If you haven’t heard of Edinburgh-stationed studio Build a Rocket Boy, you’ll undoubtably be familiar with the games director at its helm. Leslie Benzies spent most of his career at Rockstar, overseeing the production of their world-dominating titles; household names like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto V. Splintering off to form his own enterprise – with a handful of Rockstar defectors in tow – Build a Rocket Boy is gearing up to release its first standalone title.
MindsEye is an action-adventure thriller and given the pedigree of the team behind its creation, and, of course, the sheer look of the thing, the comparisons with that open world series are undeniable. Dust-hewn streets of a modern city, themes of crime, greed, and corruption, likeable protagonists who strut the fine line between earnest freedom fighters and murderous reprobates. On paper, MindsEye and Grand Theft Auto V are incredibly alike, but – as the studio themselves would prefer – resting on this comparison alone does Build a Rocket Boy’s game a disservice. MindsEye is not a GTA copycat. It presents its own spin on the genre. It combines tight narrative design with free-flowing action sequences and presents its prescient topics in a serious tone sharper than any of GTA’s satirical edges.
The game follows amnesiac Jacob Diaz, a former soldier with a neural implant, who takes a trip to the near-future metropolis of Redrock – a hotbed of blue-chip investment and swanky nightlife – to search for clues that’ll regain his memory whilst discovering the origins of his life ruining skull-implanted microchip. Along the way he becomes embroiled in a government who’re evidently a little too cosy with the city’s fully automated robotic law enforcers and their nefarious tech mogul leader hellbent on changing the course of human evolution. The game’s story trailer begins with the proclamation a scientist has discovered a paradox, and thus the iRobot comparisons begin. And the association with Will Smith’s 2004 movie strengthens as soon as we glimpse red-lighted (and presumably angry) robots punching the windows of moving vehicles during one of the game’s assumed-to-be many high-speed chases.
Leslie Benzies’ history as Rockstar’s head honcho is omnipresent though. However, Build a Rocket Boy are slowly shaping their own identity as more detail on their upcoming projects is shared. MindsEye, together with proprietary UGC platform Arcadia and Everywhere, the MMO nestled within. Benzies himself acknowledges this journey, poetically framing the image in his rear-view mirror during a recent interview with Gaming Bible at the BAFTA Games Awards as similar to Dave Grohl’s after he formed the Foo Fighters following Nirvana’s dissolution. It isn’t just a case of trying to do something different for the sake of distinction. Instead, time is key to forging your own path.
Maybe that’s why MindsEye is so reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto, or indeed any number of the high production, future-tech-tinged adventures GTA has influenced since V was unleashed on the world in 2013: Cyberpunk 2077, Watch Dogs, Detroit: Become Human, et cetera. The Scottish team aren’t trying specifically to craft experiences or tell stories beyond what interests them. If the outcome is akin to Grand Theft Auto, then so be it. The results here are cinematic and highly polished, an ultra-modern blockbuster to tie us over until Grand Theft Auto VI launches.
That said, there are distinctions here in how MindsEye presents its story. For starters, this is a comparatively short experience clocking in at approximately fifteen hours to complete the main campaign. This streamlined runtime alludes to a linear mission design; tightly structured, thoughtfully paced story delivery. Concentrating on delivering a story within the narrower constructs of linear design as opposed to, say, the self-curated discovery of open world games is a deliberate ploy by Build a Rocket Boy to push back on the over-extravagance of AAA games of recent years. We’re seeing push back against never-ending open worlders elsewhere in series like Assassin’s Creed, but during an interview with Eurogamer, Build a Rocket Boy’s assistant game director Adam Whiting is confident the studio isn’t merely chasing trends. According to him, the team has been able to curate tender story moments, tension building episodes, and bombastic spectacle with the deftest balance.
Cinematic quality is of utmost importance too but done so in a way that feels grounded in a semblance of reality. Modern games, argues Whiting, place camera angles too often from vantages too unlike where physical real-life cameras can be placed, and this is where a wackiness seeps in. Games, as per Whiting in conversation with Eurogamer, are “great mechanisms to tell meaningful stories”, with their immersiveness coming from their interactivity and not their ungrounded cinematography. Games are losing sight of their most intrinsic characteristics.
Whether you wholly agree on Whiting’s generalised stance on modern games or not is a point of debate beyond the scope of this feature. However, his comments do speak to how we can expect to perceive our experience playing MindsEye. Like an interactive movie perhaps, or a choreographed dance with just enough improv to ensure its memorability.
What else can we expect to experience when playing MindsEye? Well, guns, of course, are aplenty. In-between Diaz’s flashbacks there’re numerous opportunities for him to use his military training to undertake a range of operations, from repelling ambushes to daring search and rescue missions. The over-the-shoulder perspective when Jacob aims down the barrel of his rifle is super close, almost like a neural implant’s viewpoint, providing a compellingly widescreen visage of death and destruction. There’re extra tools at Jacob’s disposal too, most noticeably a rolled-up drone which unfolds when launched. This drone doesn’t appear to be loaded with firepower, so perhaps it’s a means to survey the environment before wading into battle. We do, however, see rockets and the like firing from the camera’s eye view of something hovering over enemies, so it’s more than likely Diaz will have opportunity to fly something into battle too.
There’ll be a variety of different enemy types encountered, most notably the now-rogue automated police force whom we see in gameplay footage as firing upon our amnesiac soldier. Enemies portray a range of tactics and behaviours, so utilising the surroundings, finding the right vantage points, and exploiting environmental tools will be crucial to gaining the edge in skirmishes. The combat here sounds a lot more in-depth than anything Grand Theft Auto has ever attempted.
High octane vehicle driving is par for the course too, and without confirmation that Redrock’s pristine public transportation system is accessible we can assume driving will be the optimum mode of traversing the game’s self-proclaimed ‘faux’ open world. And, despite the game’s story missions being ladled out in linear fashion, we’re assured this world sculpted by wealth, power, and artificial intelligence is filled with unique stories, hidden perspectives, and undiscovered truths via a wealth of side content character arcs. What’s most intriguing though is in how Build a Rocket Boy are managing to weave the city’s automated systems into the everyday lives of Redrock’s citizens. Exploring the city’s streets hopefully should reveal how the lines are blurring between government control and corporate power which, for many in the world, is a grim concern in the here and now.
MindsEye is launching on June 10th, 2025, to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and given GTA VI’s late-2025 release window it’ll be the perfect tonic to Vice City’s agonising wait.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
