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Build a Rocket Boy, the studio founded by former Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies, has announced the release date for its upcoming game Mindseye, and sure enough it will be out before Grand Theft Auto 6: The big day is June 10, and unlike what we assume will be the case for the next GTA, it’ll arrive on PC the same day as consoles.
The launch date news comes to us in the company of a new cinematic trailer revealing more about the MindsEye game world, “a super-heated near-future desert metropolis” called Redrock City. It seems like a nice enough place but as usual there’s trouble bubbling beneath the surface: An “eccentric tech genius” named Marco Silva wants to “change the course of human evolution,” but his pursuit of that lofty goal appears to be running up against the agenda of Redrock City mayor Shiva Vega, “whose blind ambition is to make Redrock the safest city in the world”—sure, that sounds fine—”and to gain even greater control of its citizens”—okay, no, that doesn’t sound very good at all.
“The volatile relationship between Silva and Vega—Big Tech and Government—is poised to impact the future of Redrock and its inhabitants, but mostly Jacob Diaz, MindsEye’s protagonist, as he searches for answers about his troubled past,” Build a Rocket Boy said in the announcement. You may recall that we met Diaz in a February gameplay trailer featuring guns, cars, overbearing music, and high-tech stuff: Diaz himself looks like a suitably rugged man of few words who typically heads up this sort of “solve problems by shooting guys” enterprise.
The new trailer eschews gameplay for drama, and channels some heavy GTA: The plane lands, the music beats, the newcomer marvels while the local brushes it all off as just another day in paradise; nice houses, sexy cars, mayhem in the streets while the power brokers do what they do amidst escalating tension and unrest. All that’s missing is a guy yelling at the top of his lungs as he makes a last-second escape from a huge explosion and—oh, wait. There it is.
Maybe I’m making too many assumptions based on Benzies’ long history as a mainstay on the Grand Theft Auto series, going back all the way to GTA3, until his unfortunate split with Rockstar in 2016. (That lawsuit was settled in 2019, by the way.)
But to my eye it sure does look like a Rockstar game—which I know isn’t the worst criticism ever, but I can’t help thinking that if Benzies broke away from Rockstar to do his own thing, it’d be cool if his own thing wasn’t so, well, Rockstar.
It may be that the similarities are largely superficial: Benzies described Mindseye as a “tightly crafted game” in the announcement, “with a thought-provoking story where technology and ambition collide, and the inevitable consequences unravel.” GTA games are great, but “tight” and “thought-provoking” are not terms I’d use to describe them. Max Payne 3, maybe: Diaz is no Max but I’d definitely be more interested in that sort of directed, cinematic narrative experience than going bowling with my cousin 34 times in a row.
In any event, Mindseye is available for pre-purchase now on Steam, and will set you back $60/£55/€60. As is the way of things, preordering will get you a free “deluxe edition upgrade” that includes a handful of cosmetics and the premium pass, which will offer more cosmetics and “extra missions and challenges” expected to release throughout 2025 and early 2026.
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Kurt Indovina
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