The founder of Hazelight Studios, Josef Fares, doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind or try new things. His company reflects this mindset, experimenting with game mechanics that haven’t often been seen before, such as creating titles that offer only cooperative play. This has resulted in the success of Hazelight’s latest title It Takes Two, which earned the distinction of being the best reviewed game of 2021 when it launched on March 26.
As with Hazelight Studios’ previous title, A Way Out, the action-adventure platformer It Takes Two does not provide a single-player option and can only be played online or in local split-screen co-op. This might cause some hesitation for gamers who typically don’t enjoy playing co-op or multiplayer games, but Fares maintains the premise behind the title, that of cooperation to solve problems, simply wouldn’t work as a single-player game.
In a recent interview with Inverse, Fares said he feels single-player games in general are too long, and therefore their gameplay mechanics are used for too long. The developer wants to see co-op games become commonplace again, as they were in the past. Fares goes on to say that as a whole, “Games are too long.”
Fares extends this opinion to replayability in games. It Takes Two does not offer much in terms of replayability, nor are there collectibles in the game, which some players view as padding gameplay. According to Fares, it’s “weird” that developers, publishers, and reviewers talk about replayability in games, because he believes more people won’t complete a game than will ever replay them. Citing CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3 as an example, Fares points out that only 30 percent of players even finished it.
While Fares might make a good point, this focus on replayability is not limited solely to developers, publishers, and reviewers. There are plenty of players who also place importance on a game’s replayability. It speaks to value for money, particularly as some publishers have begun to increase game prices to 70 dollars.
Additionally, some developers so skillfully create an immersive game world that players simply don’t want to leave, and they appreciate the experience stretching over hundreds of hours. Take the lasting success of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, which released nearly a decade ago and has since been remastered and re-released on multiple platforms. Persona 5 is a game that takes anywhere from 100 to 200 hours to complete, but was so well received that an enhanced edition with even more content was released in the form of Persona 5 Royal in March 2020. These are single-player experiences that are extremely long and seem to directly contradict Fares’ point. If nothing else, it seems there's room for both approaches to game design.
It Takes Two is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Inverse