Let’s face it. I died loads in Cut up Fiction once I performed it with a associate at a preview occasion held by Hazelight and Digital Arts. However I bought proper again up and went again into the fray. And I actually loved my time with the split-screen co-op motion journey sport.
Cut up Fiction, is popping out on the consoles and PC on March 6, 2025, for $50. However I bought to attempt it out for a couple of hours and I additionally interviewed Josef Fares, founding father of the award-winning Hazelight studio, after enjoying the sport.
Sitting on the sofa with my associate, the sport began with the humor of a few e-book authors who instantly didn’t hit it off. You play as Mio and Zoe — two authors, one sci-fi, one fantasy. They’re like oil and vinegar with regards to personalities. However they’re thrown collectively into a typical disaster. Solely by working collectively — with one participant serving to the opposite — can they get out of it.
The 2 go to a simulation tech firm the place they’re promised a publishing deal. The writers turn into trapped in their very own tales after being hooked as much as a machine designed by an evil e-book “simulation” writer who needs to steal their artistic concepts.
To flee with their minds intact, they’ve to beat their variations to crash the system that holds them. The exhausting half is studying to work collectively, Fares stated in an interview with GamesBeat. Mio is just not significantly pleasant, however she has an correct, skeptical intuition towards the corporate’s intentions. Zoe is much more trusting and is keen to just accept any indignity to get revealed.
She fortunately steps onto a platform because the machine prompts a bubble that places her right into a form of sleep stasis — and begins extracting the tales from her head. However Mio resists and needs to go away. The evil CEO gained’t let her, struggles along with her and he or she falls into Zoe’s bubble. They fall into the identical fantasy world, with Mio showing inside Zoe’s story world by a glitch. They begin looking for their manner out by following the glitch, which alternately takes them into completely different fantasy or sci-fi worlds.
The gameplay begins out pretty simple, however in every encounter/puzzle/combat, it took us a few tries to get the timing proper on preventing and motion. It wasn’t tremendous troublesome in that we by no means bought caught for a very long time. However typically one participant needed to carry the opposite by a given combat scene.
It was early to be taught to play quick. I noticed that a lot of the interactivity was coloration coded. If there was a purple lettering, that was meant for Mio and so I needed to hit my proper bumper on my controller to make use of my grappling hook to fly by an area shortly. If it was inexperienced, it was meant for the opposite participant, Fares on this case, to make use of his controller to get Zoe to do one thing. You may run on the partitions like in Titanfall, and you may leap on a rail and slide like in It Takes Two.
A few hours in, there have been some more durable fights the place it took us a very long time to get by the battles. We preferred how the problem ratcheted up steadily by the sport. The humor of the pig aspect quest was gross in a captivating manner — Mio flies round with atomic-powered farts, whereas Zoe climbs by . I all the time preferred how each battle concerned Mio doing one factor and Zoe doing one other — and victory solely coming by cooperation in preventing the enemies.
As you would possibly know, split-screen video games are very exhausting to day. It’s like utilizing one sport console to show two completely different video games directly on the identical display. That pushes the computing assets to the restrict, and the developer has to ratchet down the standard of the graphics to maintain the twin body charges up. Luckily, with the animated type of the sport, the standard seems fairly good, as it’s constructed on Epic Video games’ Unreal Engine 5.
Hazelight additionally has plenty of veterans engaged on the sport. Fares began with Brothers: A Story of Two Sons, a shifting story of two brothers. Hazelight adopted that up A Means Out (about two prisoners in a jailbreak) in 2018. In 2021, Hazelight gained Recreation of the Yr for the split-screen sport It Takes Two, a couple of couple on the verge of divorce. I’ve performed every sport, however have but to get to the tip of It Takes Two. Alongside the best way, Hazelight saved working with EA Originals, they usually have the system down and a uncommon potential to inform a narrative that’s each shifting, humorous and filled with gameplay originality.
Cut up Fiction’s has an array of ever-changing mechanics that retains each gamers on the sting of the sofa. Each Mio and Zoe have to acknowledge the scenes from their tales that the simulation is visualizing as digital worlds. They usually need to work their manner by the plush fantasy areas and sci-fi skylines.
It’s important to do issues like rework your self with a button push right into a fish to swim by a fantasy stream. Zoe has to make use of a magnetic arm to fetch packing containers and throw them at attacking flying police vehicles. Mio has to enter shut fight with troopers and hack away with a cybernetic sword. They need to experience on hoverboards by desert sands and surf round sand sharks from one thing like Dune. I’m conscious there can be extra surprises within the gameplay however I’m not going to spoil them.
A part of the narrative enchantment of the sport is that Mio and Zoe don’t get alongside at first, however they be taught they’re one another’s solely hope. The characters will change ultimately alongside their journey. They usually need to be taught extra about one another as they go alongside — and defeat issues collectively.
I requested Fares in case you would ever have the ability to play as a human participant, paired with an AI character. Fares stated that may simply be a standard single-player sport that wouldn’t be as enjoyable, as your AI associate can’t actually behave like an actual human.
“If it’s isn’t broke, don’t repair it,” he stated.
Is that this sport going to be value $50? For certain. It’s a 15-hour sport that thus far could be very entertaining. And it’s one other title that might win the ever-creative Hazelight plenty of awards.
Disclosure: EA paid my method to the occasion for the aim of this preview.
