Josef Fares hasn’t been very present in the spotlight since the critically-acclaimed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, but today at EA’s EA Play event he announced his next game from the studio, Hazelight. A Way Out will be a co-op adventure game that focuses on split screen and working together with the person next to you. The game can also be played online, but is co-op only in either instance. You can check out a trailer for the game below.
A Way Out follows two prisoners, Vincent and Leo, who each have their own character backgrounds and stories to unfold. However, players will take control of one of the characters while their friend takes control of the other. This lends itself to interesting gameplay elements such as giving one player freedom to move while the other is in a cutscene, or allowing them both to work together to create unique scenarios built from a simple objective or task.
While the game definitely gives off some Uncharted 4 vibes, there’s definitely a lot that can be pulled from Fares’s last game, Brothers. The two character dynamic seems more fleshed out, and brought to something grittier and emotionally taxing for the characters. It’s also just a far more ambitious project. Fares had announced Hazelight’s inception in 2014 at The Game Awards where he also revealed what the team was working on, which was still untitled. That game showed two men who look a lot like Vincent and Leo in A Way Out riding on a train to somewhere unknown.
Look at my sketches of A Way Out and the final? pic.twitter.com/lkYJ6DQ1Bg
— Josef Fares (@josef_fares) June 10, 2017
Josef Fares also released sketches of scenes from the trailer that reveal how they looked on paper before they were fully animated. On top of that, the EA Play event featured a gameplay video that you can watch below for more of a hint at how the game will function.
I find this to be personally exciting news as I’ve been impatiently awaiting Fares’s next project after the impact that Brothers had on me. It’s a profoundly moving game that utilized its unique control scheme to better its narrative, which is something that A Way Out looks like it also understands. I can’t wait to hear more as E3 continues. EA Will be publishing the game as part of their EA Originals brand, and will release it on PS4, Xbox One and Origin in Early 2018.
Source: EA Play Conference