Albion’s aristocracy has requirements for its pies, and divine status grants no exemption from meeting them. In Masters of Albion, an order can specify quantity, quality, and permissible ingredients; the power directing a settlement must work out how to satisfy the customer. Rat parts may offer an economical solution. A request for bitterness requires interpretation. This is a wonderfully particular distribution of authority: the player can reach down into the world with an enormous supernatural hand, yet somebody else gets to decide what constitutes an acceptable lunch. The arrangement belongs comfortably beside Fable’s irreverent British fantasy. Both games call their...

The Americans in the archival footage have already decided how the Marshallese should be seen. Their language assigns the islanders a primitive innocence, then makes that supposed innocence available to science. Nuclear testing acquires the respectable appearance of a project conducted for humanity’s benefit. The people living with its consequences receive considerably less authority to define the benefit. In 67 Bombs to Enid, these recordings preserve the mechanism of an alibi: a population can be filmed, studied, and discussed while its right to refuse disappears from the account. The documentary then gives that account an audience it cannot control. Watching...

Marco Pierre White apparently considered himself entitled to choose who ate at Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant. The recollections of a long-ago lunch at the Fat Duck differ, but Blumenthal remembers being asked to have Gordon Ramsay leave. Watching three celebrated chefs revisit this incident, I found myself wondering about the practical arrangements. How does one explain to a paying customer that another paying customer has dismissed him? Fine dining had acquired a peculiar chain of command. White’s authority produces some wonderfully absurd stories in Rise of the Rockstar Chef. Diners who requested salt and pepper could have their meals removed, their...

Jimmy Beltrán has school fees to pay, debts to clear, and plans for a better home. Staying away from work sounds sensible to his wife, Pilar, who fears an attack on Bogotá’s Palace of Justice. To Jimmy, the cafeteria there seems a safe place to earn a living. Meanwhile, upstairs, Supreme Court president Alfonso Reyes Echandía is struggling to persuade the authorities that the building needs protection. The premiere of Netflix’s eight-part Under Siege lets those two calculations run alongside each other. Jimmy’s confidence depends on safeguards that Reyes Echandía cannot get anyone to provide. Elsewhere in the building, Memo...

Iryna Dovhan’s work with SEMA Ukraine brings two difficult responsibilities into the same encounter: helping women find care and asking them to revisit experiences they have struggled to speak about. In Traces, these tasks sometimes pull painfully against each other. Nina’s shame makes seeking assistance difficult, even with other survivors prepared to support her. Her distress complicates the satisfaction of seeing testimony gathered. Before an account can become part of a public record, someone has to live through the telling, with needs that extend beyond what can be recorded. Silence, here, has been actively enforced. Mefodiivna, a great-grandmother, recalls an...

Sending rockets forward, upward, and downward at once has a particular, slightly childish appeal in Clockwork Ambrosia. Fit the right mods and those missiles can split, then scatter spikes when they explode. The pleasure comes from watching a weapon grow into something you wanted to make, with a few excesses you are happy to accept. Since ordinary firing lacks free directional aiming, that T-shaped spread also gives your enthusiasm a practical outlet. An enemy overhead becomes a reason to try your latest arrangement. The punch of the explosions and the bright trails across the screen make each alteration feel tangible....