When NME was duly invited to head to Edinburgh to take a first look at the mysterious Everywhere from Build A Rocket Boy, it wasn’t entirely clear what we were going to see.
I think it’s fair to say that the only thing we expected was a completely secret second game hidden inside Everywhere and designed to serve as a demonstration of what Everywhere can do, and it’s pretty much a narrative—oriented experience, third-person action. A game filled with shooting and driving that wouldn’t look out of place among the games created by game director Leslie Benzis during his time at Rockstar.
We don’t really see too much shooting or driving, and instead we were just shown a teaser and allowed a little peek behind the scenes in some productions. We were told that MindsEye is something that anyone could create using Everywhere with powerful editing tools contained inside, but after a few minutes of our tour, it becomes clear that this is not entirely true: enthusiastic game developers will undoubtedly do some amazing things using Everywhere, but very few have a stage motion capture in your shed or the ability to recruit actors for performances or a composer to create new music.
However, seen as an idealized representation of what Everywhere can create, it’s hard not to be thrilled by both MindsEye, which look like a high-quality version of the exact type of third-person shooter that used to be so common in past generations of consoles. and now I find myself screaming all the time.
MindsEye clearly aims to become something that demonstrates the sheer power of Everywhere and, to be honest, could be the key to its success. As a result, it’s unclear why MindsEye is a sideshow ad, another thing attached to the end of a user-generated content platform like Everywhere that really needs to be able to show what it can do to convince people to invest. your time and energy.
Be that as it may, even after watching some very impressive production lines and watching a longer clip in which your character befriends a strange scientist and tries to sort out a mystery that is still mostly confusing to the journalists in the room, it seems like it might just be the main event: something, what could inspire people and make them try Everywhere for themselves.
Related to this is the promise that, although your cosmetics and items from Everywhere can’t get into MindsEye, anyone from MindsEye will be able to use any when editing in Everywhere, and completing the game will bring players unique rewards. , too.
That’s pretty much all we know about him. While the BARB team has shied away from discussing monetization Everywhere, it’s easy to see that this is a premium part of the experience. You pay for the game, you inadvertently also buy a free editor. This makes a lot of sense and, depending on the price, will probably attract a lot of people who are interested in seeing what Benzis and the BARB team have to offer.
Telling us about the whole Everywhere/MindsEye package, Benzis happily explained that while Everywhere was a platform created for the audience, MindsEye was created for the BARB team. One is for players, the other is for developers.
Although there is no real world in the overall story, Benzis also revealed that BARB aims to develop several different games, each of which will feel completely different in terms of setting, time period and place, even if they are combined into one continuous comprehensive story. From this point of view, perhaps MindsEye is best suited as a vignette, a taster of the worlds that BARB wants to create, and a way to add new content for Everywhere players who want to design in certain worlds: the sci-fi world of the near future. of MindsEye will create a foundation for players to develop their own areas, but it’s hard not to see new settings that can go for even more outlandish settings, an AAA experience that offers fascinating content for more dedicated players Everywhere to use them now in interesting ways.
Of course, the reason for the jumps in terms of settings and storylines could actually be much simpler: “We don’t want to become a sequel company,” Benzis says during a Q&A session at the end of the studio. based event. Later, he hints that several episodes have already been planned and that they know what they want to do, but Benzis avoids any details.
Although this is just the beginning, MindsEye seems to be the best advertisement Everywhere. That’s what makes it so confusing that the BARB team seems the least willing to talk about it. Mindseye supposedly has a star composer behind the scenes, but the team isn’t ready to discuss who it is yet, and while there’s shooting and driving going on, it’s impossible to get any information about the game at this early stage.
Perhaps it’s because of the lack of information since I left the studio that I’ve been thinking so much about what it might actually look like.
