Much has been made about the rich and inclusive story in this year's edition of the popular Call of Duty video game franchise. That may be, but "Call of Duty: Vanguard," out Friday for PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PCs ($59.99-up, You are part of a team of special forces soldiers trying to commandeer a German train buzzing toward Hamburg. You must dodge gunfire from Nazis on both rail lines and German military trucks buzzing between the set of tracks. Your team, led by Sgt.

The upcoming video game "Call of Duty: Vanguard" transports you back to World War II – but the latest entrant in the multibillion-selling franchises promises different perspectives of the global conflict. That diversity of perspectives is what you see deployed front and center in the main characters in the game, due out Nov. 5 for PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PCs. Arthur Kingsley, who is Black and Russian sniper Lt. Polina Petrova, alongside squad mates Brooklyn-born pilot Wade Jackson, identified as a first-generation American, Australian explosives expert Lucas Riggs, and second-in-command Sgt. Richard Webb, who is white. This team – a precursor to the modern Special Forces units – is assembled for a mission to enter Berlin and thwart a German plan to establish a Fourth Reich.

Call of Duty is parachuting back into World War II. Special operations forces such as SEAL Team Six grew out of Allied experiments with small squads chosen for specialized missions in World War II. In developing the single-player story campaign, Sledgehammer's creative team worked with historians including Marty Morgan, author of "D-Day: A Photographic History of the Normandy Invasion" who served as technical director on the studio's 2017 game Call of Duty WWII. Video games:Fortnite meets Among Us? New Impostors mode rolling out "We were really inspired by these first special forces operators and they seemed like such interesting characters that we wanted to explore," said David Swenson, creative director of the game's single-player story campaign for development studio Sledgehammer Games. Call of Duty: Vanguard's story is fiction, but "even though we are not beholden to history, we are rooted in history," Swenson said. "It feels realistic and authentic."

British archaeologists who discovered hundreds of artefacts from a cluster of 17th century shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea have had their cargo seized and been accused of an'illicit excavation'. Enigma Recoveries, which led an expedition into the Levantine Basin off the coast of Cyprus, found 12 shipwrecks filled with Chinese porcelain, jugs, coffee pots, peppercorns and illicit tobacco pipes. The ships and their priceless cargo, hailed as the'archaeological equivalent of finding a new planet' were recovered in ancient'shipping lanes' that served spice and silk trades from 300 BC onwards. But in a strongly-worded statement, the Cypriot government accused the company of being well known to both Cyprus and UNESCO for its'illicit underwater excavations' and its'violent extraction of objects causing destruction to their context'. Cyprus's Department of Antiquities accused the company of intending to sell the objects, as allegedly evident in documents filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (NASDAQ).

Archaeologists have found shipwrecks in the Mediterranean filled with hundreds of artefacts including Chinese porcelain, jugs, coffee pots, peppercorns and illicit tobacco pipes. A British-led expedition found a cluster of 12 ships on the sea bed, 1.2 miles below the surface of the Levantine Sea, using sophisticated robots. The ships were recovered in ancient'shipping lanes' that served spice and silk trades of the Greek, Roman and Ottoman empires, from 300 BC onwards. The ancient ships – including the biggest ever found in the Med – were unearthed in a muddy part of the eastern seabed between Cyprus and Lebanon, where remnants are often hard to find. The cluster of shipwrecks were found in the Levantine Basin in the east of the Mediterranean Sea.

There's another Kubrick science–fiction project that received a similarly puzzled critical reception to 2001, and which is overdue for reappraisal. AI: Artificial Intelligence, which came out 13 years ago, was developed by Kubrick and latterly with Steven Spielberg, a perfect fear–and–wonder pairing. The film is an Oedipal fairy tale about a robot boy called David driven by his programming to seek a mother's love. It's equal parts Pinocchio and Frankenstein and, like those stories, is fascinated less by the creator than their creation. David, perfectly played by Haley Joel Osment, is a new brand of "mecha", or humanoid robot, invented by a Dr Hobby (William Hurt) as a kind of child–surrogate.

In 2016, venture capitalists invested $5 billion in startups involving artificial intelligence, representing a 40 percent increase from 2012. With hopes of securing a foothold in what promises to be a multi-billion dollar industry, some of the most influential companies in the world--including IBM, Apple, and Google--are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into their AI research-and-development labs. Health care in particular has been a favourite target for these investments. Google's research website states that "machine learning has dozens of possible application areas, but healthcare stands out as a remarkable opportunity to benefit people." As with any burgeoning industry, there have been gaffes along the way.

Video games have changed immeasurably since the days of tape loading and cover-mounted floppy discs. Today, we get lifelike 3D virtual worlds where the player can seamlessly connect with companions and opponents from every corner of the globe. An online triple-A title will now offer literally hundreds of hours of fun spread across years of play. Yet, inflation aside, the price we pay at the till remains the same now as it was 25 years ago. To make this possible, a lot of things have changed about the way the games industry works – but those changes haven't always been well received.