Split Fiction: Meet co-op protagonists Mio and Zoe

If you’ve played a Hazelight Studios game before, you know that the characters they create for you and your co-op partner come with unique personalities, backgrounds, and motivations that produce unforgettable moments as their stories unfold. 

Hazelight Studios is keeping that trend up as they introduce two new player characters in Split Fiction, which is launching on March 6 on PS5. Take control of two unpublished authors, Mio and Zoe, who you will quickly find are worlds apart! When you first meet Mio and Zoe, they have been lured into Rader Publishing Headquarters with the promise of a potential publishing deal which goes horribly wrong, trapping them inside a simulation of their stories which you have to help them escape. In this blog, we’re diving deeper into their characters so that you can confidently pick your favourite when you get your hands on the game! 

Mio Hudson – Science Fiction author

Reserved. Decisive. Realist. Introvert.

Raised in the city with her father, Mio has barely scraped by for the last couple of years. She isn’t looking for fame or recognition as an author, she’s just in it for the money. Her love for all things sci-fi is reflected in her literary works, taking place in neon-lit cyberpunk cities, harsh futuristic weapon plants, and even in the coldness of outer space.

Expect to see her love for sci-fi shine through in the abilities she gains inside the simulations, where she may become a gravity-defying ninja equipped with a lethally sharp energy sword, wear an advanced exosuit that grants remote control of drones, or dual-wield laser blasters in futuristic combat armour.

Zoe Foster – Fantasy author

Charismatic. Empathetic. Optimist. Extrovert.

A cheerful countryside girl with a deep need to prove to her family that she’s not a complete failure. Zoe hopes that a publishing deal will solve all of her problems. Fantasy is her favoured genre, with her portfolio containing works of fiction about escaping towns overrun by trolls, battling through forests against an impending ice age, and protecting the last dragons from extinction.

Given her love for the fantastical, you can look forward to seeing Zoe as a magical shapeshifter flying across the lands as a fairy, wielding a mythical sword whilst riding a dragon into a battle of the ages, or soaring between floating islands with a magical kite.

As our characters are clearly such polar opposite personalities, they have to come to terms with their differences, uncover hidden secrets about themselves, and realise that to escape the simulations they find themselves trapped in, they must work together and overcome the odds through the power of friendship.

During the game announcement at The Game Awards in December, Josef Fares revealed that the characters’ names mean a great deal to him, as Mio and Zoe are in fact named after his daughters!

Now for the tricky question for you and your co-op partner: who is going to play as Mio and who will play as Zoe…?

The Friend’s Pass

Like A Way Out and It Takes Two, Hazelight Studios’ staple feature, The Friend’s Pass*, returns again, allowing one player who owns the game to invite a friend to play online for free! Hazelight also plans to introduce crossplay, making playing with friends even easier across any platform. 

Split Fiction is coming to PlayStation 5 on March 6, 2025. 

*Friend’s Pass requires installation of the Friend’s Pass, persistent internet connection and applicable platform account. One user must own the full game in order for the co-op player to play the full game.