MindsEye is a third-person action-adventure game, set in the fictional city of RedRock, with a focus on technological advancements. Players take on the role of amnesiac protagonist Jacob Diaz as he gets caught between representations of Big Tech and Big Government within the city, all while trying to learn about his titular implant that has caused his memory loss. As Build a Rocket Boy built a game envisioning a future of AI, drones, and robots,major advances in AI, drones, and robots have been made. This, if nothing else, makes for an interesting story.
Game Rant recently sat down with Build a Rocket Boy to talk aboutMindsEye’s development journey. They also provided insight into some of the game’s design choices.This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MindsEye’s Development Journey Explained
Q: Can you take us back to day one? What did the initial pitch and early months of MindsEye look like?
A:It started with a simple idea—a world that feels familiar, but slightly off. Not broken, just unsettled. We talked a lot about trust, control, and how people live inside systems that don’t always work the way they should. From the beginning, it was about building something cinematic, with tension just under the surface.
Q: What was the moment you believed the team “found the fun” forMindsEye?
A:InMindsEyespecifically, we saw a clear change a year ago when everything started to “gel” together very well in the game. At this time, we used a subset of benchmark missions as a test bed for our processes and our design philosophy, and we saw feedback getting better and better in those missions. This triggered a change in us too: we knew thenwhatMindsEyewas really aboutand what it needed to be, and we could focus on that and nothing else. It can be painful to let go of certain ideas you’ve dreamed of for years, but it’s also liberating to feel that you have found what works and where your strength lies, that you can set certain things aside to focus on making the core of your experience the best you can make it.
Q: What has the past year of development looked like for your team?
A:We have had a playable game from start to finish for a very long time now. This is very important to get a feel of the game’s rhythm, what works, what’s too slow, etc. That meant that this last year, we could focus on making sure our systems are reliable in every circumstance, which is extra important for us because players will also be able to create their own experiences with them inMindsEye.Build. To be concise, this past year was spent iterating in very short loops with multiple daily reviews oneverything that makesMindsEyeso great: its world, its combat, its dialog, the delivery of its story in missions, and its highly polished cinematics, all based on the strong foundations the team had spent years building in Redrock City.
How BARB Settled on MindsEye’s Core Themes
Q: What drew you to themes of artificial intelligence, greed, corruption, and so forth?
A:Our own, present world! It is defined more and more by these notions, and since at least 2008, this trend has been accelerated by technological progress and social networks. Even the most powerful of people are starting to get the feeling that this wave is bigger than them. Everyone is waiting for the Singularity to finally topple things over, thinking they’ll be better off afterward. Many of us are living as if we were followers or spectators of an end-of-times cult.MindsEyereflects and anticipates the current course of humanity.
Our goal is to make a game and a world that resonates with current times, that makes you think, without being judgmental. We have very charismatic “bad guys,” but the “good guys”inMindsEyeare not really “good guys” either. They’re just fighting something or somebody worse than them in their own view, and ultimately, they all have very selfish reasons to do so. It’s what they choose to do when confronted with a life-defining choice that ultimately shows who they are. That’s when their true self is revealed.
MindsEye’s Cinematic Approach Explained
Q:MindsEyehas a focus on high-production cinematics. Can you talk about your process in creating these cinematics?
A:When creating thehigh-production cinematics forMindsEye, our process began with a strong narrative foundation. We worked closely with the writing team to fully understand the emotional beats and storytelling goals of each scene and character. From there, we moved into previsualization, using storyboards and animatics to plan camera angles, composition, and pacing. Casting was also a crucial step. We brought in talented actors, with the goal of ensuring that every emotion was captured authentically. All main talent was fully scanned to create digital doubles to replicate the actors’ likenesses inside the game. This was one of the key steps to marrying performance capture fidelity with high-end graphics.
We didn’t want the scene to be just about big, dramatic moments, but about subtle facial expressions and body language too, so we could keep the player immersed in a variety of emotions throughout the development of the story. One of the core aspects of our process was our commitment tofull performance capture, a technique that captures the actors' face, body, and audio performances simultaneously. This approach allowed us to maintain the integrity of each actor’s performance, preserving every subtle expression, gesture, and vocal nuance in sync. It created an authentic, emotionally charged experience, where character interactions felt genuine and immersive.
In production, we leveragedthe power of Unreal Engine 5, which allowed us to achieve cinematic quality in real time. Our team used every inch of computing power available to run complex cinematic sequences in real time, including cinematic cameras, VFX, animations, audio, lighting, and post-effects. All to enhance the storytelling while we stayed true to the game. Finally, in post-production, the teams worked tirelessly to refine the finish and quality level of the cinematics, ensuring that every cinematic felt impactful and polished. It was a collaborative effort between engineering, animators, artists, designers, and audio, all pushing towards a unified creative cinematic vision.
Q: How did this cinematic approach affect other aspects of its design?
A:Our cinematic approach inMindsEyewasn’t just to add a layer of storytelling, but rather an integral part of the mission flow. From the beginning, we aimed to ensure that the cinematics felt like a seamless extension of gameplay, not isolated cutscenes. This meant carefully designing transitions where players could move from gameplay to cinematic moments without any jarring breaks, always maintaining immersion. We achieved this by tightlyintegrating cinematics with mission design. The scenes were crafted with the same environments and characters players would experience during gameplay, allowing for a natural visual and narrative continuity.
Our use of full performance capture further enhanced this, ensuring that character performances were consistent whether in cutscenes or in real-time gameplay interactions. Camera work and framing were also aligned to keep players connected to the action, using cinematic angles that felt dynamic but still allowed for a clear understanding of the scene and connected the player with the next gameplay setup. Even in high-stakes moments, our goal was to maintain player engagement, making them feel like active participants in the unfolding story that was tied to the gameplay. The cinematics inMindsEyeweren’t just storytelling devices; they were woven directly into the player’s journey, creating acontinuous immersive experience.
How AI Advancements Affected MindsEye’s Development
Q:MindsEyeis releasing after eight years of development. How have the many advancements in AI impacted its development, if at all?
A:If anything, it comforted us in our themes and our story! Everything that has happened since we started closely resembles whatMindsEyeis about, and we feel that many of our characters are not far off from their real-life counterparts, with their light and their shadows. As for the development part, because of many legal intricacies and our development philosophy, we’ve limited the use of generative AI tools for concept art and in-game assets, for example. Most of our AI use for code is limited to IDE-enhancing AI, with no code generation. We have an extremely talented team of artists and programmers who know how to use AI to support their work, andwe can’t replace their talent with AIin our particular field.
On the other hand, our mission at BARB is to give our players not only a great experience withMindsEyebut also a giant toolbox with MindsEye.Build. We believe in the pleasure of creating and sharing, and we are, of course, integrating AI in our design philosophy to support creation, but not to replace it. In a sense, we are about the pleasure of creation. We want our players to access thousands of experiences that have an intention, a design, that are made because somebody had an idea, a dream, not generated slop. So, we will continue designing our products with that philosophy. We believe in AI that supports human creativity, not in AI that replaces it.
Think about it. Would children have more fun if AIbuilt their Lego creationsfor them? Wouldn’t they miss the tactile experience of building? Or would they be better off with an AI that proposes construction plans but lets them be the masters of their own creation? Would players like a platform filled with low-quality, generated content? We believe they wouldn’t, and we are designing our products accordingly.
How MindsEye Approaches Mission Design
Q: What was your overall approach to mission/quest design?
A:Mission design and level design arewhat makes or breaks an action-adventure game. We blend three different things in our design style: real-world influences, open-world style, and a story-driven linear game. We wantedMindsEyeto feel natural. In many games, you can feel that an environment has been designed for a video game. This is not the case withMindsEyebecause it simply has not! We started with places that looked like they’d been built for their diegetic use and then and only then did we start building missions and objectives in them.
This is very difficult, of course. Try getting into cover behind anything in the real world, and you’ll see how hard it is to transform a real place into a battlefield for fun! This makes our missions and levels feel a lot more realistic and a lot more open. It was an expensive process though, and we achieved this level of quality only by relentlessly iterating on our missions and levels.
Q: How does the integration of AI as an antagonistic force make these missions/quests differ from past games you’ve worked on?
A:MindsEye’s theme is that AI is just coming, a looming force behind the scenes. We wanted to be quite subtle with it and there is a story strand that many could miss in their first playthrough. For missions and gameplay, it was about balance. How do you convey this theme and stay subtle? InMindsEye, AI is only a “risk” that becomes a world-ending “danger” very late in the game. This can be felt in the difference between the first third of the game (in which you are on the side of a surveillance-heavy corporation, using its tools to your own advantage, with a lot of spying around), and the final act when sh*t hits the fan.
At that point, a bigger dog has entered play, and you are now in a position where your tools (your drone, the lenz, etc.) are just enough to get by. Ultimately, our missions reflect Jacob’s journey as an underdog using a corporation’s power to his advantage, who becomes the ultimate soldier while the same corporation gets superseded by a larger power, using its own misguided research.
How MindsEye Utilizes Drones in its Gameplay
Q: Can you discuss the use of drones inMindsEyegameplay? How do these impact combat?
A:Drones are central toMindsEye, including, of course, the companion drone. One theme in the first act ofMindsEyeis the massive surveillance system that drones and robots allow in Redrock City. We wanted players to get a feel of this surveillance system, which is why you get to use a lot of Silva Corp drones in the first third of the game. Then,you get your own companion drone, and gameplay changes entirely.
The companion drone is an absolute menace. It allows you to be as aggressive or as defensive as you please in gameplay, and its abilities increase very regularly throughout the adventure. The drone makes everything more varied and explosive, and what’s great is that it does not make things too easy either. We also made sure that you can progress through most ofMindsEyewithout feeling forced to use the drone. It just expands your tactics tenfold, and every player we’ve seen test our game has had a different style with it.
Q: Can you speak to how customizable these drones are and to the overall customizability present inMindsEye?
A:We wantMindsEyeto be about its spectacle, its story, and moment-to-moment gameplay. This is why we refrained fromadding artificial RPG systemsthat would have distracted from the experience. In that sense,MindsEyeis simple. If your drone gets an upgraded ability in the story, you can use it immediately! It’s like enjoying a fresh can of soda. A simple pleasure that is not made better by adding artificial sweeteners on top of an already sugary drink. Maybe a slice of lime, and we do have some zesty weapons.
Q: Can you discuss stealth mechanics? What options, if any, do players have for non-lethal approaches?
A:MindsEyeis an action game. We treated Stealth as a one-off in certain missions, but it is not an option for most of the game. This is in line with what we want for combat: spectacular, explosive, simple, and flowy. No unnecessary fluff, just good, fun shooting.
How Vehicles Factor into MindsEye
Q: How do vehicles factor into combat, if at all? What about customization for them?
A:We allow players to get behind the wheel of a variety of vehicles during the course of the story and much of the side content. Fromhigh-performance sports carsand lumbering trucks to fully armed all-purpose military off-roaders and attack drones, all have their own carefully crafted handling feel and purpose. Whether you are heading through city streets in a high-speed chase or fighting your way through hordes of enemy robots, we provide the player with vehicles that entertain and hopefully give a glimpse at what will be possible once players get their hands on the tools we have in store for them.
There’s also much more to come, including more comprehensive customization (if this is what players want!) There is no customization for vehicles apart from premium skins. However, this is something we are planning for in the future in our more “open” modes that will be released as part of the free update roadmap (you can get an early taste of this in Redrock City Free Roam in Play.MindsEye). Vehicles in the adventure can be used as cover in most encounters, and we’ve placed certain unlocked vehicles in key locations so you can actually use them in combat to ram enemies with or create dynamic cover with.
Q: How would you describe the overall weapon design? Should players expect a standard array of weaponry, or are there more “smart” weapons found in Redrock?
A:We want to be rooted in the “very-near future” of weaponry, which is why our arsenal consists of all the classics, with a slight twist for some weapons. We’ve tried to make the first pistol quite iconic and futuristic, for example. In the latter parts of the game, you get access to moreexperimental weapons with a slight “Sci-fi” vibe, one of which is our players’ favorite (of the explosive kind) in our playtests. You’ll recognize it when you get there!
Q: Likewise, how would you describe the overall enemy design and boss designs?
A:We’ve focused on good fundamentals, making sure our encounters feel flowy, balanced, like an integral part of the story and not tacked-on gameplay. Our AI is managed by an “Encounter Manager” that distributes roles to different archetypes, and this manager makes sure that there is no lull in our encounters, that enemies are always trying to set up an ambush, to push towards you to get you out of your current cover or defend tactical zones in a level. What’s special aboutMindsEyeis that we have human enemies, but also (spoilers!) robots. We worked hard on having robots that feel realistic and challengingwithout becoming frustrating sacks of HP, and we put particular attention on their interactions with humans. You’ll see humans taking cover behind certain robots, robots synchronizing certain actions, etc.
Q: Do you have any personal favorite vehicles or weapons in MindsEye?
A: Tough one — there’s a lot in there. Can’t wait to see what players run with and make their own.
How MindsEye’s Combat Will Keep Players Hooked
Q: What do you think keeps players engaged inMindsEye’s combat the most?
A:It’s the physical “explosivity” of it and the fact that it is so well integrated into the flow of the missions. Our goal withMindsEyeis to have every weapon feel good to use, have headshots feel addictive, and have our encounters balanced for the most important thing: spectacle and the feeling of being in control. What we thinkMindsEyenails is this sensation of going from the underdog tobecoming a one-man army.
Watching anexperienced player juggle with different weaponsand using their companion drone abilities to their maximum makes it look like a very choreographed experience, but it’s not scripted by the game, it’s in the player’s hands. That’s what’s addicting. Good fundamentals, player control, and simple and explosive fun with a twist at the service of the global experience of the game and its story.
Q: When it comes to gameplay design overall, what has changed the most since your initial concepts?
A:Our robots have been through many iterations to make them fun and spectacular, and it was not an easy task. If you look at our robots in the game, they are incredibly detailed, and every shot destroys a small part of them. Our Silva SM-01 robots, for example, you can shoot almost any part of them independently. On top of that, we introduced a lot of new abilities, like self-destruction and shield mode.
At the very end of our development cycle, when we were happy with robots, we introduced a very impactful drone ability related to robots that we’re sure many players will enjoy. But then again, and it’s very important to us, it’s all about the fundamentals.If it’s satisfying to shoot, then the game will be fun to play. No number of complex features will ever replace the joy of shooting something and seeing it react physically, feeling it in your hands.
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