YoIf the recent Jumanji movie reboots haven’t taught us anything else, and they haven’t, they’ve shown just how much fun it is to drop characters from our familiar world into wacky fantasy settings. Forspoken has the same potential: its protagonist, Frey, is used to the harsh realities of surviving in the scruffiest corners of Hell’s Kitchen, New York, and her problems revolve around harboring debts to petty criminals and remembering to feed her cat. She’s not your typical Final Fantasy teasing crystals.
So when Frey dons a bracelet in an abandoned tenement for reasons best not to examine too closely and is transported to the quasi-medieval world of Athia, you think to yourself: Here we go. It’s a great fish-out-of-water setup that allows for witty observations about the fantasy worlds of video games and the weird tropes within them that we usually don’t blink an eye. And with a writing team that includes Uncharted’s Amy Hennig and Rogue One co-writer Gary Whitta, expectations are high.
Forspoken has at least a little fun with that central juxtaposition, mostly through Frey’s interactions with Cuff – it turns out that the cuff is not only sentient, but quite talkative. It consistently refuses to understand the pronunciation of “New York” but proves to be a handy and portable source of exposition, explaining every new aspect of this strange land Frey has been thrown into like Alice Through the Looking Glass.
But Forspoken is far more concerned with telling you about his world and dragging you through a meat and potatoes story than he is with being meta. It’s a world with some depth, and one that has seen better days: a mysterious force known as the Break has left villages eerily abandoned and turned once kind and hard-working servants into hostile undead. Worse yet, a clan of magic-wielding matriarchs known as Tanta is running amok and they are absolutely furious that Frey is meddling in all of his domain.
Forspoken tells you all of this in the process of unfolding as an open-world action RPG with vast space to explore and all sorts of upgrade paths. And yet it’s strangely reluctant to let go of the reins and let you play in all that space. The first two hours are spent taking Frey from one scene to the next with more than just a short walk in between. And even when she’s out of the scenes and back in the world, she often freezes in place of her for a while longer so she and Cuff can carry on a conversation, while the player takes her somewhere inopportune.
The combat system is also drip-fed at such a stingy rate that when you’ve finally unlocked all the available abilities, there’s not much left to do but walk to the last boss encounter and roll the credits. Open world games can be daunting, and their many systems take time to learn. Luminous Productions seems to be trying to lessen that learning curve, but turning the entire game into a tutorial isn’t the answer. Elden Ring showed us how to teach players the rules of an open world game: let them loose and fill it with encounters they can experiment with. They’ll figure everything out because they want to, not because they’ve sat through eight hours of menus. A year after Elden Ring, Forspoken feels dated.
And that’s a shame, because if the player’s combat options were expanded sooner, they’d find the cool combos and finishers more satisfying on their own and probably have a lot more fun doing them than aiming magical peashooters at wolf gangs. Frey is capable of some powerful supernatural moves, from telekinetically throwing boulders to summoning large magical vines that whip groups of enemies into oblivion. The flow of his attacks fits well with his “magic parkour” ability, which allows him to run and somersault around the game world with golden kicks. When all of this lines up, and such moments are not uncommon, you feel very glad to have been sucked into Athia.
And then the game takes over again and simply demands that you pay attention to the next long part of the plot. It’s not just the scenes. The game design locks you in place even during what should be free play sections. One early stealth sequence, for example, pauses the action to explain that you need to stay hidden from the guards, then allows you to move within a very restricted field to the beat of the molasses dripping from the kitchen counter, before kicking out. The next. scene and considering the stealth section is complete. It’s like the game itself is wasting time; constantly sabotaging your own pace so you can load the next batch of textures and assets. A most frustrating experience.
What keeps you fighting the molasses is Frey herself; some well-drawn secondary characters, such as Robian, a dazed old man who also seems to have been sucked into Athia against her will; and the next boss on the world map to test your latest upgrades and skill unlocks. This is one aspect where Forspoken and Elden Ring seem to be aligned: both know the joy of climbing a hill and finding a massive beast with an even higher health bar. They are not going to promote the plot in any way. You could just walk away from the fight and no one would think less of you. But damn it, you’ve been given a few moments of freedom and you’re going to use it.
Too bad Luminous Productions didn’t capitalize on its best assets. Frey has received criticism for talking too much on Forspoken, but without she balinskaBy his fantastic performance, the game would be totally forgettable. Set in a parallel universe, this concept of a jaded New Yorker navigating a typical Final Fantasy universe makes for a fresh and clever adventure, but sadly until we find one of those bracelets for ourselves, we’re stuck in this world. And in this world, Forspoken is a huge missed opportunity.
