Josef Fares has already proven his talent as a director with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, but now he’s mastering a new skill: motion capture. Fares revealed that he did all of the motion capture for one of A Way Out‘s main characters, Leo. The other main character, Vincent, was also handled internally, as Studio Manager Oskar Wolontis donned the role. It’s a unique approach, especially considering they did their own stunts, but Fares said that he was “prepared to do everything” for his project.
Here’s how Josef Fares described doing the A Way Out motion capture in a recent interview with EA:
Not only did we do all of the mo-cap, we did of the games’ stunts as well. We didn’t have a stunt guy so all the jumping, fighting and everything else players will see in-game, is done completely by us. It was pretty tough going, but we just got on with it even though we hurt ourselves a few times.
If you believe in something and are passionate about it, then you’re prepared to do everything for it. Even if its long Walk and Run Cycle sessions for Motion Batch, where we captured every animation and movement possible, from crawling, to crouching, to sprinting, to jogging for almost twenty hours.
I don’t know how many hours I personally put into wearing that mo-cap suit, but it’s a crazy amount of time – so I guess I’m a mo-cap expert now. There are even some crazy stunts that we did, that I can guarantee are not supposed to be carried out by non-professionals!
For more on the upcoming cooperative game, check out our A Way Out preview. Here’s a snippet of what Paulmichael Contreras had to say:
It appears the game’s title, A Way Out, will take on different meanings as the game progresses. At the start of the game, the obvious meaning is finding a way out of prison. However, we were shown a point in the game approximately 3 – 5 hours in, and the two main characters Leo and Vincent had already busted out of prison (fun fact: Josef’s brother, a fellow actor by the name of Fares Fares, provided motion capture for, and voices, Leo). Between one man’s broken family and another’s tendency towards violence, A Way Out may also refer to finding a way out of the dead-end lives the two of them are living.
A Way Out controls like an adventure game in the vein of Life Is Strange or The Walking Dead, where you walk up to objects and people in the environment and interact with them. Where things diverge is that when the time comes to make a decision, both players have a say in what to do. You both have a cursor, and move it towards the decision you want to make; Josef indicated that he wants the two of you (or however many people are playing/watching the game) to talk to each other in real life and figure out what you want to do. So it’ll be interesting to see what the game does if you cannot decide, or take too long to make a choice.
A Way Out is set to launch on March 23, 2018 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
[Source: EA]
