CHARLES GAMES

The small Czech developer making videogame history

Verses mode

From Wordsworth to Grand Theft Auto V: the unexpected crossover between poetry and videogames

ALTER EGO

How tackling the Marvel universe revealed an unexpected new side of the XCOM team

Bastion

Looking back at the debut game that laid the blueprint for Hades

STAR POWER

How a Hollywood studio became the most exciting force in games

SAINTS ROW

No dildo bats, please, we’re millennials

THE MAKING OF CREAKS

How a Czech art-school project became an eight-year labour of love

The trouble with game development

The Activision Blizzard harassment and discrimination lawsuit has repercussions for the industry as a whole

Escape Zoom

The Isklander trilogy mixes detective games, video calls and immersive theatre

HEAVENLY BODIES

Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space

PHANTOM ABYSS

A game about survival where you run toward the ghosts

Ring of Steel

How a small Sheffield indie was entrusted with the future of boxing videogames

FAR CRY 6

Taking a stealthy look inside Ubisoft’s revolutionary guerrilla thriller

Gabe gear

Steam Deck: can Valve’s portable PC succeed where Steam Machines failed?

THE ARTFUL ESCAPE

Is this sci-firock opera bound for the big time?

The wisdom of crowds

With its ScavLab tech, Improbable is designing for 10,000 players at once

WEIRD WEST

A cowboy RPG from a team that has earned its spurs

Unreliable Narrator

Exploring stories in games and the art of telling tales

ELDEN RING

When we heard, around the time of its announcement, that Elden Ring was going to be essentially “open-world Dark Souls”, we weren’t entirely confident in the summary. Because isn’t that precisely what Dark Souls fans would ask for? And when did get fans get what they want? (And, in the rare cases that it happens, when have the results stood up to close scrutiny?) And yet here we are looking forward to one of 2022’s biggest games delivering pretty much everything Dark Souls devotees yearn for: screen-filling bosses, endlessly rewarding character builds, secrets by the sackful – plus magic, multiplayer and a whole lot more besides.

STARFIELD

Perhaps the two most important words of Microsoft’s showcase came just a few minutes in, at the end of a teaser for Bethesda’s next open-world epic: ‘Xbox exclusive’. It wasn’t the only time we would see them, but this was the moment it became crystal clear that Microsoft would never have spent $7.5bn on the studio behind Skyrim and Fallout if it didn’t plan to keep at least some of its output to itself.

Trigger Happy

Shoot first, ask questions later

REDFALL

Which is fortunate, because learning that this team is working on an open-world co-op shooter with vampires is frankly disappointing. There was no shortage of Left-4-Dead-alike at this year’s show and, at first glance, it doesn’t seem like a structure that plays to Arkane’s strengths. But then we consider that the Austin team’s previous project was Mooncrash, a Prey expansion that pushed the immersive sim into Roguelike territory – not to mention Deathloop’s exciting experiments with multiplayer – and Redfall makes sense as an evolution of this lineage, rather than simply a comfortable repetition.

SECRET WEAPON

Could Naraka: Bladepoint be the surprise challenger to break the battle royale stalemate?

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD 2

As Nintendo’s own press site calls it, Sequel To The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild cannot have its official title unveiled just yet, because it might give too much away – a clue to something significant about this much-anticipated successor.

COLLECTED WORKS GLEN SCHOFIELD

The artist-turned-producer reflects on 30 years with very little dead space

DISPATCHES Dialogue

Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a 12-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership

ARTISAN CRAFTS

Has wood ever been this good?

SONG IN THE SMOKE

17-Bit’s VR survival game takes us into the prehistoric wilds

KENA: BRIDGE OF SPIRITS

Heading into the woods with Ember Lab’s breezy action-adventure

TAKING FLIGHT

A world-first hands-on with Jett: The Far Shore, as Superbrothers’ sci-fi adventure prepares for lift-off