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This indie sci-fi game is a lesson in resilience and resistance

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This indie sci-fi game is a lesson in resilience and resistance

Citizen Sleeper 2’s android protagonist, in a scene from the game’s trailer.

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An abandoned, powerful spaceship hides somewhere in the Starward Belt.

My contact Yu-Jin swears he can find it — I scrounge up a crew and zip to his coordinates, only to lose out to a competitor who chased us there. Exhausted and defeated, I grit my robot teeth and plan my next gig — anything to scrape together the fuel I need to evade the crime boss on my trail.

Desperation and hope intertwine in Citizen Sleeper 2, out Jan. 31. Like its acclaimed 2022 predecessor, the sci-fi video game puts you in the shoes of an android who’s escaped a dystopian corporation (imagine Blade Runner, from a replicant’s perspective). But despite its interstellar cyberpunk-esque setting, developer Gareth Damian Martin says the series grapples with issues close to home.

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“I’m not really ever thinking about the future,” Martin says. “I’m really twisting and emphasizing or making more palpable tensions that I feel in the present.”

These tensions run from the global to the intimate. As an uneasy Gaza ceasefire and grinding siege in Ukraine splash across real-world headlines, Martin says that Citizen Sleeper 2 unfolds “on the shores of war.” Distant battles rumble through the more immediate concerns of the game’s protagonist and allies, who collaborate to scratch out lives on the margins of unchecked capitalism.

The screen displays several jobs that can be completed by allocating dice. Lower die rolls can still advance your goals, but have a chance of incurring failures or lasting penalties.

Carefully allocate dice to earn money and progress story events — but beware, lower die rolls can have steep risks.

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As cutting-edge as these themes might be, Citizen Sleeper’s grounded in ancient gaming technology.

“Each day you roll five dice,” Martin explains. “So low rolling dice are kind of important in the game, to not be something that you can easily use efficiently — they have to be something that you kind of take a chance on.”

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These digital dice force you to consider the risks of your precarious position. In Citizen Sleeper 2, Martin expanded the system to model trauma. Dice break if you get too stressed, requiring costly resources to repair.

“They’ll take little scratches and nicks,” says Martin. “By the end of the game, your dice have been broken over and over again and will be shown right there on the screen as a kind of allegory for all those marks of a story that happened — the body keeps the score, I guess.”

Interview highlights

On failure being built into the narrative of the game

Yeah, this is a huge part of the philosophy of Citizen Sleeper. But then with the sequel, I really wanted to push hard on this idea of, “I’m going to invite you into situations where there’s a lot of different right answers and a lot of different wrong answers.” There’s a lot of different ways that it can break down, can break bad, or it can break good. I want to create these moments that hinge on single dice, where you’re deciding, “Do I use this dice for this” and try to emphasize those and bring stories out of them. You’re always playing as a character who’s struggling, and so when you struggle in the game, it kind of rhymes nicely with the things you know about the character. You know about their body that’s falling apart and about them being pursued and desperate.

 A story scene with a crew member. named Serafin The dice at the top of the screen bear nicks and cracks after repeated breaks and repairs.

A story scene with a crew member. The dice at the top of the screen bear nicks and cracks after repeated breaks and repairs.

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On how this game, released in 2025, speaks to major issues of our time

In a way, it’s kind of for others to tell me how much they feel it does achieve that or not. It’s very much about bodily autonomy in that very literal way and then also a political way. Citizen Sleeper has always been about this tension between, “Is it the most depressing thing in the world that these systems exist and can crush us without ever even knowing?” Or “is it incredible that we’re able to build meaningful relationships within those structures despite the fact that they are so uncaring and vast?” So, I do hope that it feels productive.

On the game centering community, resiliency and resistance

I think that for me, I’m really interested in drawing the focus down into what people are doing to survive and thrive and build relationships and communities. Citizen Sleeper 2 is a real opportunity because I knew this would be a character who is transient and dealing with characters who are going through this transitional moment. To have you then engage with a community that is maybe becoming solid, but also, the knowledge that you can’t necessarily become part of that community permanently. I think games have a kind of tendency to make everything feel permanent. So I really wanted this delicacy of change and of things falling apart and entropy and the kind of beauty of how people resist that and how people build meaning — despite the fact that they know that one day everyone they ever knew and everything they ever thought has gone. I find that eternally kind of beautiful.

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In ‘No Other Choice,’ a loyal worker gets the ax — and starts chopping

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In ‘No Other Choice,’ a loyal worker gets the ax — and starts chopping

Lee Byung-hun stars in No Other Choice.

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In an old Kids in the Hall comedy sketch called “Crazy Love,” two bros throatily proclaim their “love of all women” and declare their incredulity that anyone could possibly take issue with it:

Bro 1: It is in our very makeup; we cannot change who we are!

Bro 2: No! To change would mean … (beat) … to make an effort.

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I thought about that particular exchange a lot, watching Park Chan-wook’s latest movie, a niftily nasty piece of work called No Other Choice. The film isn’t about the toxic lecherousness of boy-men, the way that KITH sketch is. But it is very much about men, and that last bit: the annoyed astonishment of learning that you’re expected to change something about yourself that you consider essential, and the extreme lengths you’ll go to avoid doing that hard work.

Many critics have noted No Other Choice‘s satirical, up-the-minute universality, given that it involves a faceless company screwing over a hardworking, loyal employee. As the film opens, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has been working at a paper factory for 25 years; he’s got the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect family — you see where this is going, right? (If you don’t, even after the end of the first scene, when Man-su calls his family over for a group hug while sighing, “I’ve got it all,” then I envy your blithe disinterest in how movies work. Never change, you beautiful blissful Pollyanna, you.)

He gets canned, and can’t seem to find another job in his beloved paper industry, despite going on a series of dehumanizing interviews. His resourceful wife Miri (Son Ye-jin) proves a hell of a lot more adaptable than he does, making practical changes to the family’s expenses to weather Man-su’s situation. But when foreclosure threatens, he resolves to eliminate the other candidates (Lee Sung-min, Cha Seung-won) for the job he wants at another paper factory — and, while he’s at it, maybe even the jerk (Park Hee-soon) to whom he’d be reporting.

So yes, No Other Choice is a scathing spoof of corporate culture. But the director’s true satirical eye is trained on the interpersonal — specifically the intractability of the male ego.

Again and again, the women in the film (both Son Ye-jin as Miri and the hilarious Yeom Hye-ran, who plays the wife of one of Man-su’s potential victims) entreat their husbands to think about doing something, anything else with their lives. But these men have come to equate their years of service with a pot-committed core identity as men and breadwinners; they cling to their old lives and seek only to claw their way back into them. Man-su, for example, unthinkingly channels the energy that he could devote to personal and professional growth into planning and executing a series of ludicrously sloppy murders.

It’s all satisfyingly pulpy stuff, loaded with showy, cinematic homages to old-school suspense cinematography and editing — cross-fades, reverse-angles and jump cuts that are deliberately and unapologetically Hitchcockian. That deliberateness turns out to be reassuring and crowd-pleasing; if you’re tired of tidy visual austerity, of films that look like TV, the lushness on display here will have you leaning back in your seat thinking, “This right here is cinema, goddammit.”

Narratively, the film is loaded with winking jokes and callbacks that reward repeat viewing. Count the number of times that various characters attempt to dodge personal responsibility by sprinkling the movie’s title into their dialogue. Wonder why one character invokes the peculiar image of a madwoman screaming in the woods and then, only a few scenes later, finds herself chasing someone through the woods, screaming. Marvel at Man-su’s family home, a beautifully ugly blend of traditional French-style architecture with lumpy Brutalist touches like exposed concrete balconies jutting out from every wall.

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There’s a lot that’s charming about No Other Choice, which might seem an odd thing to note about such a blistering anti-capitalist screed. But the director is careful to remind us at all turns where the responsibility truly lies; say what you will about systemic economic pressure, the blood stays resolutely on Man-su’s hands (and face, and shirt, and pants, and shoes). The film repeatedly offers him the ability to opt out of the system, to abandon his resolve that he must return to the life he once knew, exactly as he knew it.

Man-su could do that, but he won’t, because to change would mean to make an effort — and ultimately men would rather embark upon a bloody murder spree than go to therapy.

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Austin airport to nearly double in size over next decade

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Austin airport to nearly double in size over next decade

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will nearly double in size over the next decade. 

The airport currently has 34 gates. With the expansion projects, it will increase by another 32 gates. 

What they’re saying:

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Southwest, Delta, United, American, Alaska, FedEx, and UPS have signed 10-year use-and lease agreements, which outline how they operate at the airport, including with the expansion. 

“This provides the financial foundation that will support our day-to-day operations and help us fund the expansion program that will reshape how millions of travelers experience AUS for decades to come,” Ghizlane Badawi, CEO of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, said.

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Concourse B, which is in the design phase, will have 26 gates, estimated to open in the 2030s. Southwest Airlines will be the main tenant with 18 gates, United Airlines will have five gates, and three gates will be for common use. There will be a tunnel that connects to Concourse B.

“If you give us the gates, we will bring the planes,” Adam Decaire, senior VP of Network Planning & Network Operations Control at Southwest Airlines said.

“As part of growing the airport, you see that it’s not just us that’s bragging about the success we’re having. It’s the airlines that want to use this airport, and they see advantage in their business model of being part of this airport, and that’s why they’re growing the number of gates they’re using,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.

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Dig deeper:

The airport will also redevelop the existing Barbara Jordan Terminal, including the ticket counters, security checkpoints, and baggage claim. Concourse A will be home to Delta Air Lines with 15 gates. American Airlines will have nine gates, and Alaska Airlines will have one gate. There will be eight common-use gates.

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“Delta is making a long-term investment in Austin-Bergstrom that will transform travel for years to come,” Holden Shannon, senior VP for Corporate Real Estate at Delta Air Lines said.

The airport will also build Concourse M — six additional gates to increase capacity as early as 2027. There will be a shuttle between that and the Barbara Jordan Terminal. Concourse M will help with capacity during phases of construction. 

There will also be a new Arrivals and Departures Hall, with more concessions and amenities. They’re also working to bring rideshare pickup closer to the terminal.

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City officials say these projects will bring more jobs. 

The expansion is estimated to cost $5 billion — none of which comes from taxpayer dollars. This comes from airport revenue, possible proceeds, and FAA grants.

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“We’re seeing airlines really step up to ensure they are sharing in the infrastructure costs at no cost to Austin taxpayers, and so we’re very excited about that as well,” Council Member Vanessa Fuentes (District 2) said.

The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Angela Shen

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After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’

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After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’

Wyle, who spent 11 seasons on ER, returns to the hospital in The Pitt. Now in Season 2, the HBO series has earned praise for its depiction of the medical field. Originally broadcast April 21, 2025.

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