EVERYTHING EVERY WHERE ALL AT ONCE

How Leslie Benzies and a team of former Rockstars are building an allencompassing multiverse

- Atex Spencer

Leslie Benzies has been making videogames since he was 11 years old. "And for 26 years professionally now," he adds. Those latter years span the entire 3D renaissance of GTA at Rockstar, along with LA Noire and the first Red Dead Redemption, right through to the advent of GTA Online. "And this is probably the most ambitious project that I've ever worked on." Given Benzies' back catalogue, that is no small claim. But after a day at the Edinburgh offices of the studio he runs today, Build A Rocket Boy, where talent both from the Rockstar days and from across the breadth of the industry have spent more than six years and many millions of pounds making Everywhere, we're rather inclined to believe him.

As we're taken on a tour of Every where's many, many facets, we catch occasional flashes of the familiar: the pop-cultural melting pot of Fortnite; the between-battle hangout spaces of Destiny; the tools for player expression provided by Minecraft, Roblox and Dreams; the open world playground and endless diversions delivered by GTA Online. If this seems like a random grab-bag of components, we're assured that it's all held together by a single vision one that Benzies has had in his head since the very beginning of the project, in 2016, when he found himself unexpectedly striking out on his own after parting ways with Rockstar under unusual, and legally contested, circumstances. (We won't detail those here you can easily look up the specifics if you missed the story at the time.)