Forspoken - Review
Forspoken was a game that had marketing and video clips shown during Sony Playstation’s launch announcements. And though it wasn’t necessarily a featured game such as Miles Morales and Returnal, footage of its visuals and gameplay were used countless times until its release. With the amount of marketing and exposure used for the game, did it meet everyone’s expectations?
Luminous Production’s Open-world Action RPG follows New Yorker protagonist Alfre Holland, Frey for short, who finds a talking Vambrace she nicknames Cuff, and is transported to another world named Athia, where magic rules. Through its witty conversations and dialogue, Frey and Cuff travel the lands of Athia in order to find a way back home, while encountering the four warlords that rule this world. We’ve definitely seen similar stories through films and games throughout the years, and on paper, it all sounds great. In fact, Stargate had a very similar storyline. However, where it differentiates is in the execution of characters, dialogues, and in this case, gameplay.
You’d think that these days, most people who have a current gen console have at least played a handful of games and have a rough sense of what buttons are used for jump, run and so on, making them familiar with a generic button layout. Forspoken treats its players as though it’s their first time holding a controller, feeling as though it's constantly hand holding you which could come across a little frustrating as it stops the flow of actually playing the game, and is disruptive. The game constantly pauses to explain every little detail it’s doing such as what way points are, where they are, and even to the point where it’ll ask you if you’d like to save the game, opposed to the standard autosave in the background without disrupting you. You’d think that this is something that’s only added early into the game, but even past the halfway point of the story, it still treats players as though they’ve only just started the game.
Side quests known as Detours feel very basic in that the puzzles are quite easy to solve, which accentuates that this game feels like it’s been slapped on with very little thought. Another example of a Detour are quests to chase a cat, which in no way is difficult by any means, earning you a collectible ‘Poppet’. These cat-centric side quests are littered across the main city and feel more of a chore than a quest itself. So much that following the little feline Frey is fond of takes very little effort that you don’t even have to run hard.
As per any type of action RPG, you collate an arsenal of offensive, defensive and support spells. You initially start with the ability to ‘move objects with your mind’, known as Frey’s (purple) magic, and in this case it’s throwing rocks (and its variations) at enemies which slowly chip away at their HP. And as expected, the abilities you have in the start are quite weak but upgradable. As previously mentioned, along Frey’s journey you learn other forms of magic such as red and blue just to name a couple. However, Forspoken’s pacing on when you gain those other magic and spell abilities are a good seven (or more) hours into the game, being roughly halfway through the game. This makes it quite flat and boring as it doesn’t give players a taste of what’s to come to motivate your goal to gain more magic in a timely paced manner. In fact, it almost feels as though the ability progression is more of an afterthought.
To complete things, alongside the lack of magic in the first half of the game, players will have to deal with what feels like basic and sluggish character movement, complete with a massive turning circle. This makes it feel like you’re controlling a little tank, or a boat as you traverse across the lands of Athia, or playing the original Resident Evil. Sprinkle that with a little addition of extra ‘cool’ animation when Frey dodges or parkours over obstacles makes controlling Frey feel a little automated with a lack of finesse. And yes, the animations and effects of magic do look pretty good, but unfortunately becomes a bit of an annoyance when you’re just trying to get on with it.
The animations itself unfortunately doesn’t meet the expectations of what the PlayStation 5, something that you would now call current gen, is capable of. Though it’s not necessarily terrible and some animated cutscenes look fine, the organic movement of humans comes across extremely stiff and rigid. This is a real pity as there were glimpses of animation and video shown on Sony PlayStation 5’s announcement and launch. For something that was featured for a launch of a console, you’d expect the visuals to be at top tier. Not only that, but due to the fact that it’s poorly optimised to try and keep up with their supposed fantastic graphics, load times are littered through the game, even when nothing has changed on-screen. And sure, it may be only 2-3 seconds where the game freezes, but to the point where even a very short amount of load time is felt.
On a more positive note, when the land of Athia opens up, it does look epic. The vast distances, and variation in terrain gives you a feeling of wanting to explore and run through the lands… something we saw in the many PlayStation 5 launch videos.
Lastly, though the banter between Frey and Cuff can be quite funny at times, the overall dialogue feels forced to the point where it comes across very cringy. Not only that, but the amount of forced explicit language used makes it feel as though the developer are purposely trying to force feed the audience to underline that they’re trying to be edgy, which is a real shame. On one hand, there are moments that are very fun which you look forward to exploring (game and dialogue wise), the moment after feels like a cringe-fest.
Forspoken really has done everything right on paper, which makes you feel like you really want to like the game. It has all the traits of a decent action RPG of a protagonist that’s not in her element, has the vast opportunity to explore an open-world land, and a variety of skills and options you can upgrade. Unfortunately where it falls short is in its execution, it lacks a real sense of engagement and there’s nothing really motivating you to want to keep playing or find out more as far as narrative and dialogue goes. There are moments in the game where the cutscenes actually look decent, unfortunately for the most part, the rest doesn’t quite hit the spot for a current gen game.
Forspoken is an open world game that doesn’t really feel like an open world game, due to pretty constant interruptions, like random load times, instructional prompts, or information forced onto players, which combine to ruin the flow and immersion. There is also a lack of cohesion to the game, from magic systems to movement, which are likely the result of countless changes in the games direction during development. For a game that was featured alongside the debut of the PlayStation 5, the end result is a little bit of a letdown. One could argue that the amount of attention since its reveal to its release, gave the game some pretty lofty expectations to hit and that it was always going to miss. All we can say is that your millage is going to vary on this, but for now we have (for)spoken.
The Score
4.0
Review code provided by Square Enix
The Pros
+The open lands of Athia looks vast and fantastic
+Visual effects of magic looks good
+A classic fish out of water hero in a foreign land narrative
The Cons
-You don’t expand your magic abilities until halfway through the game
-Dialogue comes across forced and cringy
-Controls feels lazily put together, sluggish and somewhat automated
