplay, and it’s certainly different from what I’m used to.
Interested in guest writing for the site?
I started Matchsticks for my Eyes in 2010, with a vision of building a hub for good, thoughtful writing about “worlds of wonder” – games, books, anime, and more. Since then, the site’s come a long way: it may not be IGN, but it does have a pretty solid 6,000+ page views per month, rising to over 8,000 for the last couple of months. And that vision hasn’t changed – we’ve earned our success on the back of some very good content.
Note the “we”; several wonderful guests have graced the site with their writing (on topics as varied as how to lose Crusader Kings II and worldbuilding in Final Fantasy XII). Would you like to join their ranks? If so, leave a comment, or drop me a query via email or the contact form, with your idea plus a link to where I can find samples of your writing. :D Unfortunately, I can’t pay for guest posts – those Amazon ads don’t even cover the cost of hosting, let alone paying for all those books and games – but I would be delighted to provide a link back to your website (if any).
Beneath the cut, I’ve listed a few possible topics – but these are merely suggestions! If you think it’s relevant, I’d like to hear about it. :)
Kickstarter campaign opens for a Starbase Orion Android/Mac/PC port
Following up on a news item I posted last year, Chimera Software has launched its Kickstarter campaign for an Android/Mac/PC port of Starbase Orion. SO is a 4X space strategy title that – if the trailer is any indication – owes a clear debt to Master of Orion, and based on what I’ve heard about its current, iOS incarnation, I’m quite excited by the prospect of an Android version.
Chimera is seeking $40,000 for the campaign (it’s presently at $2,695), which closes on 6 March.
Musical Monday: Satorl, the Shimmering Marsh – Night (Xenoblade Chronicles), composed by Manami Kiyota
This week’s theme is a piece of ambient music from the Wii’s flagship RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles. Like the area in which it plays (depicted in the concept art below), it has an otherworldly loveliness that actually made me halt what I was doing in the game, sit back, and drink in the experience for a couple of minutes. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE0hhzASHwY
Musical Wednesday: Big Iron (Fallout: New Vegas), by Marty Robbins
And we’re back! This week’s song is Marty Robbins’ 1959 country ballad “Big Iron”, featured in Fallout: New Vegas. Including it in the game was an inspired choice! Not only does the song help establish the game’s pseudo-Western atmosphere, but its lyrics — about a gunslinger who rides into town with a “big iron on his hip” — could easily have been about your exploits as an RPG hero. Enjoy!
Fallout: New Vegas: a post-nuclear Western (?)
(With apologies to every writer, director, and star of the Wild West)
EXT. THE MOJAVE DESERT
The one-horse town of Goodsprings bakes, silent, in the Nevada heat. One after the other, we see several POWDER GANG BANDITS approach, cradling baseball bats and crude firearms. The Powder Gangers are in high spirits, looking forward to the plunder of the town.
POWDER GANGER #1: Pardner, I do reckon that there town be as easy as liquor flowing at the saloon.
POWDER GANGER #2: Yee-haw!
The Powder Gangers laugh, twirl their moustaches. Suddenly, they hear a yell.
An armoured figure – not one of the townspeople, but our hero, THE COURIER – charges out from between two houses. The Courier winds back his arm and for a moment, time seems to freeze. When it flows again, something red and fizzing has landed at the Powder Gangers’ feet.
POWDER GANGER #1: … Is that… dynamite?
FADE TO WHITE.
I’m ten hours into Fallout: New Vegas, the most unique-feeling entry in the venerable Fallout line of RPGs. Its predecessors (#1 and #3 in particular) revelled in their post-apocalyptic setting: their mohawked raiders could have come straight out of a Mad Max movie, and their civilisation was a precarious, hardscrabble thing – ersatz Bartertowns scattered around the wastes, each surviving as best as it could.
Choose your own adventure IN SPAAACE: The Fleet
The Fleet is a CYOA-esque piece of interactive fiction from indie outfit Choice of Games (I wrote about Choice of Broadsides, one of their earlier releases, last week). The Fleet trades in Broadsides’ sailing ships for space cruisers, and costs money ($3) whereas Broadsides was free, but in mechanical terms, the two are very similar. Both take about 30-60 minutes to play through, and both are about making choices that play to the main character’s strengths. (For instance, attempting fancy manoeuvres in Broadsides will lead to disaster if the player character has a low Sailing stat.)
Fleet’s greatest failing is that it lacks Broadsides’ charm – Fleet’s setting isn’t just space opera, it’s stock standard space opera. It will contain nothing new to anyone who’s read or watched much science fiction. Still, its plot – dealing with the trials and tribulations of a refugee fleet fighting to reclaim its homeworld – is serviceable, and I was thoroughly satisfied with the ending I achieved: I finished as a true statesman, someone who’d led his people – and the galaxy – to a better tomorrow. There are other endings out there, but I’m reluctant to replay the game to discover them – I don’t want to mar my first ending! Overall, a decent time-killer.
If you’d like more detailed looks at The Fleet, Pocket Tactics and Jay Is Games both have helpful reviews!
All aboard! Ticket to Ride: The Verdict
The railroad must get through. Chicago must connect to Santa Fe. But I’m almost out of locomotives, my rivals are muscling in, and can I get three cards of the same colour?
Welcome to Ticket to Ride, the PC adaptation of a highly regarded board game (which I have not yet played). In Ticket, players claim train routes by playing cards – six yellow cards to connect Seattle to Helena in the above screenshot, for instance, or five blue cards to connect Atlanta to Miami. Long routes are worth more than short routes, but are correspondingly harder to claim. Furthermore, each player begins with a certain number of “tickets” – routes (Chicago to Santa Fe, in my above example) that reward the player if they are completed, and impose a penalty if they are not. Again, long-haul tickets are worth more – both on the upside and on the downside! – than their short-haul counterparts. Lastly, each route can only be claimed by one player at a time (although the game does provide some duplicate routes). So for example, I couldn’t go Denver -> Santa Fe in the above screenshot, but neither could the other players go Denver -> Omaha, or Chicago -> Pittsburgh, or Pittsburgh -> New York.
Choose your own seafaring adventure: Choice of Broadsides
“Fire the starboard broadside!” shouts the Captain.
Cannons roar as H.M.S. Courageous attacks the enemy frigate. As one of the junior officers–really, more of an officer in training–you command three guns on Courageous’s main gun deck. The guns of the battery next to yours fire, leaping back against the heavy ropes that prevent them from smashing across the ship. Clouds of white smoke billow about you as you give your gun crew the commands to ready your battery’s cannons: “Swab! Powder! Wadding! Shot! Run out the guns!”
The Captain yells out, “Fire as the guns bear!” You give your gun crews orders to load and fire as quickly as they can, without waiting for the rest of the broadside.
They swab out the bore, push in a charge of powder, push wadding down on the powder, load the shot, push the gun out through the gunport, and fire the cannon, with you commanding each step of the process. “Swab, powder, wadding, shot, fire! Swab, powder, wadding, shot–”
The world turns upside down as the enemy’s broadside rips through the hull some ten feet away.
As the enemy cannonball tears through the side of the ship, giant splinters of wood fly through the air. One of the splinters, perhaps a yard long, rips through the stomach of Davies, a sailor under your command. A fragment of a cannon ball smashes Fisher’s arm, mangling it horribly. Your sailors seem stunned by the carnage, standing in shock while Davies and Fisher scream in agony.
What do you do?
A. Attend to the wounded personally–the safety of my sailors is my top concern.
B. Give some quick orders for them to be taken to the surgeon in the cockpit, then turn back to my duty in commanding the guns.
C. With a gut wound like that, Davies is done for, but Fisher can still be saved. I order some sailors to take Fisher to the cockpit but leave Davies on the deck to die. I need the extra sailors to use the guns effectively.
D. My duty to the ship outweighs my duty to two sailors. I ignore the wounded and concentrate on firing my guns as quickly and accurately as I can.
That is the opening of Choice of Broadsides, a free, short (30-60 minutes), and very good “choose your own adventure”-type game for Web, Android, and iOS. If you have ever read CS Forester, Patrick O’Brian, or one of their ilk, you will be right at home here: Broadsides chronicles your adventures as an officer in the Royal Navy of Great Britain Albion, during war against Napoleonic France Gaul. You start as a lowly midshipman, but you won’t stay that way! By the end of the game, I’d retired as an admiral, laden with honours – though not quite as much prize money as I’d hoped…
One of the greatest games of all time, Dominions 3, is now $30 at Desura & Gamersgate
First Aubrey & Maturin sailed into the digital world, and now one of my all-time favourite games, Illwinter’s strategy masterpiece Dominions 3, has finally made its way to digital download shops Desura (edit: and Gamersgate)! It’s also reasonably priced, at $30. Why is it one of my favourites?
1. It brings mythology/dark fantasy alive in a way that so few games – and almost no games outside RPGs – have managed. Elves? Orcs? Balrogs, even? Phooey. Dominions serves up titans plucked from Tartarus, queens of the air with clouds for bodies and lightning for fists, glamour-casting faery knights, and more. And in between scurry the poor human conscripts, so hopelessly outmatched as to underscore just how significant magic — and divinity — are to this world. (If you’d like to read more, a few years ago I wrote a guest piece on this very subject over at Flash of Steel.)
Wonky Feedback Form
A quick apology to anyone who’s contacted me via the website feedback form and not received a reply — I just found out that an overzealous spam filter has eaten most of the messages that were sent to me via the form. Sorry!
Match-stats for my Eyes: 2012 Site Statistics
There is something compelling about statistics – especially when they’re our own! I always enjoy seeing what draws you guys here and what makes you stick around; and I thought I’d share the results for last year. See below…
The Best Games of 2012
Happy Ne
w Year, everyone!
2013 has dawned, and it’s time to review the best of last year’s games (that I played). This year I’ve opted to break from the traditional “best RPG”, “best strategy”, etc format normally used in Game of the Year rankings. For one, it papers over the vast differences that exist within any genre: Dark Souls is not Skyrim is not Mass Effect. For another, there are sometimes multiple standout games within the same genre. So instead, I’ve opted to recognise games for their special achievements. Here are 2012’s exemplars:
Love, Hate, and Stories: The Visual Novels of Christine Love
To what heights – and depths – of emotion can we be moved by text in a game? This is the question posed by two of the best games I’ve played recently: Christine Love’s Digital: A Love Story and Analogue: A Hate Story.
Perhaps I shouldn’t call them games so much as I should call them interactive works of epistolary fiction, in which the player pieces together a story from documents and messages. The two titles contain very little in the way of abstract systems – apart from a couple of puzzles, there are no rules to be mastered here. This doesn’t mean the player is uninvolved! While both games rely on plenty of text, they also deploy that interactivity to good effect. They would not work in any other medium, something we’ll see with Digital.
Musical Monday: “Kia Hora Te Marino” (Calling All Dawns), composed by Christopher Tin
It’s Christmas Eve! For an uplifting song, I give you something that’s not actually from a soundtrack — “Kia Hora Te Marino” (“May Peace Be Widespread”), from Christopher Tin’s “Calling All Dawns” album (1). The liner notes describe it as a “traditional Maori blessing”, and its tone and lyrics are a wonderful fit for the season. Merry Christmas and happy holidays, everyone!
(1) You might remember this album as the source of the version of Baba Yetu I linked to a little while back.
Full credits for song: “Kia Hora Te Marino” was composed by Christopher Tin, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and featuring lyricist Jerome Kavanagh and backing vocalists Ben Mullon, John Mullon, Jordan Young and Tangaroatuane.
Drox Operative: my impressions
Drox Operative is the latest title from Soldak Entertainment, an indie developer of action-RPGs (Depths of Peril, Din’s Curse) renowned for their dynamic worlds. Drox transports that concept from fantasy into space opera – its galaxy is filled with alien empires, who fight, intrigue, and negotiate amongst themselves. As one of the titular mercenaries, players accept quests from these empires, fight space monsters and rival empires, plant their patrons’ flags over unclaimed worlds – and try to make sure they’re on the winning side.
On paper, this is a wonderful concept, and it’s given me a couple of memorable moments. For example, at one point I wanted to explore a hazardous, monster-filled region of frontier space. To make my life easier, I took a quest to colonise a nearby planet, then stuck around to defend the new settlement. The result: now I had somewhere to repair, and the owner of the new colony was now both stronger and better disposed toward me. And there is a certain dark satisfaction in teaching recalcitrant alien empires why messing with a Drox operative is a bad idea! Unfortunately, these cool experiences have been the exception for me. As an overall package, Drox falls flat for me; while I can quibble with various “micro” aspects of the game’s execution (1), I think my ultimate problem lies with two key aspects of the game’s design:
Musical Monday: “I Was Born For This” (Journey), composed by Austin Wintory
Following my review of Journey, this week’s song is that game’s closing theme, “I Was Born For This”. (I don’t think the similarity to Ico‘s closing song is a coincidence.) Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_wkJ377LzU
Full credits for song: “I Was Born For This” was composed by Austin Wintory and sung by Lisbeth Scott.
Journey: The Verdict
How much can we care about a digital companion?
Whole games have been built around this question – most notably 2001 classic Ico, which cast players as a young boy who had to escape a witch’s castle together with a girl named Yorda. Together, the two made a team: Yorda was frail, but she was the only one who could open the castle’s magically sealed doors. And it worked: Ico is one of my all-time favourites. Subsequent games – such as the modern Princes of Persia – ran with this idea, but implemented it the same way: your companion was always computer-controlled, and there was a gameplay reason you needed to work with her (for good measure, it was always a her). Thatgamecompany’s Journey is the latest game to tackle this question… but this time, it puts its own spin on the formula.
In Journey, you play a cloaked traveller who has to cross the desert to reach a distant mountain. There is no dialogue, no narrative, and no exposition. Who is the traveller? The answer seems to be “a pilgrim”, but this isn’t stated outright anywhere – it’s something I deduced. Is the pilgrim a he, a she, or an it? I imagined my pilgrim as a she, but that was pure whimsy. Did she have family or friends before deciding to cross the desert? Who knows. Journey’s gameplay mechanics are equally minimalistic: mostly, the pilgrim walks towards her destination. She can use the magic in her scarf to jump or fly, and she can recharge her scarf by chirping musically when standing near bits of cloth scattered throughout the world – streamers, banners, magic carpets, and the like. This is pleasant enough – controlling the pilgrim is smooth and fluid, whether she’s on the sand or soaring through the air – but that’s about it as far as game mechanics go. There is no real challenge, except for looking/walking around, wondering where to go next. There are neither puzzles nor combat. There isn’t even a Game Over screen – it is impossible to die. The overall game is quite short, just a couple of hours. In this regard, Journey feels a lot like thatgamecompany’s previous title, Flower.
Musical Monday: “Into the Light” and “Voyage” (Final Fantasy series), composed by Nobuo Uematsu
Long before video game music took off in the West, the Final Fantasy series had a long tradition of beautiful vocal and orchestral music — all the way back to the NES/SNES era! Developer Squaresoft circumvented the technical limitations of the time by re-arranging its in-game music into orchestral, piano, and vocal CD albums, which remain a treat to this day. Below, I’ve linked two of my favourites, both from the 1994 “Final Fantasy: Pray” vocal album. “Into the Light” (Japanese: “Hikari no naka e”) is based on “Theme of Love” from Final Fantasy IV, while “Voyage” is based on “Boundless Ocean” from Final Fantasy III (NES). Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS5C8GxCBqc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-iVx43eihw
Full credits for songs: Both songs were composed by Nobuo Uematsu. Both were sung by Risa Ohki.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown – The Verdict
For one month, you followed me as I played through Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the successor to one of the greatest games of all time. Now that I’ve finished, I can give my verdict: this is the true heir to the original, both in its strengths and its weaknesses.
At heart, both 1994’s X-COM and 2012’s XCOM are stories about heroism. That is something so many games claim to offer, but so few truly do. Heroism is not a power fantasy. Heroism is not about being the toughest guy alive (action games), or the sneakiest, or the cleverest general (Total War). Heroism is the courage to stand up against overwhelming odds, to endure loss and sacrifice on the road to victory. This is the experience that XCOM delivers in spades. Like its predecessor, XCOM follows a handful of outnumbered, outgunned, and oh-so-fragile men and women in their struggle against a technologically superior alien invasion. They are few enough, and diverse enough in their capabilities, to be distinct: I knew every name and face in my barracks. That makes it hurt all the more when they die – which they do often and permanently. For those odds, at least on “Classic” difficulty, really are overwhelming. On the world map, the aliens often launch three attacks at a time, while XCOM can only respond to one. Once in battle, XCOM operatives will usually die in two or three solid hits. But – and this is key – thanks to the context provided by the game’s strategic layer, that sacrifice never feels in vain. Slowly but surely, those brave underdogs will turn the tide of the war. With each battle, the survivors grow more skilled. With each pile of recovered alien loot, the survivors become better equipped. With each XCOM satellite and fighter plane (their construction funded by that loot), the world takes one step back from the brink. With each act of bravery by your soldiers, XCOM comes one step closer to victory.
Aviators of the smoky skies: Guns of Icarus Online
It seems all over for the crew of the airship Babbling Goldfish. On one side – the enemy, two airships bigger and heavier than ours. On the other – the ruins of a vast, ancient airship, still lodged vertically in the desert sand. Our hull and engines are being ripped to shreds, and the airship wreck blocks the most direct escape. Over voice chat, the consensus sounds in my ears: we’re going down. But manning the helm, I see one last chance. I steer us between towering pieces of wreckage – bare planks to our left, a piece of red-plated debris to our right. And the incoming barrage dies down. Did the wreck hide us from our pursuers? Or did they simply get bored and drift off? Whatever it is, we’re safe for now. Safe to make repairs, and safe to eventually rejoin the fight…
That is one of the stories I have accumulated in my last couple of weeks playing Guns of Icarus Online, a team-based airship combat title from indie studio Muse Games. (You might remember my very brief mention of the game last year, when it was just a trailer and a cool concept.) In Icarus, players take on the roles of airship crew – gunners, engineers, or pilots, with four crew members to one airship. (Note that the game is strictly PVP; while most unoccupied crew slots are filled by bots, each airship must be skippered by a human player.) Matches involve two teams (2-4 airships per side, depending on the map) either trying to score a set number of kills, or hold objective locations long enough to win. Each ship’s captain can choose between six available ship types, each of which can be further customised via choice of weapons – for instance, do I mount a flak cannon (long-ranged and best against the enemy hull), a carronade firing grapeshot (close-ranged balloon-popper), or a Manticore rocket launcher (long-ranged disabler) in my main gun slot? And depending on their class, crew members can choose which repair/buff items, ammo types, and piloting boosts to take into battle. Once in the game, the slow, deliberate combat feels closer to MechWarrior than to the typical FPS – ships take a while to reach their destination, and guns don’t fire that quickly. This changes once the ship takes damage – then it becomes a frantic game of ohnotheengineisred, and Someone fix the hull before we all die!
Musical Monday: “Exceeding Love” (Suikoden III), composed by Michiru Yamane et al
This week’s song is something I guarantee you’ll find unique: “Exceeding Love”, the opening song of PS2 RPG Suikoden III. I’ve linked two versions below. The first is the actual in-game version, presented as part of the game’s intro movie — my favourite intro movie ever. The visuals and music complement each other perfectly, and as an added bonus, every single character and event depicted in that video — dragonfly-mounted warriors firebombing a village, knights charging into battle, a boy facing off against a dragon, torchbearers filing through the night, whole armies on the march — actually features in the game! The second version of the song is a clearer, sharper, deeper remix that I prefer, though sadly this one lacks the accompanying visuals. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTr7LjzYkwM
Full credits for song: The game’s soundtrack was composed by Michiru Yamane, Keiko Fukami, and Masahiko Kimura. “Exceeding Love” was performed by the band Himekami.
Let’s Play XCOM: Enemy Unknown! Part 7 (FINAL): Avenger
North America, 1 September 2015. The aliens’ forward base on Earth, the wee hours of the morning. Above the landing bay, a shape appears: XCOM’s Skyranger, followed moments later by a hover SHIV and five of XCOM’s finest operatives. The soldiers rappel down into the base, plasma rifles at the ready. Little do they expect what lies ahead: an anti-climax.
Book review: The Lantern Bearers, by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Lantern Bearers, a 1959 historical novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, is officially a children’s book. It is also one of the best, most mature stories I have read in a long time, with a simple but powerful appeal. When it comes down to it, most stories – books, films, games – show us the world as we would like it to be. Some show us the world as their creators think it is. Some show us the worlds we fear. But every so often, one will show us* the world as it really is. And in TLB, I feel lucky to have read one of those rare gems.
Set in fifth-century Britain during the Anglo-Saxon invasions that followed the Roman withdrawal from that island, TLB tells the story of one Roman who stays behind to make a stand. Instantly, that tells us something. Regardless (no spoilers!) of what will happen to the characters, we know how this war will eventually end. We know the Roman Empire, both as a whole and in Britain, will collapse. We know the Dark Ages are about to descend. And that sense of changing times is imprinted on every page of TLB. It propels the world. It propels the plot. It, notably, propels the characters – the subtitle of this book could be, “Times change, and people change with them.” The realism with which they do is one of the book’s greatest strengths. This, I felt as I read it, is how people would really behave.
Musical Monday: “Baba Yetu” (Civilization IV), composed by Christopher Tin
This week’s song is another golden oldie: “Baba Yetu”, the opening theme to 2005’s Civilization IV. Soaring, hopeful, filled with joy — this is the perfect celebration of civilisation, of our achievements in science and art and engineering. Sadly, the official music video below (with its footage taken from the game’s intro movies) also highlights the other half of Civ, our talent for finding new ways to kill each other, but that’s another story…
Note that the official music video uses the version of the song from the “Calling All Dawns” album. Enjoy!
Book review: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is the latest instalment in what is, probably, my single favourite speculative fiction series – Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. For 26 years, Bujold has chronicled her hero, frail-but-driven princeling Miles Vorkosigan, as he grew from a teenager desperate to prove himself into a mature, confident adult. In CVA, she switches tack to focus on one of the series’ supporting characters – Miles’ cousin and sometime sidekick, Ivan Vorpatril. I’ve been looking forward to this book for a very long time, so how did it compare to my expectations?