Edge Of Eternity (Photo: Courtesy of Midgar Studios and Dear Villagers)
As the numbered titles in the Final Fantasy series drift further away from the turn-based roots of the series, Midgar Studios and Dear Villagers have picked up the pieces of an un-lived future and created Edge of Eternity, a game that takes the scope and gravitas of big-budget role-playing games and becomes something all its own.
Edge of Eternity is an open world RPG in the tradition of Final Fantasy, but with a uniquely engaging play-style and impressively-crafted story. In a world already plagued with devastating war, Heryon is flung into even greater turmoil when a deadly pathogen called the Corrosion rips into the population, turning them into mindless beasts. You start as an inexperienced soldier who falls head-first into an epic adventure.
Edge of Eternity made its way to Steam’s Early Access program in 2018 and since then has become a cult hit with RPG fans. After several years in development, Edge of Eternity is due for full release on Steam June 8. The game is also coming to consoles in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Edge of Eternity, like some other indie big-hitters started with a grass-roots donation campaign on Kickstarter. Thanks to more than 4,000 individual donations, the team at Midgar Studios began working on the collective dream project.
“We’ve poured our whole heard into making Edge of Eternity,” founder of Midgar Studios Jeremy Zeler said in a recent statement. “It’s a story of epic existential battles and intimate personal dramas. I can’t wait to show it off to the world.”
The game’s grass-roots origins and the revisionist inspiration for Edge of Eternity‘s creation are a reminder that we are in a new era of game development. Since video games began, there has been a consistent and well-defined line between corporate big-budget games and independent ventures. As game-making tools become more accessible to regular people, the line separating corporate products and independent projects becomes a blur.
The corporate games industry is a parasite that has metastasized to the point of host subservience. The distance between developer and designer ideas and an end product has become an abyss with the introduction of investors whose sole interest is cash returns. If you are curious why every game cover has a guy with a gun on it or why Call of Duty releases every year, the answer is that investors decided such a choice was “safe.” Vision has become secondary to capital and Edge of Eternity is an example of one of several games born out of vision and collective interest subverting the corporate structure.
I will certainly be playing Edge of Eternity in June. Its origin is inspiring and its existence is a thorn in the side of the obese, meandering corporate structure that has suppressed creativity in the video game industry.
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