A Way Out is built on a premise that no other major release has attempted: it’s a co-op-only game designed exclusively for two players, played entirely in split-screen whether online or local. Director Josef Fares, following Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, built an entire narrative adventure around the idea that two players experiencing a story together creates something a single-player game can’t achieve. The result is a game that succeeds more as a shared experience than as a standalone product.
The community response centers on the co-op experience. Players who went through it with a friend or partner consistently describe it as memorable, entertaining, and worth the time. The criticisms, which are equally consistent, focus on the simplistic gameplay, the derivative story, and mechanics that feel like they were designed to keep two people busy rather than to be genuinely engaging. The friendship test of the ending divides opinions as sharply as it divides the characters.
Breaking Out Together
The split-screen presentation is A Way Out’s most distinctive and most effective design choice. Both players are always on screen, even during solo-focused moments, which creates a shared awareness of your partner’s experience. Seeing what your friend is doing while you’re doing something else adds a dimension that traditional co-op games don’t capture. The moments where one player creates a distraction while the other acts, or where both screens merge into a single view for key scenes, use the format creatively.
The variety of gameplay scenarios keeps the pacing lively across the roughly six-hour runtime. The game shifts between stealth sections, action sequences, driving, boat chases, puzzles, and quieter character moments with enough frequency that no single gameplay type overstays its welcome. The constant switching prevents the simplicity of any individual mechanic from becoming a problem, because you’ve moved on before fatigue sets in.
The co-op moments that require genuine coordination between players create memorable social experiences. Moments of physical comedy, shared problem-solving, and competitive mini-games scattered throughout create organic interactions between players that feel unscripted even when they’re highly designed. The game understands that the relationship between players is as important as the relationship between characters.
The Friend’s Pass system, which allows only one player to own the game while the other plays for free, was a generous and smart design choice that lowered the barrier to the shared experience the game requires. This feature directly supports the game’s design philosophy and demonstrates that Hazelight understood the practical obstacle to a co-op-only game.
Serviceable Mechanics in Service of Story
The individual gameplay mechanics are uniformly average. The shooting is basic, the stealth is simplified, the driving handles roughly, and the puzzle-solving is straightforward. No single gameplay element would stand on its own in a dedicated game of that type. The game is designed to provide variety rather than depth, and players who expect any individual mechanic to feel polished will be consistently disappointed.
The story, following two prisoners planning and executing a breakout before pursuing revenge together, hits familiar beats without adding much new. The characters of Leo and Vincent are broadly drawn, and their personal stories follow predictable arcs. The prison break sequence is the narrative highlight, with the revenge plot that follows feeling less focused and less interesting.
The ending, while dramatically bold, divides players. The forced competitive conclusion means one player’s experience ends in victory and the other’s in defeat, and the emotional impact varies wildly depending on which side you’re on and how invested you are in your character. For some, it’s a brilliant subversion of co-op expectations. For others, it’s a frustrating betrayal of the partnership the game spent hours building.
The game’s reliance on quick-time events and scripted sequences can make you feel like a passenger during key moments. The most cinematic scenes often give the player the least actual agency, creating a disconnect between the dramatic stakes on screen and the minimal input required to advance through them.
The Case for Shared Experiences
A Way Out matters more as a proof of concept than as a polished game. It demonstrates that co-op-only narrative games can work, that split-screen storytelling has untapped potential, and that the social dynamics between two players can carry a game through mechanical shortcomings. Hazelight refined these ideas in their follow-up, It Takes Two, but A Way Out laid the groundwork and proved the audience existed.
Should You Play A Way Out?
If you have a willing co-op partner and you’re looking for a shared narrative experience, A Way Out delivers something you won’t find elsewhere. The social element of playing through the story together elevates everything beyond what the individual mechanics suggest. If you’re evaluating it as a single-player experience, it doesn’t exist as one, so don’t try. If you need polished gameplay mechanics to stay engaged, the serviceable-at-best systems will frustrate you. The Friend’s Pass means only one of you needs to buy it, which significantly changes the value proposition.
The Verdict on A Way Out
A Way Out is a unique experiment in co-op storytelling that succeeds more through its format than its content. The split-screen design, the variety of scenarios, and the shared experience of breaking out together create something genuinely special. The mechanics are average, the story is familiar, and the ending is divisive. But the act of playing through it with someone, of sharing a story in real time, gives it a value that no solo game can replicate. It’s the experience, not the game, that you’ll remember.