A Way Out Could Be The Split-Screen Revolution We've Been Waiting For
Perhaps the most interesting use of split-screen, however, is in the final scene (spoilers imminent for this paragraph and the next two), with Leo and Vincent being pitted against one another in a scenario where only one of them can survive. After spending the entire game keeping an eye on the other person's screen to help them out, now, in classic couch-deathmatch fashion, you're encouraged to peek on their side so you know exactly where to shoot. The same mechanics that have allowed players to help each other through the journey are suddenly inverted, making the narrative twist even more harrowing than it would have been if you were just watching a cutscene play out.
The developers could have easily opted to remove the split-screen for this final battle to make it even more intense, as you'd have no idea where the other player was, but they didn't. On one hand that could be to keep parity between those playing locally and those playing online, but it's also to riff on classic, unspoken local multiplayer rules: screen-peeking has always been a no-no and a way to spread animosity between players, with this newly-hostile atmosphere only being heightened in A Way Out by the genuine narrative stakes on the line.
That's the best part of the game: it doesn't invent new ways to use split-screen, it just decided to acknowledge the long-standing features and mechanics players already associate with that style of play. It's ostensibly using the same rules that've been around for decades, but unlike the vast majority of developers today, Hazelight dared to play around with its conventions and actually experiment with an interactive form that's entirely unique to video games, and players have responded by turning up in droves.
It's a testament to just how flexible the formal qualities of video games are, but a daring experiment like this is also a bittersweet reminder that the majority of studios and publishers aren't actually capitalising on this freedom. The toys have been buried in the sandbox for years, but hopefully seeing how successfully Hazelight have played with them will spark the split-screen revolution that deserves to happen.