Who are Mio and Zoe?

February 13, 2025

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. In A Way Out, you take control of Leo Caruso and Vincent Moretti, an unlikely duo who team up to escape from prison. Meanwhile in It Takes Two, you play as married couple May and Cody Goodwin, trying to save them from a seemingly inevitable divorce.

Mio and Zoe stand on either side of a white bubble. They are in an industrial area surrounded by rusted metal and sand, with a neon sign in the background.

Hazelight Studios are keeping that trend up as they introduce two brand new player characters in Split Fiction. You will take control of two unpublished authors, Mio and Zoe, who you will quickly find are worlds apart!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 going to dive 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.

The name "Mio" is present in large lettering on the left, and on the right is a black-haired girl in a futuristic looking sci-fi suit, complete with pink neon lights. On her back, she reaches for a sword of a similar style.

Zoe Foster - Fantasy Author

Charismatic. Empathetic. Optimist. Extrovert.

A cheerful country 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, wield a mythical sword whilst riding a dragon into a battle of the ages, or soar between floating islands with a magical kite.

The name "Zoe" is present in large lettering on the left, on the right is a blonde haired girl wearing fantasy-styled garb adorned with golden accessories. On her shoulder perches a young baby dragon.

As our characters are clearly such polar opposite personalities, they will have to come to terms with their differences, uncover hidden secrets about themselves, and realise that in order to escape the simulations they find themselves trapped in, they will have to 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! Eagle eyed viewers may have spotted some behind the scenes motion capture featuring the actresses in action, with Kaja Chan playing Mio and Elsie Bennett playing the role of Zoe. In case you missed that, you can view the This is Hazelight studio tour video posted on social media here!

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…?

Mio and Zoe stand on a neon-bathed rooftop in the rain, with their arms raised as if to surrender.

The Friends Pass

Like A Way Out and It Takes Two, Hazelight Studios’ staple feature, The Friend’s Pass*, returns again, allowing one player that 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 PlayStation, Xbox, and PC (via Steam).

Join the Discord!

If all that has got you excited to learn more about Split Fiction, we recommend joining the Hazelight Discord to discuss all things Split Fiction! Make sure to follow Hazelight on both X and Instagram to see more aspects of the game showcased ahead of launch.

You can also check out our previous blog post where we introduced Split Fiction's Side Stories here.

Split Fiction is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on March 6th, 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.