Split Fiction review

It Takes Two 2

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Electronic Arts

• Developer: Hazelight Studios
• Publisher: EA
• Release: March 6th 2025
• On: Windows
• From: Steam / Epic Games Store
• Price: £40/€50/$50
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, Windows 10

Brendan: Hello, Nic.

Nic: Brendy! Why are you here, in my review? What is this, some kind of Split Fiction ? Some kind of co-op adventure by Hazelight? Fine, since you’re here: what’s the best bit of Split Fiction, Brendy?

Brendan: We were escaping sci-fi gunships on the back of a stolen motorcycle. You must have felt cool steering us between missiles and gunfire. I could see none of that. I was too focused on clicking the “accept” box on a Terms and Conditions screen. Our ill-gotten bike’s futuristic security had kicked in, you see, and it was my job to disable its self-destruct protocol by phone. You were driving fast and jumping between skyscrapers while I was wrestling with captcha after captcha to stop us from exploding. I laughed the whole time.

Nic: My favourite bit involved pigs. You were a pig that could fly by farting and I was a pig that could transform into a tall Slinky . Then we fell through a meat grinder and popped out as sausages. Then we had to grill and mustard ourselves as a final act of sick humiliation before wriggling into some buns and getting eaten by a giant child.

Trying to evade captcha. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Electronic Arts

Brendan: I didn’t like that bit. Although it did make me hungry. Let me explain the basic set-up before we get deeper into it. Two unpublished writers meet at a big shady company’s experimental brain scanning session. But, oh no, the terse and introverted sci-fi writer has fallen into the brain-bubble of the outgoing and friendly fantasy writer. Each player takes control of a writer, with the ensuing puzzles, exploration, battles, and boss fights all requiring a bit of back and forth chat as you play to get through. If you’ve played the studio’s previous game, It Takes Two , you probably know what to expect.

Nic: Brendy, you’ve successfully pulled the context lever on your side of the screen, leaving me free to enter the detail hallway. Great job! If only your cold sci-fi heart would embrace fantasy then appreciate me as a writer and person, we might have a touching if trite odd couple story on our hands! What a good idea for a videogame.

Brendan: It’s “video game”. Two words.

Nic: Anyway. I think you said you the pig party was “too much whimsy” for you. There were also two whimsical pigs grilling a third whimsical pig on a whimsical spit. But those almost Amanita-style bits stood out for me because much of the game felt traditional and restrained. I crave novelty in all things, but what you’re getting here is a series of mostly predictable setpieces, each a metaphor for Large Emotions.

Brendan: Yeah, the big idea is that the fantastical and futuristic stories you’re playing through reflect some deeper trauma or problem our heroes face in real life. Mio’s troubles bleed into her cyberpunk debt story. Zoe’s childhood memories are a constant source of fantasy twee.

Nic loved these filthy animals. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Electronic Arts

Nic: The best of these set pieces give both players a different toolset and have you work together to overcome obstacles. My Ape had to stomp down flowers to clear a path for your fairy to fly through. Your cool, acid spitting, flying dragon had to melt some metal so my lame woodlouse rolling dragon could bump into the door. But a big chunk of the game just felt like a simple 3D platformer, albeit one where you’d sometimes have to stop and do nothing for a bit while your mate finished their alternative route and kicked down a ladder. Only sometimes instead of ladder you’re getting hurled across rooftops inside a portaloo.

Brendan: I think it’s a very simple game, in that you could blaze through it over a few nights with your partner or housemate, and you’d have a few laughs and nothing about your life will change but maybe that’s fine. I do not think it is a game for either of us - Warhammer McFadden and Tekken O’Hara. But I did laugh a surprising amount at the slapstick nature of many deaths. And the respawning is so forgiving, it felt about as consequential as dropping a single piece of popcorn in the cinema.

Nic: The simplicity is a good thing in theory, to keep the momentum up, but I don’t feel that simplicity needed to be expressed through so many sections that felt indistinct and interchangeable. I compared it to eating a bag of Revels - chocolate bits where you don’t know what flavour they are. The joy of Revels is discovering whether you’ve got toffee or raisin or nuclear waste or whatever when you bite into them. It’s all downhill from there because none of them are actually that tasty. Split Fiction is fun when it introduces a new, novel concept - less so when you have to laboriously chew on that idea for ten minutes before getting to the next.

As writers, these two should come up with better dialogue for themselves. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Electronic Arts

Brendan: It is definitely a novelty parade. Not only are you visiting different sci-fi and fantasy stories that Zoe and Mio have banked in their imagination (not to mention the many side stories we skipped), you’re also catapulted into distinct genres of game with alarming frequency. Look, you’re in a R-type style shmup now. No wait, a family-friendly platformer with pigs. Scratch that, now you’ve gotta blast through a multi-phase Metroid-style boss encounter. It plays with gravity-shifting, and the portals of, uh Portal. There’s a rhythm dance section with a culturally indeterminate disco monkey (he refers to you as “homey” and “habibi” in the space of two minutes). It is sometimes a very traditional third-person shooter. You once remarked there’s a definite God Of War 2 flavour to some bosses.

Nic: Repeatedly mashing a button to punch a large creature in the eye will always remind me of God Of War, yeah. There are also many sections where you swing between grapple points while things collapse around you.

Brendan: On top of this, it is full of watery references to other games and media. Easter eggs for scenes in Lord Of The Rings, Zelda’s Deku tree, the barrel blasting of Donkey Kong Country. It’s a very accessible please-as-many-dweebs-as-possible game.

Nic: Ah, The Deku tree. This was a big old-faced oak in one of Zoe’s stories. I can’t remember her name for it, but I remember Mio saying it was a “strange name for a leaf tree”. Then we spent ten minutes trying to discover if we were the idiots for not knowing what a “leaf tree” was or why someone would put those words in that order and then record them.

Brendan: Ah yes, a leaf tree. Like a fur cat. Or a rock stone. The uninspired dialogue is specifically painful to us as real writers, and the characters are poor portraits of the career. Hazelight have the get-out clause of being able to say that “these gals are diegetically bad writers” whenever something in the story is a bit crap. But the frame story is also somewhat rote, and if you’re going to make your writers poor at their craft, then why not make them canonically awful? Why not Garth Marenghi them or something? But Mio and Zoe are simply by-the-numbers scribes trapped in a by-the-numbers story (inside another by-the-numbers story).

Nic: There are definite Alan Wake by way of Mr. Men morality vibes to the whole thing. Also, I in no way co-sign Brendy’s assertion that I am a “real writer”. But yes, I think we spent a while trying to second guess the game’s intentions: Are they supposed to be bad writers? Is that part of the joke? Is it actually clever when the main villain claims he’s a good dude, and then the writers say “oh, come on, the bad guy always says he’s a good guy, what a cliche!”. Obviously if you’re going to go traipsing around a magical forest you need to learn how to forage for herbs, but maybe go easy on the deadly lampshade.

One dragon can fly and spit acid. The other is a glorified armadillo. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Electronic Arts

Story aside, I liked the bits where it was clearly taking a breather to let you screw each other in various ways. Or have a deathmatch. The parts where it winked at you: “We’re presenting this as a trust exercise but it’s actually so you can let your mate’s head bounce off the carpet and cackle about it”.

Brendan: This is another reason I like that games such as this exist, even if I’m not really into them. There was a chapter when you played as a big magical tree and suddenly had control over the whole forest environment. You could retract spikes and extend platforms. While I, as a big ape, had to navigate the hazards and carnivorous flowers of your sacred woods. It’s full of these moments in which the two players can have a playful dig at one another, with no real tension of messing up.

Anyway, I think we’ve dissected this quite a lot now. I got the feeling you were growing tired of our misadventures at a faster rate than I was. And that disparity is never a good thing when it comes to couch co-op games like this. But we both came to the agreement that, eh, it’s not our bag.

Nic: Despite my gripes, I can’t see anyone playing this with a mate or partner and coming away feeling they’d wasted the weekend. That’s as long as you’re both up for it in the first place - I doubt it’s going to convince anyone who isn’t already into Hazelight’s schtick. And it’s not like I’d say “this is a wonderful videogame and you’ll miss out if you don’t rope someone in to play it with you”. It’s a joy facilitator, rather than a joy generator. A fun bridge, not a fun spout. (Remember when you said I was a real writer?)

Brendan: I stand by it. You would never call an oak a “leaf tree”.

Nic: I believe it’s written ’leaftree’ actually.

This review is based on a review build provided by the publisher.

Find out how we conduct our reviews by reading our review policy .

Split Fiction

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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