If you’re a fan of It Takes Two, then you’ll almost certainly have been waiting on tenterhooks for the follow-up by Hazelight Studios. With a release date of March 6, you won’t have much longer to wait to start playing Split Fiction and the really good news is that the freshly posted PC hardware requirements start off very light and Steam Deck users will be good to go, too.
Starting with the entry requirements, Hazelight Studios suggests that all you need is an Intel 6th Gen Core i5 or second-gen AMD Ryzen 5 chip for the CPU, along with a GeForce GTX 970 or a Radeon RX 470. Decent gear for their time but these days, that’s as basic as it comes. Potato-quality, if you prefer. Having said that, you will need 16 GB of system RAM, so not manky-old-tatters level.
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
Minimum |
Recommended |
|---|---|---|
|
CPU |
Intel Core i5 6600K or AMD Ryzen 5 2600K |
Intel Core i7 11700K or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X |
|
Memory |
16 GB |
16 GB |
|
Graphics |
Nvidia GeForce RTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 470 |
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT |
|
Storage |
85 GB |
85 GB |
|
Resolution |
1080p native |
1440p native |
|
FPS |
30 |
60 |
|
Graphics preset |
Low |
High |
Admittedly that’s for playing on the Low quality preset, at 1080p native resolution, with a target frame rate of 30 fps. But if the game is playable like that, then who am I to complain?
Quite a few recent games look perfectly fine on low graphics settings and Hazelight Studios says that it has “worked tirelessly to ensure the game will be optimised on launch, completing hours and hours of performance and compatibility testing with the goal of making sure that the game will run as smoothly as possible, even on PC’s configured at the games listed minimum system requirements.”
Once you ramp up the quality setting, though, the hardware requirements become somewhat steeper. For a target frame rate of 60 fps at 1440p native, on a High preset, you’re going to need a Core i7 11700K or Ryzen 7 5800X, with a GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT.
Perhaps the only thing to make you really sit up and raise an eyebrow is that the fact that the game will take up 85 GB of your SSD or hard drive. Sure, that’s only a little more than half of a Baldur’s Gate 3 installation, but it’s still quite a bit more than I was expecting.
Split Fiction runs on Unreal Engine 5 (stop moaning at the back) but that doesn’t mean it’ll be sporting Lumen ray tracing or Nanite virtual geometry. In fact, I suspect that the game will run pretty well on most gaming PCs because the above hardware demands, while a big step up from the entry requirements, are pretty acceptable for 1440p, 60 fps. One might complain that the performance target isn’t higher but I’ll take a smooth, glitch-free 60 fps over a janky 100 fps any time.
Steam Deck owners will be pleased to note that Split Fiction is also verified for the platform. That ‘approval’ doesn’t necessarily mean it will run really well, but it should mean that you can expect to jump right in, without having to mess around with settings to get an enjoyable experience. Mind you, split-screen action on a seven-inch display is going to involve compromises of some kind.
Still, thanks to Hazelight’s Friend’s Pass system, you and a friend will be able to game together even if only one of you owns Split Fiction—your friend just downloads Friend’s Pass on their PC or console, the game owner then sends an invite, and then you’re good to play the whole game together.
It’s cross platform compatible, too, although that requires signing up for an EA account (fortunately, not EA’s app!). My partner and I thoroughly enjoyed It Takes Two and it was one of the best co-op gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time. Even if Split Fiction is only half as good as its predecessor, I reckon Hazelight Studios will have another winner on its hands.
