The Story So Far
You and your co-op partner play together as Mio & Zoe, two writers stuck in a simulation of their own stories while visiting the shady new Rader Publishing headquarters in pursuit of a lucrative publishing deal. An accident puts Mio and Zoe inside the same shared simulation, throwing them back and forth between their own sci-fi and fantasy fiction while the nefarious publishing company tries to steal all of their ideas.
What Are Side Stories?
If you’ve played A Way Out or It Takes Two before, you’ll know that Hazelight Studios are masters of co-op gameplay variety. In addition to all of the incredible sci-fi and fantasy variety featured in the Split Fiction main story, you will encounter mysterious, out of place portals that you can enter to explore all new and vastly different worlds and locations that are completely optional.
These are Side Stories! Side Stories are anomalies that occur as a consequence of Mio and Zoe being stuck in the same simulation. These portals are attempts by the simulation to steal unfinished stories and ideas that Mio and Zoe wrote when they were younger, leading to some truly weird, wonderful, and chaotic situations.
Without wanting to spoil them all, you can look forward to experiencing Side Stories featuring a daring mountain climb filled with Giants, riding Sandfish across a desert and snowboarding while performing killer tricks down a mountain - under heavy fire. Other Side Stories will have you become pigs and finding out exactly how sausages are made, chasing enemies while water-skiing and exploring the depths of space on a spacewalk gone wrong – these are just a few examples of Mio and Zoe’s imagined Side Story scenarios, which they now have to live out (and escape from) all the while adding even more crazy and chaotic gameplay variety on your adventure through Split Fiction.
As these stories have been deeply influenced by our authors' pasts, they will experience long since forgotten ideas and secrets about themselves. Once a Side Story has been completed, our characters return back through the portal to the main level where they first entered the encounter, filled with even greater determination to escape from Rader’s machine with their memories and stories intact… so, going back to our original question, are you up to the challenge?
Fun Fact - Hazelight Studios host internal Game Jams in their studio alongside regular game development where they all work together to come up with all kinds of crazy new gameplay mechanics and unexpected story moments. Hazelight then takes the best ideas and creations and adds them into their games ready to give you never before seen co-op experiences and mind blowing moments. This is how Side Stories are brought to life for you to experience at launch!
The Friends Pass
Like A Way Out and It Takes Two, Hazelight Studios’ staple feature, The Friend’s Pass*, returns again, allowing one player that owns the game to invite a friend to play online for FREE! Hazelight also plans to introduce crossplay, making playing with friends even easier across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC (via Steam).
If all that has got you excited to learn more about Split Fiction, we recommend joining the Hazelight Discord to discuss all things Split Fiction! Make sure to follow Hazelight on both X and Instagram social channels to see more aspects of the game showcased ahead of launch.
Split Fiction is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on March 6th, 2025.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001120/Split_Fiction/
*Friend’s Pass requires installation of the Friend’s Pass, persistent internet connection and applicable platform account. One user must own the full game in order for the co-op player to play the full game."