“Did We Really Do That?”: Josef Fares on How Split Fiction Advances the Co-Op Adventure Genre

Undoubtedly, creating Split Fiction is an incredibly ambitious endeavor. This game feels like it’s constantly pushing fresh mechanics at players every quarter of an hour and dropping the old ones. The real challenge lies in ensuring that each new idea is fully realized and not just a fleeting thought.

“In Split Fiction, there’s a particular segment where you get to ride dragons. Crafting just one of those dragons was a colossal task, taking around eight months to perfect. Early in my career, some team members would question why we went to such lengths for something you only experience for about ten minutes,” the game director shared.

“But here’s the catch. In movies, just because a scene is expensive doesn’t mean you reuse it repeatedly to justify the cost. I genuinely believe those special moments risk losing their magic if they’re overused. There’s this notion in gaming that if something is costly, it should be reused multiple times. But why should that be the norm? Replicating it diminishes the thrill of that first encounter.”

Split Fiction embraces this philosophy wholeheartedly, featuring vast stretches of entirely optional content. While It Takes Two sprinkled in mini-games, Split Fiction offers these (reached through portals along the journey) as fully-fledged worlds within the game.

“In these spaces, you’re introduced to comprehensive worlds filled with new mechanics, occasional bosses, and fresh visual experiences. It feels like embarking on an entirely new game within the larger narrative.”