Mindseye, the Deceptions of the Mind

A boundless world projected toward altitudes not scientifically measurable, at least not entirely. How many times have we heard it said that we use only a small percentage of our potential?

And how many times have we wondered whether it really is so, faced with situations in our daily life that we would have liked to handle differently, taking paths that at that very moment seemed barred to us, if not invisible?

A freely explorable city, the ability to interact with things and people in an ultra-dynamic way, and the tangible feeling of being able to do anything, knowing that every action will have consequences. If you’re raising your hand and itching to say Grand Theft Auto, then you’re on the right track, let’s say. At the helm of the new sci-fi project that will materialize on our consoles is none other than Leslie Benzies, who, in true Troy Mclure-from-The-Simpsons style, “you may remember for having delivered to the world the latest chapters of GTA,” up to V, before leaving Rockstar Games and seeking his fortune elsewhere.

Dalle prime immagini diffuse tempo fa e scampoli di cinematica, the palates of players and fans of science fiction storytelling with urban derivations have been tantalized appropriately: Mindseye (which already from the title suggests to us with which non-physical organ we will have to approach the worldbuilding designed for us by the development team Build a Rocket Boy) is set in a futuristic and quite fascinating city, where artificial intelligences and the vision of the progressive future imagined by magnates and scientists has finally become (?) reality. 

Jacob Diaz, our alter ego, is one of the many veterans of one of the many wars that have followed one another over time to arrive at this state of apparent universal well-being. Haunted by memories of a previous undercover mission that left its mark on his soul, Jacob is equipped with an experimental neural implant called Mindseye.

The interaction of his mind with the complex, and perhaps even dark, technological system underlying his implant will lead him to face a dual journey: the first to discover what lies behind this, to say the least, invasive implant, and the corporation that created it. The second, much deeper and more private, will force Jacob to confront his inner demons, and it is not certain that he will come out of it unscathed. If he comes out alive, that is, of course.

Redrock is the name of the city where Diaz’s adventures will be set, located in the middle of the desert, a perfect metaphor for the desolation of many moral principles abandoned by humanity; a microcosm in which artificial intelligences like our current Chat Gpt have evolved to the point of replacing entire control departments. Am I exaggerating?

Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

L man has handed over the keys to his mental health and the physical safety of his loved ones to computers; the corporations, in full Gibson Neuromancer style (go read it), are calling the shots, and the question that Benzies and the developers of Mindseye seem to be suggesting to us, at this point, appears to be only one. Will it be worth it?

I'm sure we'll be dazzled by the lights of Redrock aboard the futuristic vehicles made available to us in the driving sections; at the same time, the choices we will have to make and the clashes with enemies on our path promise to be anything but trivial. At that point, it won't matter whether we opt for a stealth approach or the Bruce Willis mode, emptying every magazine in our arsenal.

Why would we ask ourselves other equally vital questions.

Will we be able to deceive the mind? Or will it deceive us, again and forever?