- Tested on PS5
- Game purchased
- We finished the main adventure after 25 hours of play, in difficult mode (with minor adjustments), eclipsing the majority of secondary quests, but carrying out almost all the tests necessary to obtain equipment and skills.
- We didn't play DLC, Forspoken : In Tanta we Trust
- Home captures.
The AAAs follow each other and are similar. If it's a little less true today, it was still obvious just two years ago. With Forspoken, Square Enix left carte blanche in Luminous Productions, studio founded by Hajime Tabata and composed largely of the team at work on Final Fantasy XV, to create a new original license exclusive to Sony – before release on PC. The opportunity also to offer a technical showcase to the PS5, then freshly released. Unfortunately, the story follows: Square Enix, once again, declared himself disappointed with sales. However, this time it is difficult to wrong them. As for Luminous Productions, he was buried with his prematurely forgotten license. If we talk about it today, it's because, despite his mistakes and failures, Forspoken deserves a second chance. Because sometimes a failed spell can leave some magical dust in the air. Dust that it would be enough to seize to transform it.
Reflect in a broken diamond
The failure of Forspoken is logical given the final product. Although technically sound – without requiring life-saving patches like so many other industry titles – promises have only been partially fulfilled. Technical display for Sony's console, fine. On the other hand, everything related to the script and narrative is a matter of aberration and disappointment, fortiori if we compare with the works that the Japanese firm usually puts forward in its catalogue. The intentions were there.
From the start, the Open World was considered by the creative teams. Not to follow the trend foolishly — even if it's the impression that the game ends up giving — but to highlight the central idea of game design: le magical parkour. The latter is simply the mechanical signature of Forspoken. As its name suggests, it offers movements of great fluidity, carried by careful animations, exploiting both speed on the ground and verticality as a Parkour practitioner. Giving the player the opportunity to move with such ease and grace required vast environments.
The open world then makes sense. And let's say: in terms of travel, we have rarely felt so much pleasure. Rarely such a large playing space has been so pleasant to travel through — On foot. In fluidity, also feeling, we find an echo of magic at work in a Spider-Man, when one swings easily between buildings. The latter shines in the air while Frey is more anchored to the ground. However, there is a more or less similar flow, let us say.
The more you progress in adventure, the more capacity you unlock – including travel. For example, you get jump and speed boosts, requiring to press the race key at the right time. Seeing our character drifting at speed, chaining small leaps to propelle ever faster, according to our sense of rhythm and our timing, is gloomy. This makes movement not only fluid, but also fun: you feel an actor in each movement. In spite of some automation Killers Creed, Forspoken leaves more control to the player. The amplitude of the movements, the management of the momentum, the freedom to improvise its trajectories... all converges towards a feeling of control that is rare enough in a modern open world to be congratulated.
Mirrors Frey
Frey, the heroine, is very satisfying to take charge of. And just for that, a few hours to run without a goal are worth a visit. The soft offers some challenges focused on travel or platform sequences, but they are too rare and not ambitious enough. Yet, in these moments, we can see all the playful possibilities offered by this gameplay. Solar Ash or Atlas Fallen Although they are sympathetic with their slide mechanics, none equals the manoeuvrability and subtlety of what Luminous Productions managed to create. A purity emerges, there is something instinctive that takes shape. It is during these moments that one feels a breath of life. Frey unfolds with all her body, with all her flexibility, when the laughter plays does not support a squabble to attest to the joy experienced by the heroine usually little played.
The pitfalls do not stop there, and writing these lines reminds why the game disappoints. He disappoints because everything is present to offer a singular experience, magical to more than one title – one will come back – but everything is ruined by an alarming creative deficit and a world of unarming banality. Yeah, the open world had to exist, but why like that? Why does such a generism emerge? Forspoken It's not ugly: we find pretty panoramas, Frey's modeling is successful, but the artistic direction is soulless. The decors breathe the emptiness. The level design offers nothing stimulating, and the ancillary activities are almost non-existent. An illusion of grandeur behind which magic has been extinguished.
The world of Athia is sad and monotonous. And that's where the drama Forspoken Come on. The developers stopped presenting their game as a narrative title, relying on the script, a story to tell, a journey to live. And, for a while, we believe in it. For despite a failed scenario until its conclusion as well as a poorly rhythmized narrative, Frey's character manages to save what he can. Nothing goes into writing, proof of the many shifts during development (Gary Whitta, having worked on the script, moreover confirmed that a initial version of the script was completely rewritten). To the point that Frey's character was finally entrusted to a separate team, to try to give him more thickness, which limits the breakage.
Frey is a young New Yorker who is overwhelmed by life, without ambition, blasé and alone. When the adventure begins, the Christmas celebrations approach. Frey is isolated, in a period supposed to be that of the family. His only company is his cat, even the furniture has deserted his apartment, while the legal troubles are pulsating his daily life. Rebellive girl, angry with the world and against herself, she will find herself propelled into another universe – a fantasy world where magic is supposed to exist. There, despite her lack of spirit and insolence Frey will have to honour a role she never wanted, carry responsibilities that go beyond her, and find a meaning in a world that, paradoxically, seems to lack cruelly. On the contrary relevant musical compositions which also convoke magic The game struggles to pass on.
The other side of the mirror
What was supposed to be an initiatory journey into a magical world will ultimately not be. Forspoken has been lost in a split development: the gameplay designed by Japanese teams, and the writing entrusted to American teams. The name of Amy Hennig is also included in the generic. The facts are here: the sirens' song trapped the creators. Frey, it's a little bit Alice in Wonderland – the reference is also explicit in the game – but in a disenchanted version, a broken mirror of a tale that our time can no longer dream.
Here, no white rabbit to follow, only hollow quests and soulless landscapes. Frey, like Alice, is propelled into another world, but his has nothing wonderful. It is a kingdom emptied of its magic, a land that seems conscious of its own nothingness. Developers mentioned generative I.A. use for vegetation, but given the poverty of Athia, one wonders if it is not the entire environments that were generated by a machine without inspiration. Where Alice discovered colors and madness, Frey found nothing but dull expanses and heavy silence, an arid desert of creative intentions.
The mirror cracked. It no longer returns reflection, only emptiness. No diving into the imagination, no wonder. The beautiful collapse and efface, replaced by the monotony of a world without radiance. Forspoken could – should have – have been a Endless history, a journey to the heart of the imagination. Frey, like Atreyu, crosses broken lands in search of an evil to overcome, a mist to dissipate. But where Atreyu fought to save dream and fantasy, Forspoken shows, in spite of him, what remains when no one believes. When magic deserted the studios. When the AAA, by swallowing everything, swallows up to fantasy.
In Endless historyThe None feeds on the lack of imagination of humans. In Forspoken, it repaints itself of the lack of creativity of the creators themselves. Every plain, every ruin, every futile quest proves it: there is no dream here. So we're consoling ourselves with Frey. We run, we slide, we sneeze without purpose, just to feel a moment of grace. Frey embodies what remains of the dream: a last breath of life and madness in a frozen universe, where melodies help us to absorb the void, fill it. This is the concern of Forspoken, A game that talks about magic, but doesn't believe in his anymore.
Sister Midnight
So what's left of us? The gameplay. The disappointment is all the greater as in addition to the brilliant magical parkour, the game deploys a really interesting combat system. Imperfect, of course, but refreshing in the landscape of modern action-rpg. More oriented towards distance fighting, Frey still has sorts based on the body to body which, once unlocked, further enrich the confrontations. However, we would have liked more spells, precisely for the body to body, especially since synergies work well. Playing in difficulty makes it easier to appreciate the richness of the gameplay, the enemies then have more health and it is easier to vary attacks, to understand the subtleties of the gameplay without stuffing the keys stupidly.
To ensure the most constant pleasure, we recommend to go straight with detours to glean equipment (this goes through caps, bracelets and nail polishes) and specific skills. In doing so, one avoids scattering in a less engaging world. Let's say the terms, this open world doesn't work. The vast expanses fulfill their role by offering the space needed for the magical parkour, but the level design does not get any from it. There was a card to play. If only to energize the combat arenas, often dull and suffering from a limited bestiary and a poorly exploited weakness system. Only boss fights – more twisted, better staged – offer the adversity that we hoped and push to master a minimum his arsenal of spells and displacements.
Focusing on the main frame shortens the experience while taking full advantage of the qualities of the game. As such, in addition to the disappointment of a little engaging narrative with its disappointing narrative conclusion, the open world based on an annex quest is not consistent with the writing of Frey's character. The latter is clearly not of the kind to be interested in others. She does not allow herself to dictate her conduct, does not support authority and it is very well so. So why impose secondary quests centered on self-help or socialization? It doesn't stick with his character, nor with his narrative bow supposed to see her gradually open. What is more, knowing that as soon as Frey arrived in Athia, he was imprisoned and rejected.
The dangers of Athia should have been the catalysts of its evolution, trials forcing Frey to grow, to confront herself. Discover the dream and ambition through a magical world. In the state, everything goes on too fast, without coherence or real emotional impact. And what about Cuff, the conscious bracelet supposed to guide Frey and break his loneliness? An unbearable wordmill, more talkative than relevant, to the point that we bless developers for having included an option to make it mute – even if it says a lot. A narratively questionable choice, as well as saving everyone's mental health. Forspoken Speak a lot, but say little. Now, when the game is silent, we finally discover what is best: the silence of the wind, the race, the movement, the music, the action...
If Forspoken cumulates the defects, to the point of self-saboting, he still manages to take advantage of his strengths, especially this grey gameplay, to offer sensations that one wishes to feel more often. The game design remains clumsy, writing and narration sluggish, to remain polite, but Frey remains a success: endearing, interpreted with nature by actress Ella Balinska, and strong enough to carry the game on her shoulders. Alas, it is not the land of wonders that we pass through, but the land of the generic, the country where the imagination is extinguished. And yet, never, perhaps, to move will have provided such pleasure in such a vast world. If there is still magic here, it does not reside in the script, nor in the world, but in the movement and in the action, in this feeling of freedom proven thanks to the magical parkour. It is for this magic where we signed the pact, offering several tens of hours of our time to play. Because we wanted to believe it. Because Forspoken could have been magical. He could have pushed the formula, broken the circle of standardized AAAs. Except the teams got lost on the way. The Neant has taken possession of Athia, and the resulting experience is more than the reflection of a broken dream.
For
- Beautiful panoramas and light effects
- The magical parkour and the unique pleasure it brings
- An original and fun combat system (especially in difficulty)
- We attach ourselves to Frey's character
- Music
- Boss fights
Against
- Unsuited Narration
- Overall failed scripture
- Fade and generic artistic direction
- Open world doesn't work
- No activities or engaging quests
- Bestiary too limited
- Gameplay still underexploited
- Quickly boring experience outside the difficult fashion...
- and if you don't go straight
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