The big Leslie Benzies interview: MindsEye, Everywhere, and the double-edged sword of GTA

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

MindsEye has been positioned as a linear game. You are best known for creating open world games. What was behind the decision to make MindsEye a more linear, narrative-driven experience?

I think certain stories are more difficult to present to players in an open world setting. Open world gives you freedom – you don't necessarily want freedom to portray a story. For MindsEye, it's a very set time in a character, Jacob Diaz's, life. You pick up as Jacob when he arrives in Redrock, and then you leave Jacob at a certain point in the future.

And so, it'd be very difficult for us to have an open world in there. It's horses for courses: it depends what you're doing. But for Jacob's story, it had to be a linear game.

Having said that, there are open world experiences in there, and we can build them through Build.MindsEye. There is a free roam open world mode, where you play [as] a different character and you see his time, from the end of MindsEye, to the point of our next big planned launch.

Again, they're all connected through a narrative, and we really want to show the universe, show the stories that have taken place in the universe, the characters in that universe, and see how they've experienced the same experience but from different viewpoints.

Was there ever a discussion about creating a more traditional GTA competitor?

In design, you look at a lot of different options.

I'm not sure it would've been smart as a company to say, 'we are going to compete with the biggest game on the planet'. I'm not sure that would be the best business decision to make. We went through a bunch of different designs, and to tell our story, this is what we landed on.

Being who you are, it brings a certain level of expectation and attention. Do you find it a double-edged sword, launching a new studio and launching a new game, with your background?

Yes. There's always comparisons, and I think that's how humans work.

As kids, we're taught to put a triangle into a triangular hole, and a square into a square hole. I think we do that for the rest of our lives, and we like to describe something new as 'it's X plus Y, with a bit of Z in there'. It makes things easy for us. It's maybe humans optimising the way we communicate.

So there are comparisons. It serves us well in some ways, it doesn't serve us well in others. Dave Grohl said it well when he formed the Foo Fighters: nobody's interested in the Foo Fighters, all they were interested in was Nirvana.

The guys have built something very cool, and I just hope people can see it for what it's trying to be.

Check the link for more.
 
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The more I hear about this the more I'm turned off. Seems like Roblox for adults is the way they're trying it to market it, a direct quote is that they say they sit somewhere between

I think the game actually looks ok and may be pretty fun for a single player run through. I think the optics are very mixed though, if they had just said this is a linear single player game then I'd be more interested.

In terms of the tools, the tool doesn't really care what world you're building in. It sits separately. So any game we create, it will naturally work on top of it. But we're big fans of keeping everything thematically connected, or connected through a narrative, and you'll see it.

The bigger story will become obvious, once you've played through all of MindsEye. Then you might start to see how it all connects together, to the Everywhere world.

"The everywhere world"


confused jim carey GIF
 
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What were they thinking with this art?
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Looks like some knock-off Battlefield 3 DLC.

That being said I am still mildly interested in this game.
 
As you guys mentioed above about orange/blue and BF, yup. Many BF covers are similar. But the trend of orange/blue started with BF3.

Looks like BF covers have changed over the years:

Orange/green..... orange/grey..... orange/blue.

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Mindseye seems like a very competent first game from a new studio. Wish Benzie and the rest of the gang the best with this game.
 
Mindseye seems like a very competent first game from a new studio. Wish Benzie and the rest of the gang the best with this game.
It seems ambitious as fuck. I'm a big fan of studios taking huge swings - even when they miss. I hope this doesn't sink them.
 
Its basic color theory. Orange and teal is the most pleasing color combination, Or at least the easiest one to pull off.
Better than purple at least.
images-6.fill.size_256x256.v1742291351.jpg

Gold and brown tends to be a good one when done right
Clair_Obscur%2C_Expedition_33_Cover_1.webp
 
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That benzie guy sounds terrible.
"whatever he woke up with that day, it was a new priority what he liked or not"
yikes

would be funny if the game came out and it's amazing lol... probably not.
edit: I kinda don't like this stuff leaking/personal interviews and so on "oh it was so bad to work there".
I prefer to be completely disconnected from the game and the reality of creating it. I shouldn't care if they made the game with water stolen from kids in africa. It's not my problem.
 
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Find out everything you need to know about MindsEye, the upcoming narrative driven single player action thriller with expansive creation tools from developer Build a Rocket Boy in this interview with Leslie Benzies, Founder and Game Director.
 
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