10 Things You Should Know About MindsEye, the New Game from Ex-GTA Lead Leslie Benzies

I've been curious about MindsEye ever since it was announced, but as the first game from former longtime Grand Theft Auto lead Leslie Benzies has neared release, I've become increasingly confused. Benzies’ studio Build A Rocket Boy's debut game is a linear-action adventure, with GTA-style mechanics used to tell a more direct, cinematic story. But it's also set in an expansive city that is, in theory, fully explorable. On top of that, it's also a digital platform that lets players create and publish their own game content, using bespoke tools that were used in-part to build the game itself.

It's a lot of different layers? But how do they all come together? Can you actually explore MindsEye's world freely? And what the hell happened to Build A Rocket Boy's previous project, Everywhere?

These are the questions that were on my mind when I visited Build A Rocket Boy's studio last week. Now that I've seen MindsEye in action, I have a much clearer picture of what it is and what it hopes to achieve. With that in mind, here are ten things you should know about MindsEye.

1) MindsEye is set in the city of Redrock, a near-future spin on Las Vegas

MindsEye's setting of Redrock is heavily inspired by Las Vegas, a desert city that arose to prominence as a hub for casinos and entertainment. But MindsEye takes place in an imagined near-future where those casinos have been shut down, and Redrock's economy has shifted into being a haven for tech companies. "You find a lot of companies moving to very specific places in America because of these tax breaks, and it's also a good place to go and hide," says Benzies, MindsEye's director. "There's a lot of characters, or groups of characters who are hiding from things."

As a virtual space, Redrock is fully mapped out, with a total map size of 9x9 kilometres, and a playable area measuring 6x6 kilometres. As you're driving around it, it has a definite GTA-ish feel, with a believable road network, a built-up downtown area, more suburban areas on the fringes, and sparser settlements on the outskirts. "We took a lot of inspiration from Las Vegas, of course, like the population, the way that the different demographics are working," says executive producer Misha Shmakov. "We have low-income areas, high income areas. So we see different cars, different people there."

2) MindsEye's story takes place at a tipping point in society's relationship with technology

Redrock is essentially a city-wide social experiment, where the residing tech companies have a heavy influence on society and, in some cases, operative control of social institutions. The city is "protected" by AI powered copbots, and citizens are monitored by a centralised surveillance system called 'CARE'.

These ideas were still far-flung concepts back when MindsEye began development, but have become more relevant as tech-like large-language models have emerged. "A lot of the things that we came up with back then weren't necessarily mainstream, or even really known about, and we just thought they would be great ways to present the world," Benzies says.

MindsEye's story sees Redrock at a crossroads with this technology – one inspired by Benzies' own perspective on the power and potential pitfalls he sees in real-life technological innovations. "Whenever I jump on and use AI and ask it questions, I am communicating with the most intelligent thing that exists on this planet right now, the collective intelligence of every single human being, and it's quite friendly to me," he says. "Used wisely, it's going to benefit humans. Used wrongly, which so many pieces of technology are, things could go pretty bad for us.

"That's the question that MindEye poses. What do you think? What's going to happen? Is it going to end up like this, like, this story we're telling you. Or is it all going to be happy and light?"

3) You play as Jacob Diaz, an ex-military drone pilot with a shattered memory

In MindsEye's campaign, you play as Jacob Diaz, a former military drone pilot who has been implanted with a MindsEye chip that allows him to interface with the drone directly. Players enter Diaz's story after he has left the military and his chip has been decommissioned, a process that left his memory in pieces.

At the story's outset, Diaz gets a new job as a security guard at Silva Industries, the manufacturer of the MindsEye chip. Through this, Diaz intends to conduct his own investigation of the company and attempt to piece together his past.

It's a story you experience through a sequence of missions that'll take you all across Redrock, in a similar fashion to the Mafia games. According to Benzies, the linearity of the experience is a storytelling decision. "It's sometimes difficult to tell a story in an open world, and you join Jacob at a very set point in his life, and then you leave Jacob at a very set point in his life," he explains. "If Jacob was to go off and pop into a casino and gamble for three days, it kind of breaks the illusion of being Jacob who's on a mission."

4) Missions will involve racing across the city by both land and air, and occasionally shooting enemies with a massive energy cannon

The mission I was shown involves Diaz escorting Silva Industries' CEO Marco Silva to a campaign rally for Redrock's mayor. After arriving at the rally via his personal VTOL, and engaging in a heated debate with mayor Vega over his plans to launch a rocket into space, Silva is drugged and abducted by an armed gang, and Diaz must chase them down.

The ensuing mission sees you pursue Diaz' abductors in a VTOL before continuing the chase in a car, weaving through the desert and barrelling through an ongoing dune buggy race. The vehicle handling is slightly lighter and more arcade-y than GTA, but still has enough weight and inertia that they require skill to control at high-speed, as I learned after repeatedly slamming my car into the boulders strewn across the desert.

The mission culminates in a protracted gunfight through an industrial backlot. At a basic level, combat is a familiar, cover-shooter affair, pressing yourself against cars and shipping crates as you pick off enemies one by one.

Your basic arsenal comprises slightly futuristic variants of familiar firearms like pistols, assaults rifles etc. While these are effective weapons (the shotgun in particular has a satisfying punch to it) they aren't vastly different from what you'd see in other cover shooters. But later weapons include a massive energy cannon that fires charged, explosive projectiles.

The developers stressed this would not normally be available at this point in the campaign, but I nonetheless enjoyed using it to obliterate cars and send enemies flying, and it was interesting to see how MindsEye's arsenal will expand over the course of the campaign.

5) Combat is designed to be tactical, with you using a drone to scout enemy placements and hack robots to fight by your side

When you're not causing havoc with a rocket launcher from the future, MindsEye's combat is designed to be a more tactical affair than that seen in GTA. Enemies will not only attempt to outgun you, but also outmanoeuvre you too. "Some of them will be more defensive. “Some of them will come and try to push you out of [cover], some of them will try to flank you," Shmakov says. "They also look at what type of weapon [you] use. If you use a shotgun, they will try to close the distance while others are putting pressure on you."

Initially, you'll have to deal with these foes using straight firepower. But eventually, Jacob will regain access to his MindsEye drone, which has several functions. It can scan the environment, highlighting enemy positions. It can stun enemies for a short duration, and it can hack robotic enemies to turn them to your side. You can also deploy these functions either as quickfire abilities, or through direct control of the drone, piloting it into enemy territory to survey the battlefield or disrupt enemies before engaging directly.

6) MindsEye also features optional side-missions that provide more insight into the world of Redrock

Although MindsEye's campaign is linear, there are side missions. As you follow Jacob's story, you'll occasionally encounter optional missions designed to provide a broader understanding of MindsEyes world. "These are narratively extra experiences that relate to the game but are not main story critical," says Adrian Butchart, creative strategist at Build a Rocket Boy. "We've got some that are young Jacob, and some that are just completely different characters that we meet."

One such example sees you play as Jacob in his military years, while another places you in the role of a member of the Back Niners, a criminal gang embroiled in a deal gone wrong. Both seemed like fairly straightforward combat sequences, but I didn't see the full extent of how they played out, because these side missions don't just exist to fill out the backstory, they're also intended to be a gateway into MindsEye's more creative side.

7) Build.MindsEye lets you create your own missions and experiences using MindsEye’s own assets

Part of the side content's role is to introduce players to Build.MindsEye, aka the creative tools. These can actually be accessed at any time during play, and are usable in any area of Redrock. But the portals are designed to showcase what's possible with the tools, and act as isolated bubbles for experimentation.

The tools themselves are designed balance accessibility with power. Assets like vehicles and characters can be added to the world through a simple drag and drop interface, while you can adjust their size, positions, and mess around with other parameters. Senior Level Designer Josh Mattyas demonstrates this in the side-mission set in Jacob's past, jumping into build mid-action and adding in several trucks that deploy copbots. Returning to the action, the mission plays out precisely as it would normally, cutscenes and all, but with the copbot trucks integrated. "It's quite powerful. It's tempting to throw in all kinds of crazy stuff," he says.

But Build can be used to construct the entire logic of a level or the ruleset of a game, via a node-based scripting system that Build a Rocket Boy describes as a blend of Unreal Engine Blueprint scripting and Minecraft Redstone. Users can also save groups of assets or scripted elements as stamps, which you can then place with a single click or publish for other people to use.

According to Benzies, the end goal of Build.MindsEye is to give players the tools to create games of blockbuster quality. "There's nothing really out there that allows you to build triple-A quality content with ease," he says. "Roblox, great for building in, but it's bloody difficult, whereas Minecraft is a lot easier, but you're not really getting that quality. We're trying to create something in the middle."

8) Build.MindEye is PC only, but there are plans to bring it to consoles in the future.

On launch, MindsEye Build will only be available on PC. Benzies says this is mainly a control issue. "Controllers are difficult. We will do it on console at some point. We just didn't have the time to do it properly." Moreover, if and when Build does arrive on console, it may not function in precisely the same manner as the PC version. "I can see there's certain things you wouldn't be able to do, but I think it will still [be able to] make a pretty compelling piece of content.

In the meantime, console players will receive monthly updates of new missions and other content via Play.MindsEye, the same menu that enables access to the existing side missions when you’re not near a portal.

9) While MindsEye's campaign is linear, you can explore Redrock openly through its "Free Roam" mode

Although MindsEye's campaign doesn't let you explore Redrock freely, players can wander around the city as they please through its recently added Free Roam mode. Free Roam takes place after the events of the story, putting you in the role of a character called the Preacher. "You can just explore the city, see what's happening, like, see what the other gangs are up to, fight them," Shmakov says. "You will have a functionality where you can just call a car, your car, to come to you."

It isn't clear how much there will be to do in Free Roam on launch, but Build a Rocket Boy plans to add more features with future updates. "[It's] a really big part of our post-launch, because we'll keep updating it and keep improving on it," Shmakov says. Part of this may well include making free roam multiplayer. "This is at first, it's single-player, then we'll think about how it can evolve."

10) Build a Rocket Boy plans for MindsEye to build into its larger project, Everywhere

MindsEye is designed to function as a standalone game, but it also forms part of Build A Rocket Boy's larger project, the massively multiplayer game platform Everywhere. "Everywhere still exists, we just closed it down," Benzies says. "It was in beta for a while, so we got a load of data from the players. It was a decent-sized community, a very engaged community. So we've learned a lot from that. We took all that learning [and] we put it into the Builder Tools."

Benzies says the tools players can use to build MindsEye are game and genre-agnostic. "Those builder tools don't really care if it's MindsEye, if it's Everywhere, or if it's any other game. They just work in exactly the same way," he says. "It doesn't matter what theme the game is, once you've learned the skills of the creator, they'll just work across anything."

As for how MindsEye and Everywhere relate, Benzies says the former ties into the overarching narrative of the latter. "MindsEye is a piece of content that probably sits in the middle of our big story," he says. "So Everywhere will come back online in a slightly different shape, but will be the same thing, and it will all be part of the story."