Gamescom 2022 wants to ignite the last days of this hot August, and it does so by opening the dance of the countless world premieres by dedicating themselves to the first taste of one of the most mysterious games of recent months. We knew that Everywhere would be inspired by the collaboration concepts seen in GTA Online, but also that Everywhere would wink at Ready Player One for scope and imagination: after the latest trailer of Everywhere we must admit that the haze surrounding the project has not yet cleared, but the glimmer shown in Cologne begins to at least define the aesthetics and ambition of the project.
A multifaceted reality
The deep voice that accompanies the Everywhere logo at the opening of the film suggests the ambitions of a mythological taleaccompanying the first glimpse of a futuristic panorama that transports us to a plane of reality where science fiction has learned to coexist with the nature that surrounds it, while the peaks of the mountains on the horizon make fun of gravity and float dreamily standing on the orange of a dying sun.
The camera approaches by cutting over a flock of birds and approaching that symbol that stands out on the inhabited center of the futurean E that is mirrored in its reverse, which we imagine will be able to connect the different worlds created by the Build to Rocket Boy.
Low and fast vehicles whizzing through the desert trails, with tires so thick they can withstand the rough terrain of their roads, but the new experience born from the mind of Leslie Benzies will not be glued to a single world, because her ambitions led him to create an entire universeand the trailer lets us fly over a silent clearing surrounded by greenery, as well as between the lava waves that erupt incandescent lapilli.
To underline how every single world is but a small, infinitesimal fraction of that vast cosmos created by the developers, the camera moves away, flooding the screen with countless screens, each connected to those two cryptic E’s glued together: a logo that unites and gathers around itself the various realities that can be explored, alone or together with friends or strangers.
If the aesthetics of the title does not seem to jump for originality in terms of imaginary worlds, it must however be remembered that the objective designated by the development team points decisively to the vastness of this universe more than a single breathtaking panorama, therefore in the overall analysis it will certainly be fundamental to understand which peaks have been reached on this very complicated front.
All the colors of the universe
Build a Rocket Boy is a team put together relatively recently, and even if over time it has welcomed several veterans of the game industry it will be necessary to understand if the renewal ambitions have not turned into mere pretentiousness, because the boundary between the two is too blurred. And only the final product will be able to unravel the thorny skein. Cyberpunk and aesthetic environments with futuristic geometries alternate with everyday and even understandable events, such as the lobby where you can chat and catch your breath after yet another foray into a hostile world.
In fact, among the glimmers that follow one another relentlessly, there is also a remnant of gameplay in its shooting phaseswhich for color tones and camera settings somehow reminds Fortnite and its thousand explosions, but there are also driving phases with various cars, intent on traveling the streets of those realities observed previously, as well as platforming sections between jumps and stretch to reach the goal.
The Everywhere trailer wants to amaze the audience with the overwhelming amount of possible eventsturning on the light of the imagination in the mind of the beholder in the hope that it fills the absence of concrete information, while trying to divert attention from some less successful details such as the quality of the textures and animations, even if the work on this front could also lead to clear improvements.
Everywhere promises a frightening amount of content within its logo, finally giving thrilling gamers a concept to hold on to, a form that gives life to those declarations of adventure, discovery and creativity to be shared in multiplayer. The guys led by Leslie Benzies, one of the masterminds behind GTA, have decided to challenge the limits imposed by the current videogame mediumgiving shape to a shared experience that embraces different genres and puts the user’s inventiveness first, but without forgetting a more “classic” component totally sewn around the player.
The final part of the trailer refers to this, with those short and unrelated sequences that allow us to glimpse what we could define the story mode of Everywhere: apparently a sort of sci-fi thriller and star-studdedbetween a rocket about to leave for space and equations that do not bode well, while the protagonist has confused memories of explosions and injections.
The dense fog that envelops Everywhere has therefore begun to thin out, but it is doing it with shyness and reserve, because the way to go is still long, but the developers promise that this title with enormous demands will be published in 2023. The months that separate us from its release will certainly be richer in information from now on, while for the moment the only certainty is that Everywhere intends to change the definition of video game forever.
Everywhere: An open world multidimensional reality from the author of GTA