Josef Fares, founder of Hazelight, has had a foot in both the worlds of film and video games, but he’s not split when it comes to his strategy for making games like Split Fiction.
Fares is all in on the genre his company has pioneered in a unique way: split-screen cooperative action adventure games that two people can play on the same screen. His newest title, Split Fiction, is coming out on the consoles and PC on March 6, 2025, for $50.
Electronic Arts is publishing the title as an EA Originals game. EA also published the previous Hazelight game, It Takes Two, which took the Game of the Year award at The Game Awards in 2021. While that game focused on two players as a bickering couple, this one focuses on Mio and Zoe, two budding authors who clash over science fiction and fantasy books.
I’ve played the game and it’s a clever twist on the genre with a lot of new mechanics that keep players on their toes, like switching between sci-fi and fantasy worlds as well as sci-fi and fantasy characters and weapons.
The contrasting writers become trapped in their own stories after being hooked up to a machine designed by an evil book “simulation” publisher who wants to steal their creative ideas. To escape with their minds intact, they have to overcome their differences to crash the system that holds them. The hard part is learning to work together, Fares said in an interview I did.
Fares is a former film director and creator of the critically acclaimed game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. He famously said “f*ck the Oscars” while on stage at The Game Awards. Hazelight is committed to pushing the creative boundaries of what is possible in games. In 2018, Hazelight released A Way Out, the first ever co-op only third person action-adventure, as part of the EA Originals program.
I asked questions alternating with a Brazilian game publication and I pointed out below which ones are mine. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Question: One of the things I think of when I think of you specifically is that–nowadays we have a few directors that can transmit a certain authority through their games. We have Sam Lake. We have Kojima. We know what to expect from those guys. You’re at that level as well. Would you agree with that? Why do you think you can transmit so much of yourself through your games?
Josef Fares: I don’t know. I guess it’s my personality. I’ve always been like this. I can’t tell you why I became like this. It might be a better question for you. I guess one thing is that I just say what I want. Nobody is controlling what I say and when I say it. It comes from a place where I say what I want. Which should be what everyone does. I think that’s it.
GamesBeat: What was the hard part of doing the game over four years?
Fares: Easily it was the variation of the gameplay mechanics. The hardest thing about a Hazelight game is to get all these game mechanics to a state of polish. It’s easy to prototype different mechanics, but to take them to a level where it feels nice, that’s the tough part. When you play a Hazelight game, when you play the combat you expect it to play like a fighting game. Or if there’s racing in it you expect it to play like a racing game. People expect it to play like that. Because we change up the mechanics so much, it’s hard to get them to that level.
We’ve become quite good as a team at knowing if we’ll be able to polish it that well, though. We have good pipelines. We have good tools in the engine to help us make everything feel really nice. Otherwise we don’t release it. It has to be a polished experience. You’ll see when you play it. Everything feels nice and crisp.
Question: With It Takes Two you experimented a lot. Does Split Fiction draw on any ideas that you had in the process of making that game? What was the thought process around the mechanics you wanted to put in the game?
Fares: One thing about–does it feel nice to play? Do these mechanics complement each other well? Can we take it to the level of polish we want? I wouldn’t say there was anything in particular that we cut from It Takes Two that ended up in here. But we definitely cut stuff in Split Fiction. Maybe 20-30%, if I was to pick a number. Stuff that got cut early. “This doesn’t work. It doesn’t fit here.” But with that said, there’s a huge amount of stuff in there. I’m surprised playing it myself.
I was at a friend’s house playing it with him on a normal TV. When you play the game every day–I just saw it from a different perspective. We played for an hour or two, and he said, “How far is this?” “It’s just the first level.” “Are you crazy? I feel like I’ve played so much stuff.” Just wait and see. There’s going to be some crazy stuff happening.
GamesBeat: How do you adjust the game for different skill levels? What happens if there’s a big difference in skill between the players?
Fares: We just do the game we want to do. The most important thing–because we have a narrative experience, we don’t want anyone to get stuck too much. We want the experience to be fluid. The pacing feels nice. You never get too stuck. This game might be a bit more skill-based than It Takes Two. Roughly the same. You can still play it with a kid.
GamesBeat: It looks like you don’t have to wait too much for the other player to do something. You can just keep going until you complete your thing.
Fares: No, if you continue to play the game, trust me, you can’t progress forward without them. You need your friend. There might have been a section you played that was like that, but you can’t continue–the whole design is that you need to communicate. You need to do stuff together. We don’t want you to be too dependent on the co-op player, where you do everything together. We still want it to feel like you’re playing your own game a bit. But you have to communicate all the time.
Question: Coming from a game that won Game of the Year, do you feel pressure with this project?
Fares: No, I feel super confident. There’s no doubt that this is a great game. Even if the whole world said this sucks, I’d say, “No, you’re wrong.” That’s how confident I am. It’s a great game. Play it to the end and you’ll experience things you’ve never seen in a game before. You’re going to experience some really cool stuff. You’ll also experience a heartwarming story about friends, these two entirely different people, different personalities, that have a beautiful story together.
GamesBeat: It feels like you could have created an AI second player so people could play the game in a single-player mode. You chose not to. Was there a reason to not do that?
Fares: First of all, it’s way more complex to create an AI that works with you. It would take too much focus away from the rest of the game. Plus, we feel that experiencing it together–that’s the whole thing. Having your unique characters and unique mechanics, talking to each other. That collaboration is what makes our games special. It would take away some of that specialness.
Question: Since the main characters are named after your daughters, are they old enough to know what’s happening in the game? Has your experience with parenthood influenced the game?
Fares: In this game, not so much except the names. It’s something for them to remember when they’re older. But obviously they see the game all the time. They understand when they see the dragons and all the cool stuff, “That’s me!” The older they get, hopefully they’ll be gamers soon. I’m trying to make my daughters into gamers already.
Question: Do we have to kill a fluffy animal this time, or are you going to spare us that?
Fares: You’re not going to have to kill a fluffy animal, but you’re going to experience some fun moments. What I call the Hazelight moments. One of them is in the build here. There’s going to be some fun stuff here for you to experience.
GamesBeat: What were you the most proud of about this project?
Fares: That we pulled it off. When you play it from the beginning to the end, it’s going to be like–how is that even possible? I even question it now when I look at it. And it looks so nice and crisp. It plays so well. That’s the true challenge in creating a game. Getting it to a state where it feels really nice–a year ago I was saying, “Fuck, how are we going to be able to do this?” But where there’s a will there’s a way. We did it. I’m super proud of that.
Question: What message do you think players will get after they finish the game?
Fares: Hopefully–I want them to feel like there’s a possibility that we can become friends with everyone. Or at least understand each other. It’s really a story about friendship. Even two entirely different people can find each other and find some connection. That would be nice, to connect people.
GamesBeat: Is there something about characters who fight with each other all the time that’s attractive to you?
Fares: Not particularly? But how fun would the drama be if you had two characters who loved each other from the beginning? You need a conflict for it to be interesting. It’s good for the story to have conflict between them. Maybe we can do something where they’re best friends in the beginning and then they hate each other at the end. We could do that route for you if you want.
Question: When the trailer dropped at the Game Awards the first thing that I thought was that it was very Spy Kids 3. Is that something you had in mind?
Fares: Never thought about it. I’m an early Robert Rodriguez fan. Desperado and things like that. But no, I never thought of it like that. It’s funny, though. The first thing that came up with this game was combining science fiction and fantasy. We started looking at TV and movies to find some references we liked, and we couldn’t really find anything. You have parallel universes and stuff like that, but no one has done that mix of sci-fi and fantasy. From that perspective, the concept feels kind of fresh.
GamesBeat: Is there a way for one human player to annoy the other human player?
Fares: Always. You can mess with each other. In that level, the skyline–he just did it. There are ways to mess with each other. That’s part of a Hazelight game.
Question: When I was playing It Takes Two with my girlfriend, it nearly ended our relationship. You probably get that a lot. She’s not used to playing video games. Did you hear that a lot from other people? Do you think Split Fiction will get similar reactions?
Fares: I don’t think it’s the same, but it’s obviously going to test your skills. Funny enough, with It Takes Two, I remember when we did some testing. There were couples. You could sense it with some people. “Oh, those two need to work on their communication.” It’s a good way to test your relationship. You need to communicate all the time. Even if there are moments where you play by yourself for a little while, most of the time you need to communicate. Otherwise you’re not going to be able to progress. Are you together still?
Question: We dropped the game partway through because she was getting so frustrated. She doesn’t play video games at all, so–it’s a tough game for someone who hasn’t ever played games in their life. But maybe we’ll give it a shot with Split Fiction.
Fares: I played it a bit with my wife, but she’s not a gamer as well. Sometimes you just have to accept it. Not everyone loves video games. I don’t understand that. How can you live in a world where you don’t love video games? I just don’t get it.
GamesBeat: What do you think of the Oscars?
Fares: What do I think of them? I say fuck ‘em. No, it’s funny. The whole “fuck the Oscars” thing, it’s based on when I was there at the awards. Everyone was talking about how, “This is like the Oscars! This is like the Oscars!” They were so pumped. I said, “Fuck the Oscars, this is so much cooler.” I don’t actually know what’s going on with the Oscars now. We’ll see when I win an Oscar someday. Who knows what I’ll do on stage?
