It is the autumn of 2026, and the gaming world is still peeling itself off the ceiling after Hazelight Studios proved, for the second time in a decade, that cooperative play isn’t just a gimmick—it’s a genre unto itself. Today, nobody bats an eye when a co-op-only title wins Game of the Year, but rewind to late 2022 and the scene was far more chaotic. The ink was barely dry on It Takes Two’s Game of the Year trophy when Josef Fares, the studio’s perpetually uncensored director, sat down with Video Games Chronicle to promote the imminent Nintendo Switch port. What followed was a masterclass in charmingly unfiltered hype that, viewed through a 2026 lens, reads less like a standard interview and more like a road map written in invisible ink.
The centerpiece of that 2022 chat was the miraculous Switch port, outsourced to Turn Me Up Games—the same wizards who had managed to squeeze Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 and Borderlands: Legendary Collection onto Nintendo’s aging hybrid. Fares, never a man to mince syllables, admitted he had been “pretty uninvolved” with the technical wizardry, yet his admiration came coated in his signature sandpaper charm. “A lot of people forget,” he pointed out with the exasperated energy of a physics professor explaining gravity to a cat, “that in It Takes Two, everything has to be rendered twice in a split-screen.” He went on to marvel that the port “looks really nice,” given that “the hardware is pretty old now.” This was Fares in his element: lobbing truth grenades with a grin, a style as refreshing as a bucket of ice water at a shareholder meeting.
To understand why that 2022 interview still echoes, one must appreciate the bizarre alchemy of Fares’ public persona. Describing him as merely “eccentric” is like calling the Sun “a tad warm.” His language has always been a fireworks display of expletives wrapped in genuine passion—a hybrid of a motivational speaker and a sailor on shore leave. When pressed to name a favorite moment from It Takes Two, he initially resisted, declaring, “I can’t say it’s only one [level], but I’m still looking back on it now thinking, this is a f** good game.” That sentence alone should be framed in the Louvre as a monument to artistic self-confidence.
Yet one moment refused to stay buried: the infamous elephant scene. The one that players either laugh-cried through or required a week of therapy to process. Fares, with his trademark deadpan, revealed it was “always a funny scene” to him, believing many players missed “the dark comedy side of what the elephant meant.” In a revelation that still makes 2026’s game designers cackle nervously, he disclosed the original version was “more violent,” not just visually but in music and tone. “We actually had to take it down to make it a bit less [intense],” he confessed, as if describing a pasta sauce that needed one fewer ghost pepper. The mental image of Hazelight’s team dialing back emotional devastation through volume knobs and color palettes has since become an unofficial mascot for the studio’s creative philosophy: push until someone screams, then gently ease the throttle by 2%.
Then came the prophecy. “We’re making good progress,” Fares teased about the studio’s next project, “but there’s a lot more to do. And it’ll be something really f** cool… Trust me… it will blow your f** mind.” In 2022, these words were a wish; by 2026, they are a historical document. Because what followed—after years of radio silence broken only by the occasional cryptic smirk from the director—was Split Fiction, Hazelight’s 2025 magnum opus that took the co-op blueprint and folded it into a sci-fi and fantasy blender so violently that it shook loose awards, tears, and at least three separate fan theories about parallel universes.
Looking back with the cold clarity of 2026, Fares’ 2022 mindset becomes fascinating. He had just watched a game about a divorcing couple turned into dolls outsell and outshine countless AAA behemoths, yet he spoke about the next idea with the nervous excitement of a chef who has just tasted a sauce so good it might be illegal. The Switch port was never just a port—it was a victory lap that doubled as a stress test. If It Takes Two could run on hardware Fares affectionately likened to a vintage coffee machine that somehow still brews espresso, then anything was possible.
📊 A Quick 2022–2025 Timeline for the Forgetful
| Year | Event | Fares’ Reaction (Paraphrased) |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Switch port of It Takes Two announced | “The hardware is old; this looks really nice anyway.” |
| 2022 | Teases next project | “It will blow your mind.” |
| 2023–2024 | Hazelight goes mostly quiet | Speculated by fans as “probably cooking.” |
| 2025 | Split Fiction revealed and released | Mind-blowing, indeed. Wins multiple GOTY awards. |
| 2026 | Players still discussing elephant scene and Fares’ prophecies | Smug silence from the director. |
What makes the studio’s trajectory feel less like luck and more like dark sorcery is Fares’ unwavering belief that co-op is not a limitation but a canvas. It Takes Two forced two screens to coexist in permanent split-screen, a technical migraine for any engine. Split Fiction then took that concept and asked, “What if we throw in genre-swapping every fifteen minutes and mechanics that require genuine telepathy?” The answer was a game that felt engineered by a committee of mad scientists and former circus performers, held together by the gravitational pull of Fares’ vision.
In the 2022 VGC interview, there was a subtle but unmistakable shift in Fares’ tone when discussing the future. His usual bravado was tempered by a quieter confidence, like a comedian who knows the punchline will land three years later. “Trust me,” he kept saying, and by 2026, that trust has been repaid with compound interest. The Switch port itself has become a collector’s curiosity—a testament to Turn Me Up Games’ technical wizardry and a reminder that even as hardware evolves, the heart of a great co-op experience can survive any aging chipset, much like a beloved recipe surviving a move to a smaller kitchen.
The elephant in the room, of course, is the elephant itself. Four years after that interview, the scene remains a cultural Rorschach test. Some see hilarious absurdity; others see childhood trauma given limbs. Fares’ revelation that it was toned down has spawned endless “Elephant Sequence: Original Cut” memes, with fans imagining what could possibly have been more intense—perhaps actual tears extracted from players via USB? The director’s dark comedy instincts remain unmatched, and in 2026, as new players discover It Takes Two through cloud streaming or whatever Nintendo device now occupies our palms, the elephant continues to stampede through collective consciousness.
As Hazelight reportedly works on yet another project (Fares’ last public comment was, predictably, “You have no idea what’s coming”), the 2022 interview serves as both time capsule and launchpad. It captured a moment when a studio director was so high on his own success that he could casually promise a mind-blowing sequel while reviewing a port of the game that had already stolen the industry’s soul. In hindsight, it was the gaming equivalent of Michelangelo pausing halfway through the Sistine Chapel to repair a leaky faucet, then mentioning he might paint something even better next decade.
And honestly? In 2026, we believe him. The mind, after all, is still recovering from being blown.