On paper, the new PS5/PC game Forspoken sounds like quite a fun idea. The protagonist, Frey, is a modern New Yorker that gets ‘vooshed’ through a portal to the mystical land of Athia. The game drops a reference nice and early to Alice in Wonderland, and we wouldn’t be surprised if The Wizard of Oz was another inspiration for Forspoken story’s set-up.
Frey, voiced by Ella Balinska (who you might remember from the Charlie’s Angels reboot or the Resident Evil Netflix series), is a streetwise orphan who is trying and failing to keep out of trouble with criminal gangs. She just wants to escape her humdrum life, but Athia is a lot more than she bargained for, as is the mystical cuff that she is bonded with early in the plot.
This piece of ‘sassy bling’ is voiced by Jonathan Cake (Rebecca, Empire, Desperate Housewives) and it imbues Frey with magical powers right near the start of your adventure. She was already a bigger parkour expert than Michael and Dwight from The Office, and now she can dish out magical attacks as well as travelling at superhuman speed through the open-world of Athia.
As we said up top, it’s a fun little idea to kick off a game with, but we wouldn’t say that Forspoken nails much of what it’s going for. We don’t hate that set-up, but we don’t love what it leads to either. The game has a visually-impressive open world, for example, but it regularly pulls you out of it for stilted cut scenes and forced conversations that you can’t even look around during. It’s very stop-and-start, especially in the crucial opening hours.
Latest deals
The game also has a strong array of magical attacks that come in very handy during combat, but the control scheme dictates that you basically have to spam L2 and R2 in every battle — whilst constantly pressing circle to dodge — which doesn’t exactly create the feeling that you’re a master of the mystic arts. It’s more like you’re just mashing buttons and hoping for the best, which doesn’t make you look forward to the next battle.
This is a shame, because it does feel like a lot of time and effort has been put into designing your enemies, which often feel like the deranged sort of monsters and messed-up mortals that you’d expect to find in a FromSoftware game like Elden Ring. While those games make you feel like a legend, however, this one makes you feel like you’re constantly winging it and hoping for the best.
That’s not to say there aren’t some enjoyable moments that are closely tied to combat, though. There are some subterranean dungeon-like levels, where you must face room after room of opponents (in exchange for some decent loot), which feel like they could become fan-favourite sections of the game.
As fans feared from the much-maligned marketing materials (see below), the game’s dialogue also leaves quite a lot to be desired, with the script being absolutely drenched in the damp sort of ‘comedic’ dialogue that has become increasingly common in games (and movies and TV shows) in the years since Joss Whedon first assembled the Avengers. “Well, that just happened” is the sort of cringe-inducing, cliched line that would feel right at home in Forspoken.
Perhaps we’re being overly harsh, though. Although the dialogue is corny in terms of its content, you can really tell that the actors are trying their best to sell it, to make it sound like it’s coming from a place of honesty within the characters. (You could also argue that some of the humour got lost in translation, with developers Luminous Productions based in Japan.)
Frey is a motormouth New Yorker and her Cuff companion (who prefers to be called a ‘Vambrace’) is a sarcastic Brit, and somehow you do believe that these are the sort of conversations they would have. Hats off to Balinska and Cake for committing to the bit. Certainly, their characters are more bearable than they seemed when the trailer below first dropped and Twitter tore it to shreds.
A beautiful and cruel new land? Twisted monsters? An array of magical abilities? Sentient jewellery!?
— Forspoken (@Forspoken) August 8, 2022
Welcome to the world of #Forspoken. pic.twitter.com/46diiLnQ7M
That’s not the only way in which the game does well. Traversing through the world always feels fun, with the ‘magic parkour’ being a really enjoyable way to zip around the eerie landscapes of Athia. You’ll be whizzing along the ground, quickly climbing up walls and hurtling towards your next objective in style (until the game forces you into another cut scene and rips all the momentum out of itself).
There are also some surprisingly emotional beats to the story, even in the first couple of hours, which will attempt to tug on your heartstrings. Sometimes this will work, but other times it doesn’t quite feel like this level of drama has been earned by everything else. There are also a few interesting mysteries underpinning the whole thing, including the detailed backstory to Athia itself (which has been through a strange semi-apocalypse prior to Frey’s arrival).
All in all, it feels like there are some good ideas here, but the game struggles to coalesce. It is held together by a willing cast, but ultimately ends up feeling like less than the sum of its parts. Fans of open-world fantasy games may be able to forgive the flaws and have a good time, but we can’t see Forspoken breaking through to the mainstream in the way that Luminous Productions and Square Enix will be hoping for. Not exactly magical, then.
Forspoken launches 24th January for PS5 and PC. We reviewed on PS5.
Hungry for more gaming? Visit our video game release schedule, or swing by our hubs for more Gaming and Technology news.
Looking for something to watch? Check out our TV Guide or Streaming Guide.
Try Radio Times magazine today and get 12 issues for only £1 with delivery to your home — subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times View From My Sofa podcast.