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Who are Mio and Zoe?

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If you've played a Hazelight Studios game before, you know that the characters they create for you and your co-op partner come with unique personalities, backgrounds, and motivations that produce unforgettable moments as their stories unfold. In A Way Out, you take control of Leo Caruso and Vincent Moretti, an unlikely duo who team up to escape from prison. Meanwhile in It Takes Two, you play as married couple May and Cody Goodwin, trying to save them from a seemingly inevitable divorce.




Hazelight Studios are keeping that trend up as they introduce two brand new player characters in Split Fiction. You will take control of two unpublished authors, Mio and Zoe, who you will quickly find are worlds apart! When you first meet Mio and Zoe, they have been lured into Rader Publishing Headquarters with the promise of a potential publishing deal which goes horribly wrong, trapping them inside a simulation of their stories which you have to help them escape. In this blog, we're going to dive deeper into their characters so that you can confidently pick your favourite when you get your hands on the game!

Mio Hudson - Science Fiction Author
Reserved. Decisive. Realist. Introvert.

Raised in the city with her father, Mio has barely scraped by for the last couple of years. She isn't looking for fame or recognition as an author, she's just in it for the money. Her love for all things sci-fi is reflected in her literary works, taking place in neon lit cyberpunk cities, harsh futuristic weapon plants and even in the coldness of outer space.

Expect to see her love for sci-fi shine through in the abilities she gains inside the simulations, where she may become a gravity defying ninja equipped with a lethally sharp energy sword, wear an advanced exosuit that grants remote control of drones, or dual-wield laser blasters in futuristic combat armour.



Zoe Foster - Fantasy Author
Charismatic. Empathetic. Optimist. Extrovert.

A cheerful country girl with a deep need to prove to her family that she's not a complete failure. Zoe hopes that a publishing deal will solve all of her problems. Fantasy is her favoured genre, with her portfolio containing works of fiction about escaping towns overrun by trolls, battling through forests against an impending ice age, and protecting the last dragons from extinction.

Given her love for the fantastical, you can look forward to seeing Zoe as a magical shapeshifter flying across the lands as a fairy, wield a mythical sword whilst riding a dragon into a battle of the ages, or soar between floating islands with a magical kite.




As our characters are clearly such polar opposite personalities, they will have to come to terms with their differences, uncover hidden secrets about themselves, and realise that in order to escape the simulations they find themselves trapped in, they will have to work together and overcome the odds through the power of friendship.

During the game announcement at The Game Awards in December, Josef Fares revealed that the characters' names mean a great deal to him, as Mio and Zoe are in fact named after his daughters!

Now for the tricky question for you and your co-op partner: who is going to play as Mio and who will play as Zoe…?



[h3]The Friends Pass[/h3]


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 to see more aspects of the game showcased ahead of launch.

You can also check out our previous blog post where we introduced Split Fiction's Side Stories here.

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.

Split Fiction - An Introduction to Side Stories

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[h3]The Story So Far[/h3]

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.



[h3]What Are Side Stories?[/h3]

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!


[h3]The Friends Pass[/h3]

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."

The Split Fiction Road to Launch!

It feels like two minutes since Josef Fares revealed Split Fiction live on stage to the world back in December 2024 at The Game Awards, and here we are, just under 2 months away from the game launching on March 6th.

Today we are excited to share our “Road to Launch” road map to give you an idea of what we have planned for you before you get your hands on the game.




We hope you will enjoy everything we have planned for you above, and we’ll have PC specific news coming as well before launch. Come March 6, we can’t wait to see the incredible things our community can do with the game - sharing your gameplay clips, cosplay attempts and amazing fan art!



Looking for a place to chat about Split Fiction? Join the Hazelight Discord and get involved with the community! Make sure to also follow Hazelight on both X and Instagram social channels to see more aspects of the game showcased ahead of launch



https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001120/Split_Fiction/

Experience a Mind-Blowing Co-Op Adventure in Split Fiction

Pre-order Split Fiction today! Grab a friend, master a variety of abilities, and overcome diverse challenges while jumping between sci-fi and fantasy worlds in this unexpected story of friendship.

Mio and Zoe are contrasting writers – one writes sci-fi and the other writes fantasy – who become trapped in their own stories after being hooked up to a machine designed to steal their creative ideas. They’ll have to rely on each other to break free with their memories in-tact.

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Split Fiction is a unique action-adventure experience that keeps you on the edge of your couch with unexpected moments. One minute you’re taming adorable dragons and the next you’re fighting as cyber ninjas, escaping terrifying trolls, or dodging hover cars thrown by a robotic parking attendant. It’s weird, it’s wild, and it’s designed to be shared.



Get ready to overcome any obstacle thrown your way, together.

You can play couch co-op, or invite a friend to play online for free using Friend's Pass*. As long as one of you owns the game you can both play!




https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001120/Split_Fiction/


Looking for a space dedicated to all things to do with Hazelight Games?

Join the official Hazelight Discord server today! Chat with other fans who are excited for Split Fiction too, learn more about the studio, share your game creations and find like-minded players to co-op with and play together!






Internet connection, EA account, acceptance of EA User Agreement (terms.ea.com) and Privacy & Cookie Policy (privacy.ea.com), registration with single-use product code, and applicable platform account may be required to play and access online features. Installation of the EA app (ea.com/ea-app) may be required for the PC product. Age restrictions apply. See o.ea.com/ea/child-access and applicable platform account for details. Mandatory content updates may be downloaded automatically, require additional storage, incur bandwidth usage fees, and require an additional purchase to access. EA may retire online features with 30 day notice at ea.com/service-updates. See final product details at ea.com/legal/legal-disclosures, if and when available.

*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.