Josef Fares: "I'd rather be on the street than not doing what I believe in"

A Way Out and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons caught attention for their innovative ways of telling stories, and Hazelight's creator Josef Fares was on hand to talk about his two games, telling us that he's always trying to do something new with all of his releases, even if he faces opposition for it.

"I love pushing the boundaries of what is possible when telling a story, and I'm okay with taking risks, doing stuff that hasn't been done before," he said. "I'm okay to p*ss people off, I'm okay that not everyone likes it and it's fine, as long as I feel in my heart that it's pumping - then I will do it, I don't care."

"I think for me, I'm so passionate about this, I just want to kick in all the doors possible, to kick in and see what's there, because I think we live in a time where there's so much to explore and I think we live in a time where it's actually quite easy to do something creatively different. If you compare it to movies today, if you make a movie it's quite hard to do something that sticks out, that's different and unique. In games we're in a good position as there's so [many] things to try out, there's so [many] new things we haven't done before, and I want to do that because I feel there's so much potential, and I want to keep pushing it. If it's gonna be co-op or single, I can't talk about, but what I can say is I still really wanna push the boundaries forward of what is possible. I don't care if somebody is telling me it's not gonna work, because I keep hearing it the whole time, for Brothers, for A Way Out, but at the end of the day you can just follow your own voice; that's the most important."

We also asked about what it's been liked working with EA and how that's progressing, to which he said:

"It's been super good working with EA, and with A Way Out - I'm not just saying this because they're telling me to or whatever, I'm saying this because it is that way - they treat me super good, I don't have a problem, they respect the vision, they only support the vision, and that's it. So whatever experience everybody else has, I don't know, but at the end of the day I don't know, EA has done some mistakes, but so have other publishers. Every publisher f*cks up at some point, you know what I mean."

"But for me it's super good, and it doesn't matter what publisher I work with in the future, it's gonna be the same. How I am is I'd rather be on the street than not doing what I believe in, that's how I work, and I think everyone knows this that works with me, because I'm not afraid of saying what I think and what I want. In the end I'm a passionate gamer, I wanna play games. I love to play games as much as the players [...] but I have the opportunity to actually make them as well, so it's a lovely situation. I will always do it, and if I don't get that support, and people say 'say this, do that', then goodbye; I'll do it another way."

Do you like Fares' approach to game design?