Hazelight announced A Way Out at this year’s EA Play press conference. The reveal of the game was met with a lot of warm reception from the gaming community because it’s a story-oriented co-op adventure game that gamers have been waiting for.
Director Josef Fares excitedly introduced the game to the mostly lethargic audience at the EA Play press conference. The offerings from Electronic Arts this year were completely uninspired and they had no confidence whatsoever in showcasing the story mode of Star Wars: Battlefront II (possibly due to rumors that the game’s story campaign mode could be an SJW wetdream), but they did showcase the story to A Way Out, which is sees to criminals in prison reluctantly working together to escape.
The game can only be played as a two-player game, so if you want to be all sullen, lonely, hateful, belligerent and misanthropic, you’re going to have to take that attitude to where it belongs… in an online multiplayer session of Call of Duty.
You can check out the trailer below, featuring the fittingly appropriate tune of “No Sugar In My Coffee” from Caught A Ghost.
Leo looks a little like Harland Williams.
Anyway, the small escape tale is not only about two guys trying to flirt with the dangers of escaping the law, it’s also about their interpersonal relationships that suffered due to the crimes they committed that placed them behind bars in the first place.
Instantaneously I was reminded of Kane & Lynch, but a lot of the gaming community quickly pointed out the similarities to the Fox TV show Prison Break.
The game’s graphics look serviceable enough thanks to some cheap lighting and shader solutions provided by the Unreal Engine 4. It doesn’t have to be award-winning visuals to win over most gamers, and the characters and designs look compelling enough to tell an interesting story about escape, survival, and finding a way out.
Interestingly enough it also appears as if the game tries to avoid racking up a body count like in Kane & Lynch, which could prove to be a welcomed change from the typical one-against-a-million trope that we oftentimes see in most action-adventure games.
You can check out some of the gameplay features and how the synchronized gameplay works with the gameplay trailer below.
As revealed by Fares, the game is always played split-screen even when you play online. This is necessary for synchronicity and ensuring that both players know what the other player is doing in order to progress through the game. This way whether you’re playing as Leo or Vincent, you can always tell what your teammate is doing, whether that’s driving a truck, riding motorcycles, scaling buildings, or fighting off security guards.
Even if this is just a two or three gameplay experience I would be okay with that if it’s like $19.99 or $29.99. These kind of mid-budget games is what the industry really needs; small, cool, innovative and inventive gameplay scenarios to keep people interested and engaged in the gaming industry. It sure beats the microtransaction grind-fests being churned annually by most other AAA studios.
You can look for A Way Out to launch on Origin PC (sorry Steam users), PS4 and Xbox One starting early 2018. You can learn slightly more about the game by hitting up the official EA website.
