Civilization VI’s [official site] E3 demo will not only teach you a lot about the game, it also happens to be a fascinating cultural object. Narrated by Sean Bean, it follows a tribe from their first settlement through barbaric battles, early diplomacy and trade, technological development, and into the terror of modern warfare. Then they jump in a rocket and set off into space. The erstwhile Ned Stark/Richard Sharpe provides commentary throughout. It’s as if Sean Bean has transitioned into a career making Let’s Play videos and, by god, I had never known how much I wanted such a thing until now.

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In Kholat [official site], every day is a snow day. I’ve spent a couple of hours wandering around in the game’s open world and I’ve mostly been looking at drifts, flurries and heaps of the white stuff. Occasionally celebrity narrator Sean Bean says something, sounding weary even for a Yorkshireman, but he’s mostly been quiet since picking his way through the introduction (at one point the subtitles suggest “extraterrestrials” might be involved in the Dyatlov Pass Incident on which the game is based; Sean’s too practical-minded for that sort of nonsense so he goes with “wild animals” instead).

I’m supposed to be using my map and compass to find points of interest, referencing a list of coordinates, but I’m not sure that I care to go on. I’m snowblind.

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Alex has pitched Kholat [official site] to me as “looks alright, has Sean Bean in it.” So naturally, moved by his booming recommendation I’ve slipped on my Sharpe #1 Fan jumper to take a look.

And O! It takes me back to those dark nights in Canada reading through Wikipedia’s strangest entries. Have you heard of the Dyatlov Pass Incident? The event saw the mysterious deaths of nine hikers in the Northern Ural Mountains in 1959. Kholat, then, sees you explore Dyatlov Pass to work out how and why those deaths occured.

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