Electronics Arts is currently hosting its summer EA Play event, a digital presentation alternative to the canceled E3 convention. In addition to major announcements for Apex Legends and other prominent franchises, several of the next EA Originals indie games were announced, too. One such game is It Takes Two. It Takes Two is the next game from Hazelight Games, the studio behind the co-op action-adventure game A Way Out.
It Takes Two is also a co-op game, as well as an action-adventure-platformer. But it's also going to be something entirely different than A Way Out or Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons before it. Hazelight's Josef Fares says that It Takes Two features "uniquely varied gameplay" as well as the studio's now-staple emotional storytelling to create something both gripping and exciting to play.
The game starts with a small family unit. The parents are named Cody and May and they have a daughter named Rose. Unfortunately, Cody and May are separating, with Rose obviously feeling very unhappy with the situation. She doesn't want her parents to divorce but feels powerless. As such, she makes two dolls out of cloth and debris at hand, surrogates for her divided parents. These dolls then miraculously come to life, with players taking control of them and perhaps their emotions, too.
The short amount of gameplay shown shows that levels in It Takes Two will be at the scale of Toy Story. One level featured a fort or a treehouse of sorts, with mattresses laid out, a sheet for a roof, and an extension cord being used to plug in a TV and a video game console. Another level showed the inside of what looks to be a grandfather clock.
As for gameplay, there's little information beyond Fares' description of It Takes Two being an action-adventure-platformer. However, he does mention one further interesting mechanic. He says that in some levels, there will be a specific mechanic for controlling/manipulating the doll characters' emotions. How exactly that works remains to be seen.
Fares describes It Takes Two as a "crazy rollercoaster ride" where at the end the rollercoaster comes off the rails and explodes, with players launching off into space. Hopefully, players come back down to Earth afterward.
It Takes Two launches in 2021.