Released Date: January 24th, 2023
Developed by: Luminous Productions
Published by: Square Enix
Available on: PlayStation 5 & PC
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
The video gaming internet can be a cruel place at times, and no release in recent times knows this more than Forspoken. If you happen to have read or listened to various Twitter or podcast accounts in the last ten days, from people who haven’t, and won’t play Forspoken, you can be forgiven for thinking this game is trash, and an easy pass.
Playing as protagonist Alfre, or Fray as she’s known, the story of Forspoken is as predictable as you can probably imagine. Orphan, down on her luck, in trouble with the law, homeless, on the brink of suicide (literally). Forspoken is a redemption story of such, from zero to hero, your unfortunate protagonist grows and battles all her obstacles to become that hero she was always destined to be. It really is that predictable and tropey.
Frey is thrust into her new world, Athia, a fantasy world riddled with The Break, a curse if you will, where humans and animals have become zombie-fied and are on the hunt for blood. Complete with your new sidekick Cuff, you are thrown in the middle of this world, armed with new magic powers you can move with your freakin’ mind and eccentric parkour moves.
The world of Athia, from a gamer perspective, has two sides to it. There is the capital city Cipal, and the rest of the world you can parkour your way around. Cipal is bland and ugly, really ugly, textures are off, people are static and lifeless, it’s quite extraordinary at times this is a current-gen only game, no PS4 to blame… If you’ve played Horizon Forbidden West, you’ll remember how alive the towns felt. Forspoken has none of that: people are literally just standing still, all day every day.
Interacting with people is as bland as the walls and textures: motion capture was apparently used, but you’d be amazed to know where. Lip syncing is out, expressions are wooden and faces at times just look off – unfinished almost. Ending conversations with NPCs is equally as frustrating: the screen fading to black every time a conversation starts and ends means you lose the immersion. When conversations with NPCs end, and Frey and Cuff reflect on that between them, you can’t walk and talk so you have to stand on the spot, waiting for it to finish. You can thus add poor pacing to some of the negatives.
Outside of the walls of Cipal however, a lot changes. Landscapes become lucious and beautiful and suddenly you are reminded you are playing a PS5 game. But those vibrant colours and fidelity sadly drop when in heavy combat scenarios, as does our 60 fps performance. Numerous times I had to face heavy drops in performance when in big battles, especially when throwing eccentric magic spells filling the screen.
Luminous Productions have filled this outside world with locations and collectibles. If you’ve played Assassins Creed Odyssey, then Forspoken is the fantasy version of it. Area after area, tower after tower, town after town – at times it seems like it will never end. For some people, they will love this. It’s full of content giving you your money’s worth. For others it’s a slog, and bloat, and for the Platinum Hunters it will absolutely feel like a major grind. Traversing around the world however, won’t be. The magic parkour system is absolutely fantastic and extremely enjoyable, to the point I often didn’t mind going from location to location around a section of the map, because of its fun nature. I rolled the credits at 32 hours, and I still had around half the locations and collectibles to visit. Should I want to pursue that all important Platinum Trophy, I estimate a grindy 20 hours ahead of me…
The strength of Forspoken is undoubtedly its combat system. The combat system is split into two types: your left triggers are support magic and right triggers are offensive, and both can be used at the same time. Within those magics, you can have up to ten support magics and four offensive: you can literally cycle through each one, creating devastating combos.
At the beginning of the game you only have one magic type, an earth type. I found the start enjoyable once I got into the flow of magic: I could for example bind an enemy down to the ground, leach a seed into the enemy damaging it over time, have a flower type turret attacking it, and then use my offensive magic to launch rocks to devastating affect. Four attacks all being used within seconds together – it really is fun, no doubt about it.
The downside however is that you are limited to this magic until the first story boss. Once you beat said boss you unlock the second string of magic, Red Magic, ie Fire. And this is where the combat excels. Throwing up a wall of fire circling your position, launching a fireball into the feet of an enemy, casting two demonic fire legionnaires to aid you in battle and then using an offensive melee fire swords to engulf your screen in a fiery hell is some of the most rewarding combat I have played. It truly is THAT good.
Using this Red Magic means you do need to change your tactics slightly: where the earth magic was based on range rock throwing combat, Red is all about close up melee. It’s fun, but the enemies hit hard, and when surrounded by many you can quickly become consumed – and then you’re in trouble. That magic parkour comes in very handy to dodge and weave your way out of trouble, avoiding purple and red enemy attack cues.
There are many enemy types, however they do repeat as the game goes on. What fifteen types there are just suddenly look different and get harder to kill, nothing all that uncommon. You will be challenged, and have to think tactically. Walking into an enemy area could have you facing three or more enemy types, each of which could be vulnerable to a different magic type. Where fire works on a soft enemy type, it won’t work on a hard-as-nails ogre, he may need to be electrocuted, for example. Cycling through your magic spells, within a battle, again creating further combos and variety, makes up for any lack of enemy type – it always means battles are fresh and varied and require tactical thinking as opposed to button mashing and spamming the same spell over and over.
The game rewards you heavily with some solid RPG mechanics. Spells, of which there are over one hundred in total, can be upgraded by completing various tasks using them. You have a cloak and necklace equipment which have varying degrees of strength, defence and magical power – these can also be upgraded with three slots each to add different buffs to. Lastly you also have nail equipment, basically allowing you to use different sets of nail polish on each hand, giving various boons and buffs to your build.
The most controversial aspect of Forspoken going into it was the dialogue. Numerous comments and videos taking shots at small aspects (often out of context) of dialogue some found cringey really put this game into a bad light before even beginning. Myself, personally, seeing those videos BEFORE playing, I found myself thinking, “and?”. I didn’t get the negativity beforehand, and after playing I certainly don’t now.
One of the common lols at Forspoken’s expense, I quoted above, was the scene where Frey discovers she has magic powers and excitedly says: “I just moved shit with my freakin’ mind…!!!”. I challenge anyone to write a small script for this scene: a 21 year old girl, from New York, who moments ago was considering suicide, suddenly gains the power of magic. Write something better to convey the excitement in that moment, prove me wrong…
Frey and Cuff communicate with each other frequently, sometimes too frequently, but it’s something that’s also become a victim of internet lols. Bantering with each other, the humour is no different to every buddy cop movie you’ve watched since the 80s – Lethal Weapon comes to mind. Trust me when I say, this dialogue is absolutely fine, and it’s also funny at times, there is nothing untoward about it at all. Frey constantly making comments during battles, conveying excitement, can get repetitive and grating for sure, but if you’ve played 2018’s Spider-Man, then it’s no better or worse, so do keep that in mind if you’re going to take shots at it…
CONCLUSION
Sadly, Forspoken never lived up to the Project Athia hype many of us had, its lacklustre story and poor fidelity saw to that. But this is a good game, and it’s fun and rewarding once you’ve unlocked those second, third and fourth magic sources. Current Metacritic scores absolutely do not do this game justice, neither did the poor demo, and your buying decision should not be reflected because of it. I firmly believe Forspoken will in time be given the Days Gone treatment, people who once sneered will be changing their tune. But like any proposed Day’s Gone sequel, I see Forspoken suffering the same fate…
-Dony
