Thanks, but we want to see the trailer, not the tools
One of the most irritating things about the GTAVI hack was the fact that no one benefited. If these things have to happen, we should at least get something worthwhile out of it, right? What we got instead felt a bit like the videogame equivalent of the section of that work-in-progress trailer for The Mummy in which Tom Cruise bounces around a plane interior with odd placeholder audio – something difficult to get excited about because it’s not ready to be consumed in the context of trying to make you excited.
Rockstar will be seething that its game broke cover this way and not via the kind of pitch-perfect trailer that famously accompanied IV and V. It must also be aggravating because of the stature of the project, which is the only game officially in development across its many studios. In some respects GTA has come to define the entire company nowadays, so the stakes have never been higher. Knowing Rockstar, though, all of this will have only inspired it to double down. Perhaps there is a positive, after all.
Rockstar’s narrow-focus approach is entirely alien to Embracer, whose vast umbrella encompasses over 120 studios, with more than 220 games currently in production. The group’s appetite for acquisition has made a lot of noise recently, but we haven’t known too much about what’s been driving it. To remedy that, this month we meet with CEO Lars Wingefors to discover how his early years collecting comics paved the way for a collection on a considerably larger scale. Our interview begins on p80.
As well as discussing Embracer’s procurement spree, in this issue we also check in with the company’s team of archivists, who’ve been tasked with assembling the ultimate collection of physical games and hardware. They’re joined by a league of fellow history enthusiasts from across the world in our examination of the preservation scene on p70.
Ahead of all that is cover star The Callisto Protocol. Apologies if the image on the front of our retail edition gives you the shivers, but, well, it really is that kind of game. Director Glen Schofield explains all on p52.