Josef Fares, de man achter A Way Out en de aankomende It Takes Two, heeft een opmerkelijke interview gedaan met IGN US.
Het begon allemaal heel normaal. Fares geeft aan hoe It Takes Two anders is dan A Way Out, de scope van zijn projecten, de verkoopcijfers en dat hij gaat beginnen met het ontwikkelen van een gloednieuwe game over een maandje.
Maar dan gaat Fares wederom in een outburst net als bij The Game Awards in 2017. Daar zijn hij: ‘F**k the Oscards’ toen miljoenen mensen live zaten te kijken.
Dit keer laat Fares zijn frustratie los op Microsoft. Fares is helemaal niet te spreken over de namen Xbox Series X en Xbox Series S. Volgens Fares zijn ze de weg kwijt en zijn de namen zo verwarrend dat Microsoft zelf soms de namen door elkaar haalt.
De nieuwe game van Josef Fares genaamd It Takes Two, komt op 2 maart 2021 uit voor de PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, de Xbox One, Xbox Series X en Xbox Series S.
Opmerkelijke antwoorden van Josef Fares
“When I believe in something, nothing can stop me. Obviously no one believed in [A Way Out] – not even EA thought it would sell, but they still believed in me. I didn’t care. I was like, ‘This is going to happen.’ Now, we’ve sold almost 3.5 million units of that game. These numbers for a small team of 30, 35 people are madness, you know? And at 3.5 million units sold, that means that, I don’t know, almost seven million people played this game, which is crazy.
“Now it’s proven but, for me, the important thing was to follow your passion and what you believe in. I do believe that there might be someone in the industry who wanted to try this kind of game, but they didn’t really dare to because they were afraid of what could happen. I just think that sometimes you need to f**k s**t up and really go with what you truly believe in. That’s the only thing that matters, you know? I do think – and hope – that more people do this, especially when publishers see that, ‘Oh, we have an audience here.’ People want this, obviously.”
“Of course I wish we could have pushed all that more with A Way Out, but it was hard with the team we had. But I still think we did a great job considering what we had. In A Way Out we got compared to AAA titles – you know, you compare Uncharted’s shooting with our shooting, I mean come on. We had one coder on our shooting. But with this game, we have gotten way better and we can deliver a way better game.”
“I do believe in the narrative game. We really need to look closer at how mechanics are connected to story, and I really, truly believe that in [other] narrative games, sometimes designers and writers are [making] two different games. We need to drop the idea of the old thing where you learn your mechanic and blah, blah, blah, you get better. That’s old design rules. I don’t care about them. They could function and work in another game but, in story experiences, you have to have the [game] and the narrative meld together. This is what we’re trying to do. Everything the characters are seeing, or interacting with, or encountering is part of the gameplay.”
“No, no, no, no, no. The next game I have in my head is very different to this. I mean, very different. […] This is not the new tone for the kind of game we’re doing. The next game is totally different. It’s something totally else, which is so cool. We’re going to start with it in the next month.” Rather than sit within his own genre, it feels as though Fares is feeling out his next steps, building on his original ideas, while thinking of ways to push them further in future.
“I don’t really care about consoles. I care about games. Of course I wish we could have looked more into the new consoles [for It Takes Two]. I’m just happy they are more powerful, because it takes a lot of time when a console is not really powerful enough, but what I like about the new generation is that they are powerful, that we can focus on them. But to be honest with you, they came in so late in our production – of course it’s going to look better on PS5 and Xbox Series X, but we didn’t really have the time to adjust them and make the PS5 version special, or the Xbox blah blah… Whatever they call the Xbox Series.
“That’s a f**king confusing name. What the f**k’s going on with Microsoft? They’re losing it, man. What the f**k is going on? Like Series S, X, Mex, Next. I mean, who knows this? Come on. Madness. Call it the Microsoft Box and that’s it. I don’t know. It’s a total f**king mess. Trust me, even them, they’re confused in their offices. What is this X, S… I don’t know, what the f**k.”
