Ex-GTA Boss' New Open-World Game Is A Real-Life 'Ready Player One'

As you may have heard, former Rockstar North boss Leslie Benzies has been working on an incredibly ambitious new open world game called Everywhere for the last five years or so. Now, we're finally hearing the first concrete details of what to expect.

In 2020 Benzies raised an incredible £32 million to fund his Grand Theft Auto rival. Benzies, who helped create the GTA series back in the day, parted ways with Rockstar back in 2016.

The project has been fairly quiet since then, but a new investor document from Galaxy Interactive uncovered by analyst Roberto Serrano (via VGC) includes brand-new information on the in-development game.

While Everywhere isn't mentioned by name, Benzie's studio, Build A Rocket Boy, is listed as one of the companies Galaxy Interactive has invested in. The presentation briefly mentions what Build A Rocket Boy has been working on - and it sounds as hugely ambitious as it ever did.

The document describes Everywhere as a "real-life Ready Player One", a reference to the book and movie in which characters can jump into a sprawling digital world and do pretty much anything. Ready Player One has also been cited as an inspiration for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse.

The report goes on to call it an "open world AAA game with a multiplayer experience incorporating a multi-chapter epic narrative, user-generated content through a ‘virtual sandbox’ where players can create their own worlds, and deep social and streaming integrations”.

This is by far the most information we've received on the game in the last five years, and confirms to us that Benzies' ambitions have not dwindled one bit.

In an interview with Venturebeat a few years back, Benzies said that Everywhere would be unlike anything he'd ever worked on before.

Rockstar Games

"Everywhere has a lot of traditional game mechanics but we're going for something more that draws inspiration from, well, everywhere," the developer explained.

"Players are getting smarter and require more from their games, and we want players to have the real freedom to live in our worlds in the ways they want to. We're aiming to offer a huge variety of game modes and styles that not only tell our stories but also enable players to live in the identities and adventures they most want to explore."

Everywhere is reportedly being developed in Amazon's Lumberyard engine, but who knows if that's changed in the last few years? The game may be shrouded in slightly less mystery than before, but it still remains an enigma.