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Leslie Benzies, the longtime creative force behind GTA 5 and much more, is steering his next project, MindsEye, toward the kind of blockbuster car action usually reserved for the big screen. Now heading the Edinburgh-based studio Build A Rocket Boy, Benzies has given his team an unambiguous brief: make every chase feel like the climax of a summer action movie. According to Assistant Game Director Adam Whiting, the touchstone is the Fast & Furious franchise, and that influence becomes obvious the instant players pitch a car into a high-speed corner.
Speaking to Edge in issue 409, Whiting explains that “the camera detaches as you take corners at high speeds to make you feel like you’re on the edge of control, almost like you’re in a Fast & Furious film.” The flourish isn’t just for show. It rides on a bespoke layer of Unreal Engine 5.4, where game engineers have spent months fine-tuning tyre grip, suspension travel, and weight transfer so the dramatic camera swing feels tied to real mechanical forces rather than a canned animation.
The handline model aims for a sweet spot between depth and pick-up-and-play ease. As Whiting puts it, it’s very intuitive. You’ve got a lot of precise control, so you can really thread the throttle, the brake, and the handbrake to keep control at all times. But a lot of people, when they first pick up the pad and play the game, get on with the driving straight away.” In practice that means novices can drift through a highway with only minutes of practice, while veterans still have room to master throttle-feathering and Scandinavian flicks.
That flexibility extends to the garage. Individual missions hand you factory buggies, long-travel off-roaders, tuned street racers, and more. Each is built to have its own distinct personality. One car skids over loose gravel, another squats under heavy braking, but then explodes with speed on a hairpin. Switching rides isn’t just cosmetic, it forces you to rethink speed, braking points, and power oversteer angles each time the game tosses you a fresh set of keys.
Benzies pioneered open-world driving that felt weighty yet playful during his years with GTA, and MindsEye looks set to raise that bar once more, delivering the cinema-sized adrenaline rush of a getaway without sacrificing the snap and nuance that serious driving fans crave. The studio is still holding back on a firm release date, but if Build A Rocket Boy sticks the landing, players can expect a tightly paced thrill ride where every handbrake turn feels ready for its own IMAX close-up.
