Confusion is a generally accepted side effect of mystery box shows. They slather on secrets with the promise of a satisfying payoff in the end, and sometimes the cast and crew even have a hard time following what’s going on. But even by the standards of the genre, Dark Matter is extreme. Its multiversal premise, which involves a man kidnapping a version of himself from another world, can be hard to wrap your head around, and as the first season went on, things only got harder to follow. With the return of the show for season 2, I have both good and bad news: The show is more dramatic and thrilling than ever, while also being ever so much harder to follow.

Spoilers follow for the first season of Dark Matter.

First, a reminder of where the story left us. Based on the novel of the same name, Dark Matter follows Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), a physics professor in Chicago who is living a relatively normal and contented life with his artist wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). In another world, a different version of Jason decided to forgo that family life in pursuit of his dream, which was apparently to build a gigantic box that allowed people to travel to other parallel universes. But that alt version of Jason ultimately wasn’t satisfied with the life he had, and used the box to travel to a world where he and Daniela were together. He then kidnapped himself, abandoned that version in another world, and proceeded to take over his life.

Things did not go as planned for alt Jason. Daniela eventually realized that something was wrong, Jason prime fought his way through multiple worlds to get back home, and by the end of the season, an army of Jason variants had descended on the same version of Chicago in hopes of reuniting with Daniela. At the end of the finale, the original Jason, Daniela, and Charlie had made their way into the box in hopes of finding a new world where they could live out a normal life in peace.

Still with me? Well, good, because things only get more complex from here. Dark Matter is obviously a high-concept sci-fi thriller, but in season 2, it really pushes further into its premise, exploring all of the wild possibilities. Jason and his family are living like multiversal nomads, traveling to different worlds in search of a home, and this lets the show get into the nitty-gritty of how the box works and the rules for traveling between worlds. It’s an inexact science: You can’t just go wherever you want. Instead, your destination is dependent on your mindset when you open the door. So if you’re scared or stressed out, get ready for a postapocalyptic version of Chicago.

This premise leads to some really great moments. The Dessens, for instance, are going through a situation that no family has ever gone through, which puts all kinds of strain on their relationships. But the show is often at its best when it moves away from the main story. One episode explores several years in the life of a random Jason variant who simply tries to build a life for himself in a quiet world. It’s a melancholy short story that reminds me of the “Long, Long Time” episode of The Last of Us. It doesn’t try to push the story forward or inundate you with revelations; instead, it shows you the human impact of this technology. There’s a similar episode that introduces a sort of waystation that various multiverse travelers visit over the years, and one that involves Charlie seeking out a long-lost family member in another world.

But getting to these moments means being okay with being confused, and that’s because season 2 really ratchets up the complexity primarily by introducing a whole bunch of new characters, most of whom are variants of existing ones. That means a lot of Jasons, Danielas, and Charlies, of course — the original alt Jason who started this mess features prominently — but also their friends and coworkers like chemist Ryan (Jimmi Simpson), psychologist Amanda (Alice Braga), and the well-off Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi) who is bankrolling the whole thing. There are multiple versions of each, spread across different worlds, all of which are involved to some degree in the larger story. It’s a lot to keep track of, and the show often doesn’t help much in differentiating the variants so that it’s clear who you’re actually watching. At one point, the main Jason and Daniela get tattoos so they can clearly identify each other. On top of this, season 2 jumps around in time quite a bit, further putting a strain on your ability to follow narrative threads.

That kind of knotty storytelling is perhaps unavoidable with a premise as convoluted as Dark Matter’s, but season 2 shows that series can also do a lot when it slows down and explores human-level stories, as opposed to racing toward the next big set piece. The second season attempts to balance both kinds of storytelling — it even ends with what feels like some Christopher Nolan–inspired action — which means that in order to experience the show at its best, you’ll have to resign yourself to not understanding everything.

_{Dark Matter season 2 is streaming on Apple TV on August 28th.}

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on GTA VI and the state of the video game industry, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

How it started

Four years ago, fans got a long-awaited look at Grand Theft Auto VI with a huge cache of videos that showed off Rockstar’s latest open-world epic. There were 90 videos in total, providing a glimpse at the next-generation take on Vice City, introducing the game’s new dual protagonists, and generally showing off the crime-fueled mayhem the series is known for. The twist? This wasn’t some official reveal. The videos were part of a massive leak in September 2022 that ultimately ended with a life sentence in a secure hospital for the hacker, and they dropped months before Rockstar properly unveiled GTA VI to the world with its debut trailer.

For many video game studios, a leak of that magnitude would be devastating. But not Rockstar: Following the unprecedented success of GTA V, which has sold more than 230 million copies across PC and three generations of consoles, it seems like there is little that can impact the studio in the lead-up to the sequel’s much-hyped launch. GTA VI’s first trailer was leaked less than a day before it was set to premiere in December 2023, and yet the official video went on to garner nearly 290 million views on YouTube. 

That’s not all that has happened on the long road to launch. Outside of the leaks, the studio has also been accused of union busting, GTA VI has been delayed multiple times, and the game, which won’t be available on a disc, has been viewed as a worrying sign for the future of physical media. But none of that has done much to slow down Rockstar or the relentless force that is its next game. And next week the hype is poised to reach a new level: A gameplay trailer for GTA VI will premiere on Netflix, available to subscribers six hours before everyone else can watch it on YouTube. It’s a huge marketing coup, and the type of thing only GTA VI can get away with.

How it’s going

The lead-up to the Netflix premiere hasn’t exactly been smooth. Over the last week further leaks have spread unofficial gameplay clips across platforms like Discord and X, and Rockstar has flexed its legal muscles, subpoenaing both Microsoft and Discord in hopes of finding the culprit. This had led to some frustration internally, and potentially changes to how Rockstar approaches security, according to a Bloomberg report. But, once again, it doesn’t seem to have put a dent in the fervor around the game. GTA VI is so big that even small updates, like a cover art reveal, rack up millions of views. And this has allowed Rockstar to do things no one else can. It can reveal gameplay through a mainstream platform like Netflix, and maintain sustained interest in the game despite only releasing two trailers over the span of several years.

“Grand Theft Auto reveals have become cultural moments in their own right,” Netflix exec Brandon Riegg said when announcing the gameplay reveal. “The anticipation and fandom around Grand Theft Auto VI is unprecedented, and we’re honored that Rockstar Games has partnered with us to debut the next part of the Grand Theft Auto story with Netflix members first.”

This mentality isn’t entirely new for Rockstar, but the success of GTA V has allowed the studio to be more confident with how it reveals and launches games, eschewing the traditional news cycle in favor of, well, whatever it wants. Back in 2016, on a random Sunday afternoon, the studio released an image that was simply its logo on a red background. The internet promptly went into a craze, correctly surmising that Rockstar was teasing the next Red Dead Redemption, an open-world Western series that had been dormant for several years. That game, Red Dead Redemption 2, went on to sell nearly 90 million copies, giving Rockstar another blockbuster to fill the gap between GTAs.

Open-world games have become widespread over the last decade or so, but there’s still no developer that renders its virtual worlds with the level of detail and realism that Rockstar does. That’s true whether we’re talking about a fictional version of modern California or the Wild West at the turn of the century. It’s also probably why the studio can get away with taking so long with GTA VI; fans have been given plenty of reason to believe that it’ll be worth the wait.

And that’s why the steady stream of leaks has done little to diminish the hype around the game. In fact, they’re almost serving as a form of marketing; Rockstar may be content with a drip feed of news and details, but anxious fans are eager to soak up every new detail about the game, whether it’s official or not.

What happens next

Grand Theft Auto VI launches on November 19th, and it’s coming at a challenging time for the games industry. For basically everyone not named Nintendo, things are not looking good: Hardware is getting prohibitively expensive, physical media is dying, major platforms are in a state of upheaval, and ill-placed bets on live-service games have left the industry reeling. There are few signs that things will improve anytime soon. Amid all of that, GTA VI stands apart. It’s a launch so big that nearly every other major publisher and developer is getting out of its way, a game on a scale that has the potential to boost flagging console sales.

GTA VI isn’t a fix for everything ailing the industry, and most of its benefits will be temporary for everyone but Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive. There are also still plenty of questions ahead of its release, like what the future for the enduring multiplayer spinoff GTA Online looks like, or whether GTA VI’s satirical slant on Florida will still feel relevant after such a long development cycle. But for at least a few weeks later this year, players can pretend everything is normal while they lay waste to Vice City once again.

By the way

• Despite exploring new territory with the GTA VI gameplay reveal, Netflix appears to be slowly retreating from games. It recently closed two more internal studios, including the team behind the interactive horror story Unhinged.
• Fired Rockstar workers are mired in a legal battle with Rockstar, but they say they currently aren’t calling for a boycott of GTA VI.
• November is mostly quiet for non-GTA releases, but there’s one game that isn’t afraid to go up against the behemoth: The Binding of Isaac: Repentance + Online.

Read this

• The Guardian’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter looks at the challenges presented by hyperrealistic games like GTA VI.
• Friend of The Verge Joshua Rivera has a great piece in Aftermath looking at how GTA VI’s outsize importance is a terrible thing for the industry at large.
• Bloomberg has an interview with Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick about GTA VI’s “unprecedented” preorder numbers.

There’s something just a little bit different about FromSoftware’s office in Tokyo. Like with any other successful video game studio, there’s extensive security to get in the door, a minimalist lobby with framed posters from the studio’s most recent releases, and a large glass display case filled with statues from ceremonies ranging from the BAFTAs to The Game Awards. But the hallways are painted black, a fitting theme for a developer known for crafting dark, gothic worlds and a hint at what new creations are lurking inside.

While it has largely become known for a singular style of action game — dubbed “Soulslike,” after the massively influential Dark Souls series — FromSoft has steadily continued to try new things, pushing its signature style into new genres. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is the studio’s next release: The Duskbloods, a competitive multiplayer game set in a world of vampires that will be exclusive to the Switch 2 and published by Nintendo when it launches later this year. It’s a new genre, new setting, new platform, and new publisher all rolled into one game. But after Elden Ring, which has sold more than 30 million copies since it launched in 2022, the team at FromSoft now also feels more assured in expanding their horizons.

“With the success of Elden Ring, as a company it has definitely allowed us to explore, I wouldn’t say risky ideas, but things that we might not have had the confidence for,” FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki, who also directed both Elden Ring and The Duskbloods, told me during a recent hands-on event at the studio’s office.

The studio’s rise to this point has been slow and steady. FromSoft’s first release was the dungeon crawling RPG King’s Field in 1994, and while it launched a consistent stream of titles after that — including the cult-hit mech battling Armored Core series — it was more than a decade later when the studio really started making its mark with the release of Demon’s Souls in 2009. Directed by Miyazaki, the game thrust players into a harsh fantasy world, one where death was a constant and the combat was punishing. It was an experience that demanded a lot from players, but also rewarded their patience with thrilling victories and a story that gradually revealed itself.

It was an unlikely hit that spawned a new genre of action games, and was followed up by a number of successors, including a trilogy of Dark Souls titles and the Victorian-era-inspired Bloodborne in 2015. Those games were all successes, selling millions of copies, but it wasn’t until Elden Ring that the studio had its first blockbuster hit. The game not only sold well, but spawned a large-scale expansion, a co-op spinoff called Nightreign, and an upcoming film adaptation from A24 and director Alex Garland. Part of what made Elden Ring a hit was that it took what FromSoft had become known for — relentless action, subtle storytelling, and immersive worlds — and translated it into an open-world adventure and gave players more freedom to explore its bleak and beautiful fantastical realm.

Even with its signature game style cemented, FromSoft was continuously experimenting. Sandwiched in between the launches of Dark Souls 3 (2016) and Elden Ring (2022) were a pair of one-off games — a solemn VR story called Déraciné in 2018, and a ninja action game called Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice a year later — that showed the studio expanding its range. At the time, Miyazaki, who directed both games, explained FromSoft’s approach to taking on new projects.

“I think one of the studio’s characteristics is to embrace wholeheartedly what we feel is interesting; what we perceive to be worthwhile, cool, or beautiful; and to place these ideals at the foundation of the games we make,” he told me in 2019. “Part of those things we feel may deviate slightly from what is considered to have mass appeal. This ‘unorthodox’ nature could well be what ties our games and our culture together.”

The Duskbloods may seem like a big departure, but it also fits neatly into this philosophy. Over the years, FromSoft had steadily been injecting multiplayer elements into its largely single-player games; in Elden Ring, for instance, you can summon other players to help you in battle. As the studio experimented in this realm, a number of multiplayer-centric ideas were filed away. “There are a lot of ideas that we had wanted to try that didn’t necessarily fit in that context of a single-player game,” Miyazaki said during the Duskbloods preview in Tokyo. “Those pile up over the years.” That eventually culminated into The Duskbloods.

Development on The Duskbloods began in 2021 and originated on the first Switch before eventually migrating to its successor. The game consists of matches where eight players, each controlling a vampiric fighter, have to both fight against the monsters prowling the level as well as compete with each other. The combat is faster than a traditional FromSoft game, and the exploration is much more vertical — you can triple-jump your way up large towers — but it also has many of the studio’s telltale characteristics, from its dark, haunting world to the fact that players will die repeatedly. (For more on how The Duskbloods plays, check out my hands-on right here.)

But all of those new elements also made the development process difficult, and Miyazaki says that working with Nintendo has been extremely helpful in this regard. “The Duskbloods is a challenging game for us,” he says. “There are a lot of new things in terms of designing the systems and the rules, and it requires a lot of fine-tuning and adjustments, and Nintendo has provided a lot of support in that regard. Things like onboarding and tutorials for players are something that we are historically not great at, so the support they’ve provided in that regard has been very, very good and we think that it’s been a great relationship in that sense.”

On a technical level, Miyazaki notes that the team initially struggled with getting The Duskbloods to work on Nintendo’s previous console, so the reveal of the Switch 2 came as something of a relief. “We were definitely very happy when we heard about the Switch 2, because we were thinking, ‘How are we going to do this?’” Miyazaki says. “The Switch 2 came along and all of those problems were solved.”

The game is being designed in part to appeal to players who might not traditionally be interested in competitive multiplayer, a genre that can be intimidating to a lot of people. While The Duskbloods does involve fighting against other players, it also gives them other things to do, whether it’s killing minor enemies to gain experience or exploring the landscape in search of helpful items or sidekicks that can aid in battle.

“We really just want as many players to enjoy our games as possible,” Miyazaki says. “Not just having it be solely [player vs. player], but having more indirect ways that you can compete in the match and enjoy it, is definitely something that we wanted to implement to accommodate players. From a role-playing and story aspect as well, we didn’t want it to be something where you had to always win every single match to enjoy the game. We wanted you to be able to unlock aspects of the story and enjoy it at your own pace, even if you’re not necessarily doing great in every match. And if [players] go in wanting to know more about the story and that’s what interests them, that’s great. And as they reveal that and play more of the game, they might find that they do like the PvP more than they thought. We’re hoping that is an entryway.”

It might look like a shift in strategy, particularly as the studio’s last two releases have both focused on multiplayer play. But The Duskbloods is actually an extension of how the studio has worked for years: a big departure that builds off of the developer’s previous work in natural ways. It’s still set in a dark fantasy world, it still stars a cast of eclectic weirdos, and it still thrusts players into a space where they have to master complex systems in order to survive. It just puts these ideas in a new, multiplayer-specific context.

Because of this, Miyazaki says that The Duskbloods doesn’t necessarily represent any kind of change in how the studio operates. FromSoft has always made whatever it wanted, and Elden Ring’s success has only made it bolder. “We’re not super rigid,” he says. “It’s more just, if we find something that we want to make and we think it’s a great idea, we’ll make it.”

The Duskbloods is a world away from the approachable games Nintendo is known for. But for its next Switch 2 exclusive, the company has partnered with Elden Ring developer FromSoftware on a hardcore multiplayer game about vampires. And after spending a few hours playing through its gothic world at FromSoft’s offices in Tokyo, I’m convinced that The Duskbloods could end up being one of the most important exclusives for Nintendo’s latest console.

It’s a notable change for the company. People buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games. That’s a generally accepted truth, and also one that’s backed up by data — a quick glance at the bestselling games across platforms like the Switch and Nintendo 3DS reveals expected names like Mario Kart, Pokémon, and Animal Crossing. Titles from outside developers can be an integral part of broadening a platform’s appeal, but that’s something that Nintendo has historically struggled with. Which is what makes The Duskbloods so intriguing.

The Duskbloods is not an easy game to describe. In a universe of vampires that spans multiple time periods, eight players, controlling vampiric characters known as the Bloodsworn, descend on a level filled with enemies and gigantic boss creatures. Over the course of several phases the group is whittled down until only a few remain, who must then fight until only one is left. This isn’t a Fortnite-style battle royale, however. Instead, The Duskbloods is designed to mix the thrill of competitive play with the roleplaying fantasy that FromSoft has become known for through games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne.

Read next: FromSoftware can do anything

Key to this is something that the game calls “virtue.” Essentially, it’s a system that allows you accumulate points over the course of a match by doing just about everything. You can get virtue by collecting the most items, or by killing the most minor enemies, or by taking down boss creatures like a gigantic frog with far too many humanlike teeth. There are virtue points for exploration — the levels are littered with hidden corpses you can discover — and in the later rounds you can get a huge burst of virtue points by defeating other players on specific points of the map, or making a pledge at an altar before another player stops you.

Each match is divided into four phases, and the player count slowly shrinks through what’s known as “the culling.” Basically, if you don’t have enough virtue points by the time a round ends then you’re out. How many points you need depends entirely on how much virtue other players have collected. The idea is that, even if you maybe aren’t the best one-on-one fighter, you can still progress through the game and make it to the final phase, since there are so many different ways to earn points. And aside from the final round, you’ll respawn immediately after dying with your virtue intact, which makes it easier to try things and explore without fear of the game ending.

In practice, The Duskbloods can be an overwhelming experience, at least initially. It took me some time to wrap my head around the points system; in most competitive multiplayer games, killing other players is the clearest path to victory. Here, though, that’s not the case, particularly at the beginning. Instead, the early rounds are best spent exploring the map, defeating weaker enemies, and generally strengthening your character by acquiring items and experience.

And there’s a lot more to The Duskbloods’ complexity than just the points system. For starters, there are multiple vampiric characters to play as, each of whom has a very different playstyle. In the early version of the game I played — which is the same as the network test that will run later in August — there are six characters to choose from. There’s an aging senator who wields a rapier that doubles as a cane, and who can both summon a prehistoric bird as a ranged attack and temporarily transform into a bloodthirsty dinosaur. There’s a ninja with circular blades, a mysterious man who can shoot columns of fire from a stone embedded in his hand, and an armor-clad weirdo named Zork who carries around an electrified chunk of undersea cable.

Each character plays differently — some are quick and nimble, others lumbering yet powerful — with their own distinct abilities. During each game you can also find and summon companion characters, called kin, which lend help in battle and can also be leveled up over the course of a match. These can be everything from sword-wielding samurai to gigantic wolves. My favorite was a soprano who was also a wrestler, suplexing enemies while singing a song that helped improve my defensive capabilities. You can also turn certain enemies into your minions by sucking their blood and exerting your influence over them.

There are random events that can happen — a zeppelin that barrages the level with bombs, a lightning storm that zaps players to random points on the map — as well as “sigils” you can equip that give you a specific and sometimes strange task to perform that can earn you lots of virtue. For instance, a sigil might be based on revenge, and task you with finding a specific player and killing them. Or it might ask you to find the other player who is your character’s lost love and… propose to them in the middle of the match. These are designed to give you both an additional way to earn points in a match and a role to play in the story.

I should note that what I played is missing some key features that will be in the final game, most notably the majority of the character customization and story elements, which will be a major part of the appeal for existing FromSoft fans. Similarly, while all of the games I played ended in a fight to the death, there will be other possible win conditions, like the last group of players teaming up to defeat a boss.

And all of that is just scratching the surface. There is a lot going on in The Duskbloods. After spending several hours playing the game with other members of the press over the course of two days, I felt like I had just begun to grasp how everything worked. That’s a far cry from the pick-up-and-play nature that has made Nintendo’s online games like Splatoon and Mario Kart such major successes. Those are games that are easy to grasp from the moment you pick up the controller.

But at the same time, The Duskbloods has the potential to do something very significant. With Elden Ring, FromSoft took an extremely intimidating genre of action RPG and opened it up to a new audience by fusing that style of game onto an open world that gave players more choice for how they approached challenges. The result was a massive hit: Elden Ring has sold more than 30 million copies, its expansion Shadow of the Erdtree sold 10 million, and the game is being made into a Hollywood movie. The Duskbloods, meanwhile, is tackling the similarly intimidating field of competitive multiplayer. And while The Duskbloods is still pretty hardcore, it’s designed in a way that attempts to give players things to do even if they can’t win a match.

The live-service space may be a disaster right now, but online multiplayer games still make up the bulk of time people spend playing games. And the combination of online play and FromSoft’s renowned fantasy worldbuilding could eventually lure a new type of player to the Switch 2, at a time when dedicated video game platforms are largely struggling. There’s a lot of risk inherent to a game like this. Control developer Remedy Entertainment, for instance, tried something similar with the co-op shooter FBC: Firebreak, and that didn’t end so well. The Duskbloods has the added challenge of launching exclusively on the Switch 2, a platform that’s not yet known for these kinds of multiplayer experiences.

But the same things that make the game a risk are also what make it so fascinating. The Duskbloods is unlike anything else in the Switch 2’s lineup — and it could help Nintendo reach players beyond Zelda and Mario fans.