A Way Out gets release date, trailer, free friend's pass and bizarre developer rant at the Game Awards 2017
If you hadn't heard of A Way Out before, you will now: money can't buy this kind of publicity. Well, it probably did, to be honest.
A Way Out is a co-op prison break game published by EA, and you may remember it being announced at E3 2017.
Here's the TGA 2017 trailer for A Way Out, then. It introduces characters Vincent and Leo, and confirms a March 23, 2018 release date on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. Because it's a co-op game, it will ship with a "friend's pass" scheme so that you can invite a buddy in to play with you for free.
A Way Out secured itself a place in gaming's collective consciousness at tonight's The Game Awards show when writer and director Josef Fares came on stage to introduce the trailer.
The segment began calmly enough with a bit of hyperbole regarding the relative merits of the Oscars versus the back-back-commercial stream which is gaming's leading night, but took a strange turn when it became clear that Fares was earnest in this declaration. After obtaining permission to swear, he threw the bird at the camera, saying "f**k the Oscars", and carried on in this vein for some time despite host Geoff Keighley's attempts to turn the situation.
The subsequent monologue touched on EA's recent errors - probably a reference to Star Wars Battlefront's microtransaction fiasco - and underlined Fares's own, positive experiences with the publisher. It then wandered off into who knows where, with Fares continually demanding a moment more to speak in the face of Keighley's weak protestations.
It's being compared to Joel McHale's memorable appearance at the Spike Awards and opinions are divided between "what a genuine and amusing man" and "this man has interrupted the sacred sanctity of this our hallowed night". Enjoy sorting that out, games culture.
Anyway the upshot of this is that everyone suddenly wants to know what the hell A Way Out is, which is invaluable publicity for a new IP with a difficult-to-sell premise, and given how little Keighley did to prevent the moment one does wonder if it was arranged ahead of time; The Game Awards is a favourite place for stunts, like the whole Phantom Pain reveal thing.