Even to this day, developer Starbreeze Studios’ 2013 classic Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is fondly remembered. This adventure puzzler was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 just months before the next console generation, and packed a real emotional punch for those that caught it. Jump forward eleven years and we have a new remake for a new generation on PS5, Series X and Series S – so how does it hold up on new platforms, including the less powerful Series S, across both performance and quality modes?
In terms of its tech, this is a significant remake: the original game’s Unreal Engine 3 is jettisoned for Unreal Engine 5, with Milan-based studio Avantgarden putting in serious work to re-imagine every environment with vastly improved detail via the engine’s Nanite and Lumen technologies. Beyond improved visuals, the release also includes new cutscenes, tweaked controls and adjustments to difficulty. Even its soundtrack was re-recorded from scratch, with original composer Gustaf Grefberg returning to the project.
Despite all of those changes though, it’s a relief to find that great care has been taken to stick closely to the original’s core gameplay design and story. From the main menu design to the physics for its puzzles, the game logic running underneath is often identical. As before, you take control of two brothers simultaneously in a top-down view, with one brother on the left analogue stick and the other on the right. The goal is to navigate an eerie, beautiful fantasy world – full of trolls, wolves and sentient trees – in a quest to find a cure for their dying father.
