Build a Rocket Boy’s debut title MindsEye has generated a fair bit of buzz in the lead up to its launch, and at least on a superficial level, you can see why that’s the case. Not only is it backed by ex-Rockstar talent and led by Leslie Benzies, the lead on Grand Theft Auto 5, Red Dead Redemption, and multiple other Grand Theft Auto titles, MindsEye is also promising a premium AAA experiences that emphasizes narrative and cinematic storytelling above all else. But though MindsEye does have undeniable appeal to it in more ways than one, we also can’t help but feel a little skeptical due to several factors.
Let’s start with the fact that we have had plenty of instances of large scale mainstream debut titles by new studios comprised of industry veterans that make big promises but fail to live up to them, from The Callisto Protocol to the utter disaster that was Mighty No. 9, so if MindsEye were to turn out to be a disappointment after making grand and enticing promises in its pre-launch building, it wouldn’t be the first game to do that, to say the very least.
Beyond that, however, there’s the plain and simple fact that what little we have seen of the game so far hasn’t look spectacular by any means. We’re not even going to get into how weirdly stingy MindsEye’s pre-launch marketing cycle has been – we’ve done that already – but even the sparse trailers and bits and pieces of footage that we’ve seen haven’t necessarily done much to grab attention. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve looked fine- but that’s sort of the issue. They’ve looked fine.
Build a Rocket Boy and publisher IO Interactive recently released an overview trailer for MindsEye that gave us our most extended look at the action game until now, and though it would be unfair to say the game’s looking bad, it’s also arguably looking a little run-of-the-mill in some ways. From the third person shooting combat to the driving mechanics, there isn’t that much that we have seen of MindsEye so far that sets it apart from the crowd. Its promise of an exploring near future city with light cyberpunk elements is undeniably an enticing one, but then there’s the fact that MindsEye is first and foremost a linear story driven game. Its missions will be linear, and its narrative will follow a set, linear structure, which means the open world sandbox experience is more or less going to be a separate thing, which raises some questions about how well integrated the open world is going to be with the experience to begin with.
Of course, the thing that MindsEye is banking on above all else in all of its pre-launch talk so far is its story and how cinematic it is going to be- but that is obviously the sort of thing that we’re not going to fully know until we’ve played the game ourselves. And frankly, the game’s pre-release marketing hasn’t done a great job of convincing us that it will indeed succeed in those areas. Yes, we’ve been told repeatedly that MindsEye is being developed by a lot of known industry talent that has worked on some great games in the past, but what we have seen of MindsEye itself hasn’t done an awful lot to convince us that the game will indeed be the narrative tour de force that Build a Rocket Boy keeps insisting it will be. We hope that it will be, of course, and we’re certainly not suggesting that that cannot happen- but if it does, it will be something of a relief, because at present, we can only take the developer at its word when it says that MindsEye is emphasizing story and storytelling more than any other aspect of the experience.
There is every chance that MindsEye is a more compelling gameplay and story experience than its pre-release marketing is making it seem so far – that, in fact, would be the ideal scenario for all concerned – and in fairness’ sake, we also do have to highlight the parts of the game that are looking quite intriguing in what has been shown off. Specifically, it is MindsEye’s creation and editing toolset that has caught the eye all of a sudden.
MindsEye will let players use a custom game creation toolset that will allow you to use all of MindsEye’s assets to develop your own content, missions, scenarios, and what have you set in the open world of Redrock, the city that the game is set in. Build a Rocket Boy says the toolset is the very system that the developer itself has used to create the game’s content, and what it will continue to use to craft post launch offerings (more on that in a bit).
Using the toolset, players will be able to craft different kinds of content, from stealth missions to chases and much more, while Build a Rocket Boy also says the system will be “intuitive and easy to use” for “players of all skill levels.” That is, of course, something that you hear often about creation toolsets in games, and it’s not often that that actually turns out to be true. But if MindsEye can indeed deliver a robust creation toolset that is legitimately easy to use, then that certainly is something to look forward to. The glimpses that we saw in the recent aforementioned overview trailer looked promising, so there’s cautiously optimistic, at the very least.
Interestingly, Build a Rocket Boy also seems to be using MindsEye’s creation system as the driver for the game’s post launch plans. The developer says it will use the creation tools to deliver a steady stream of new content on a monthly basis following the game’s release. Build a Rocket Boy and IO Interactive say that through a combination of studio-developed new missions, challenges, game assets, and more, and community-developed content, they foresee “decades” of post launch support for MindsEye. That is, of course, ultimately marketing speak, and no one is actually expecting literal decades of post launch content for the game- but it is interesting that the developer and publisher are nonetheless expecting a long tail for the game, whatever the specifics of that may be.
Whether that ends up happening remains to be seen. The list of games that have made grand post launch promises prior to release and then gone on to completely fail to deliver on those promises is a depressingly and infinitely long one, so these promises are never the kind that you can just take on faith. There’s also the fact that Build a Rocket Boy hasn’t actually offered too many concrete post launch details other than the brief and vague bits and pieces we’ve touched on here- that’s not exactly a roadmap, and not necessarily what would inspire complete confidence. Hopefully, we’ll be hearing more soon.
Our hope ultimately is that MindsEye is a much more compelling game than it looks like it is right now, because right now, we’re not entirely convinced. Build a Rocket Boy’s debut title is making some really interesting promises, and visually and technically, it’s looking quite impressive, but in some other key ways, it hasn’t made the strongest impression up until this point. Hopefully, we’ll be proven wrong in the not-too-distant future, with MindsEye set to launch for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on June 10.
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.
