Edge August 2021

interplanetary, most extraordinary craft

Remember 2011? Not a bad 12 months for games, that. Big hitters such as Skyrim, Portal 2 and Dark Souls. Indie delights including Bastion and Frozen Synapse, plus Limbo’s arrival on PC/PS3. And not forgetting one of the year’s most singular treats, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, a pixel-art fusion of music and interactivity that felt like the arrival of an important new talent on the game-making stage. It took nine long years to find out what Superbrothers would deliver next, when Jett: The Far Shore broke cover as part of Sony’s E3 2020 showcase. And now, a year on, we’re playing the game for the first time, and talking to its developers about navigating “unexplored genre space” during the creation process. As Steven Poole notes elsewhere this issue, humankind has…

scratched record

Seeing gaming concepts defined shakily in a court of law has, broadly, been a source of comedy during Apple and Epic’s trial. But the mischaracterisation of Itch.io has made for difficult listening. The indie storefront was welcomed into the Epic Store as an app earlier this year, a fact Apple has sought to weaponise, suggesting that the presence of alternative app stores on iOS would open the door to depravity. The “so-called adult games” on Itch.io are, Apple claimed, “so offensive we cannot speak about them here.” It’s true that Itch.io has different moderation standards to both the App Store and Epic Store - but that’s precisely the quality that makes it a haven for marginalised developers. Apple’s own squeamishness about creative expression is one solid argument against its stranglehold…

store wars

According to Steve Jobs’ authorised biography – the same adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin – the co-founder of Apple came up with the company’s name on the way home from an orchard, a pilgrimage during “one of [his] fruitarian diets”. But in 2021, it’s hard not to think of a more Biblical connection, involving the fruit of a certain walled garden. After all, the tech giant has for decades presided over a closed ecosystem that it controls completely. Now that garden is under siege, attacked by powerful companies tired of paying Apple for the privilege of selling their products on iOS devices. We’d call it a tithe, were it not for the fact that a tithe is a ten per cent tax – Apple famously asks for 30…

infinite wisdom

Longo leaving his role as Halo Infinite’s creative director grabbed headlines in 2019. So how does it feel to watch the game’s gradual unveiling from the outside? “It’s a bummer to not be a part of it, but I’m excited for them.” He says he can see “a lot of the glimmers of hope I always had about that project” in the footage that’s been released since his departure. “They have a lot of challenges, and it’s been a rough road - and I was there for a lot of that - but it’s a good team, and I still believe in the vision.”…

new dawn

Supergroups can be risky propositions. Whether in music or in games, it’s easy to think of examples of people who’ve done great work in the past forming groups that add up to less than the sum of their parts. But for Tim Longo (pictured), CEO of Twin Suns Corp, it’s not so much the projects the members of his new Seattle-based studio have worked on that are important (though it’s certainly a fine list, encompassing Halo, Tomb Raider, Hitman and Gears Of War) but the fact that they’ve worked on them together. “I use this silly phrase of ‘getting the band back together,’” he tells us, “but it really does feel that way.” Longo describes himself as the “common denominator” of the team. Before his time at 343 Industries, where he…

long walk

Endwalker’s most welcome additions include letting players travel between Data Centers, the MMORPG’s terminology for its localised servers, allowing players to roam the globe. Meanwhile, players in Australia and New Zealand, who currently have to put up with lag while connecting to servers in North America or Japan, are finally getting a dedicated Oceania data centre. Given the comfort people have taken in MMORPGs to stay connected during the pandemic, it’s about time, though Yoshida clarifies this has been planned for years. “I had gone to Australia about five years ago and found everyone had a passionate demand for their own data centre, but we would need Final Fantasy XIV to grow first before it could become feasible,” he explains. “It’s something that we have been working on together with…