Judging from all the teaser videos released so far, Forspoken is promising a swathe of visually stunning elemental spells and a heroine that can dash, glide and traverse a fantasy world quicker than any Assassin’s Creed protagonist.
But aside from magic parkour, what else is Forspoken’s Frey Holland capable of? How is the rest of the game shaping up?
At a hands-off briefing, Square Enix offered a closer look at the characters, world-building and capabilities of the bangle-wielding Frey, who fell through a magical portal from New York to the land of Athia. We also got to see a lot more of the battle systems and spells you’ll be able to wield, all running on an early version of the game.
This is the first title from Square Enix’s new studio, Luminous Productions. Forspoken runs on the studio’s proprietary graphics engine, Luminous Engine. A streamed video call on Zoom isn’t the best place to marvel at graphics, but judging from the higher-resolution trailers, there seems to be a focus on fluidity. And flinging around a lot of spells.
Beyond elemental attacks of varying scales, magical powers include the aforementioned magic parkour, where the hero can dash at speed, jump again mid-air, dodge attacks and more. Running on the studio’s proprietary Luminous Engine, the team is aiming to run the game at 2K 60 FPS and 4K 30 FPS, with ray-tracing graphical options too.
The new studio is taking different approaches to the story, too. Instead of in-house writers, Luminous Productions tapped Allison Rymer (who wrote for the TV series Shadowhunters) and Todd Stashwick as lead writers. The development team, which had last worked on the divisive Final Fantasy XV, said they were looking to create a game with more “universal appeal”, promising a narrative-led action-adventure RPG. However, judging by this early look, Forspoken may not stray too far from the video-game trope of messianic-outsider-saves-mystical-lands.
There is a focus on both the female lead, voiced and mo-capped by actor Ella Balinsk, and several female antagonists – mad sorceresses called Tantas. The world of Athia has a matriarchal society, ensuring, rightly, that the most important players are women. Still, the preview didn’t really help us get much of a bead on where the story of Forspoken will take Frey. The team is also promising post-launch DLC content, called In Tanta We Trust, which will function as a prequel to the main title.
We do know that encroaching darkness has trapped what’s left of humanity within the walls of a single city, Cipaul. The rest of the world is now covered in this sinister fog, “The Break”, that warps and absorbs life.
