Leslie Benzies’ first game since GTAV is refreshingly old-fashioned – even as it makes way for an ambitious future

By Jeremy Peel

Redrock’s regular sandstorms, induced by climate change, recall Dubai as portrayed in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

Game MindsEye

Developer Build A Rocket Boy

Publisher IO Interactive

Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series

Origin UK

Release Spring

The headquarters of Build A Rocket Boy were once a reliable source of free cheese toasties. At 3am, after the pubs of Prince’s Street had rung last orders, their patrons would decamp down the road to Leith, where the portside casino would supply inebriated souls with grilled sustenance on the house as they tried their luck at the tables.

Today, the casino is no longer in business. The row of teeth down one side of the building – a set of booths where staff would once scour security footage for cheats – now belongs to BARB’s audio department, and houses a mixing desk, a drum kit and acclaimed former GTA music director Craig Conner. The office of game director Leslie Benzies, erstwhile president of Rockstar North, borders the mezzanine balcony that used to overlook the slot machines – replaced on the ground floor by a QA team nowadays, hard at work finding bugs in MindsEye as it approaches completion.

It’s a meeting of past and future that finds a curious parallel in the world of the game itself. “When the casinos shut down, I had the foresight to open our doors to new companies,” says Mayor Vega. “And today, together, we will continue to make this growing economy thrive.”

IT’S A FULL-THROATED ACTION GAME FUELLED BY DRIVING AND SHOOTOUTS, DESIGNED TO BE A TIGHT, CINEMATIC THRILLER

Billionaire Silva bonds with protagonist Diaz over their shared background as immigrants: “Best people. You really need to be outside this place to understand it”

“We do want this to feel like a movie that you’re playing through, ultimately,” Whiting says

MindsEye assistant game director Adam Whiting

Mayor Vega doesn’t belong to the political ecosystem of Edinburgh or Scotland at large. Rather, she oversees the city of Redrock – the fictional backdrop to MindsEye, a full-throated action game fuelled by driving and shootouts, designed to be a tight, cinematic thriller. The mayor’s name is a clue of sorts: Redrock is best thought of as a near-future Las Vegas, wracked by the effects of climate change as dust storms roll in from the surrounding desert. There, big tech has treated the city as an R&D experiment writ large, developing AI-driven copbots to keep the peace, and a ‘CARE’ system which constantly analyses the data provided by phones, traffic cams, surveillance drones and satellites. “Crime in this city is almost impossible for your average citizen,” says Kerry Rigby, head of security at the Silva corporation, which develops and operates these iffy-at-best technological innovations.

AS DIAZ STEPS OUT, THE SCALE OF MINDSEYE’S WORLD BECOMES SUDDENLY APPARENT

Precisely where this power is concentrated is set to become a point of serious contention as the game begins. While enigmatic billionaire Marco Silva gears up for an imminent rocket launch he hopes will “save this planet from itself”, the city mayor is holding back airspace clearance, hoping to barter for backend access to the systems that steer the copbot program.

Into this rapidly heating cold war comes Jacob Diaz, a former black-ops soldier and recipient of the titular MindsEye implant – a pioneering neural interface that allows him to interface with a companion drone. Or at least it did, until a breakdown in the drone’s functions led to a catastrophic mission failure, the exact nature of which is shrouded in sand and confusion. Since his implant was decommissioned, Diaz has lost clarity on what happened during his time in the service, and is missing some other memories besides. He shows up in Redrock with his head in pieces, and broad shoulders visibly carrying a terrible weight, the exact nature of which his brain isn’t privy to.

Fortunately, some levity and understanding is on hand from Seb, a childhood friend who welcomes Diaz into his outskirts home with a kind, performance-captured smile and some reassurance about the heat: “You’ll get used to it. Sort of. Not really.” Seb has wrangled Diaz a job as a Silva security guard, but there’s a good chance he might regret it: Diaz has every intention of using his new position to investigate MindsEye on the sly, since the corporation manufactured the implant in his skull.