Starbreeze Studios and Josef Fares’ upcoming collaboration: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (set for a spring launch on PC, PSN and Xbox Live Arcade) is an important game for a few reasons, but it’s also a game you actually need to play in order to understand how and why it works so well. The acclaimed Swedish director and well-seasoned developer have crafted a gorgeous-looking fantasy adventure tale with an innovative control scheme, smart camera system and no GUI to take away from the immersion, all of which make the game unique but accessible once you wrap your head around controlling two characters with a single controller.

There have been many games where players were either followed around by “smart” AI characters or controlled multiple characters on the same screen, but Brothers’ unique control scheme gently demands that both halves of your brain operate in unison right from the start, as many of the puzzles you’ll face require timing and precision in order to progress. Just remember that your left side of the controller is Big Brother and the right side Little Brother and it all clicks into place…

In case you’re curious as to how it “clicks”, there’s a “tutorial” of sorts set in a tiny village that allows you to get accustomed to the brothers before setting out on your adventure. Fares noted that the game isn’t supposed to be hard at all because in its case, built-in frustration isn’t really good game design nor a replacement for telling a story. This was evident in the different sections of the demo I tried as there’s a certain “flow” to things that works beautifully as the game camera adjusts to give the best angles when encountering new locations and puzzles. Observation and recognition of clues makes the puzzles quite intuitive and rewarding to solve. Yes, there’s a great ICO-like vibe to the game’s color palette and puzzles in some areas, but this isn’t a bad thing at all as both games use mystery and exploration in fine ways.

Out of the village area, there was an angry dog to deal with, which showed off a few possible solutions. Getting each brother across the short area required one sibling distracting the animal from a high spot while the second scooted past while it was barking away at the other. Fares noted that these and other types of events are one-time only affairs, so once a player completes them, there’s no need for backtracking in order to keep the story flowing into each new area. The idea, he suggests is to play the entire game in a single sitting, which, given its estimated 3 to 4 hours play time isn’t going to be difficult at all for many gamers.

That made for fun bit discussion on how the concept of “length” in games is somewhat annoyingly overblown these days, as Fares noted that some stories are best told as short ones as opposed to over-padded experiences that force players into mandatory or optionally addictive busywork simply to fill out tens of hours. Brothers is set up from the beginning as a brief tale that each player will probably experience in a slightly different manner. Getting the director to reveal more about the story and gameplay in later sections was tricky, but given the relative brevity of the game experience, it was understandable why he was so intentionally coy.

Another mind expanding thing is while it embraces adventure elements and twists them around (there’s no inventory system to navigate either) the game doesn’t properly fit into a strict genre category. In fact, it’s Fares’ hope that players embrace the idea of being told a touching story (with it’s share of dramatic and humorous elements) as they’re playing a game that’s set in a richly detailed world where they’ll discover more if they choose to. For example, each brother can interact with certain objects in the environment or other characters that shows off their personalities while offering brief side-quest opportunities. It’s entirely possible to ignore these interactions and still complete the game, but those players who experiment will get more from the experience (and a few extra Achievements or Trophies).

Checkpoints are invisible and frequent, so if a brother falls to his doom or otherwise expires (hey, my hand got tired and slipped off the analog stick during one puzzle!), the game simply lets you try again from where you left off. Again, the level of grief here is none at all because the director and dev team just want players to enjoy what they’ve worked so hard on. Granted, some out there will think the game is TOO easy, while a smaller handful will obsess over that one puzzle that requires them to shake a few extra brain cells loose and think outside of the run ‘n gun box they prefer every game they play have as a “solution”. Fares wants Brothers to be a “just right” game for anyone who’d held a controller or not, so this one should be as cool to watch as it is to play…

As their games are well-known for their solid visuals, Starbreeze is of course, doing some fantastic work here. It’s nice to see the Unreal 3 engine being used for more than just another FPS or big AAA action game, and the world created by the dev team is rich in all sorts of detail. It’s a shame it’s not wide open, but again, Fares noted that the collaboration is designed that way for a reason. That said, the game’s look and some of the maps I saw made me wish Starbreeze would revisit the fantasy genre and cook up a new Enclave or Knights of the Temple game at some point down the road (yes, I’ve been playing their games for that long).

As for the future, it’s clear (to me, at least) that this new way of collaborating on a game project just might bring forth some even more innovative experiments. Particularly when there are visionaries like Josef Fares who understand gaming doesn’t need to be the same thing all the time and playing with expectations often leads to new directions more developers can take as they explore more interesting manners of telling stories. 505 Games, Starbreeze and Fares have a definite sleeper hit on their hands with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, but it’s going to be up to the dedicated gamers who play this one and love what it does that point to what’s possible in the future…