Fold up your overalls, prisoner. We don’t know a lot in regards to the subsequent game from Hazelight, the studio who made co-op jailbreak ‘em up A Way Out. But we not less than understand it isn’t a sequel. “What I can say is that it’s not A Way Out 2,” stated Josef Fares, studio head, when he spoke to me at Gamelab Barcelona. “But it’s going to be something with story, and in many cases remind [players] of Brothers and A Way Out, but in a very different way.”
So, one other co-op game? Maybe. Fares wouldn’t say for sure, however he did depart a number of imprecise breadcrumbs, amid his typical exuberant outpourings. He swore so much, is what I’m saying.
“You’re going to get fucked,” he stated, talking in regards to the unannounced challenge. He doesn’t imply this actually (I hope). He means “mindfucked”. An abrasive time period Fares likes to make use of to explain earlier games he has labored on, instead of merely saying “there’s a twist”.
“I like to make [the player] not really know what’s going on… just like a roller coaster ride. Make them [think] ‘woah, what’s going on over here?’ … Especially the endings… The next game will be like that too. And that’s why I call it ‘mindfucking’, it’s a nice approach, a nice motto, you know?”
He is pondering of the thumb-confusing gimmick of Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, wherein you management two characters with separate joysticks, or the twist within the jailbird story of A Way Out. The essential factor is that there’s something simply as “mechanically” fascinating in regards to the studio’s subsequent journey.
“The next game is going to be an insane game, mechanically,” he says. “Oh my god… It’s impossible to get tired of the next game. You will [be] like ‘what the fuck’. It’s going to be like that. You’re going to get fucked. You’re going to get fucked every 30 minutes.”
As for the kind of game it’s, Fares received’t say precisely. But he does say he’s taken with “multiplayer story games”. Which suggests one other co-op story, or one thing else involving multiple participant.
“I do believe that there [is] a lot of potential in telling great stories for more than one person,” he says. “If you look at movies today, we look at them together, we experience stories together… I do believe that multiplayer story games are underestimated. I think that there’s a lot of potential there that I would like to explore.”
Obviously, you’ll wish to take the Fares hype with an enormous tub filled with salts. He’s an animated man, possibly finest identified for his on-stage hyperbole at the Game Awards, the place he stated it will be “impossible” to dislike A Way Out. He even doubles down after I convey this up. “It is unimaginable!” he says.
“It is unimaginable. I’m really stunned it didn’t [win] ‘game of the year’ right here and there. I can see that it wants extra polish. Several of the folks on the workforce have been interns. I can perceive that individuals examine us to Uncharted which is loopy in a way. We’re not polished, the gameplay will not be essentially like ‘boom’. But typically, what A Way Out does is completely distinctive.”
That boastfulness crops up again and again throughout our interview. “I can make AAA today if I wanted,” he says at one level. “I say what I want.” And later: “EA know this, they know they can’t control me.” He’s mainly a dwelling quote machine. It’s no shock that he’s beforehand stated he believes within the questionable concept of the auteur, some over-riding inventive drive who whirlwinds in, solely chargeable for the inventive imaginative and prescient of a studio. But after I ask him about this, he feels he must make clear.
“No, no, no,” he says. “A game is completely a collaboration between a workforce. And if you happen to take a look at my workforce, like my designers, every thing, we’re tremendous [collaborative] they usually do wonderful stuff. My job is to maintain pushing them – come on, go go go, extra extra extra. So it’s positively a collaboration.
“However I do consider that you simply want an individual or two to push a imaginative and prescient. I feel it’s essential. We are inclined to see the games that do develop into nice have that particular person or two that’s pushing… I do consider it may be higher for the games.”
The studio’s earlier jail break caper was a principally good co-op paltime, stated Kevin Wong in our A Way Out review, even when it had cumbersome stealth sections, and tried to do too many issues without delay. Whatever the studio is doing subsequent, it received’t be a behind-bars sequel. They received’t return, man.
