Square Enix’ next-gen action-RPG Forspoken has been haunting the release lists for quite a while. Originally scheduled for May and then October 2022, the adventure with parkour and magic is finally due to be released on January 24, 2023 for PC and PS5. But even apart from the shifts, many players have encountered the title with mixed feelings so far: While the Isekai setting, in which the New Yorker Frey Holland ends up in a fantasy world for unknown reasons, comes across as fresh and unused, the resulting dialogues are not everyone’s business. The gameplay demo recently released for PS5 also received some criticism.
Accordingly, we started our journey to the big preview event in Hamburg with a healthy dose of skepticism. After we were allowed to fight our way through the first chapters of the role-playing game for a full three hours, we realize: some open questions still remain unanswered, but we are a bit more optimistic about the release!
The premise: takes some getting used to, but charming
Our gameplay demo begins in the second chapter of the game, so we haven’t seen exactly how Frey gets from New York to Athia. A look at the codex menu reveals a few details about the background story: Frey, whose real name is “Alfre”, was abandoned as a baby in New York’s Holland Tunnel. Until she was an adult, she stayed with various foster families.
Shortly before her trip to Athia, she is then hired by a gang to commit a robbery, but it goes wrong. When Frey flees from the gangsters, they carry out an arson attack on her apartment. Homeless and penniless, the young woman goes to the Holland Tunnel and finds her future sidekick there, a glittering bracelet that apparently brings her straight to Athia.
Forspoken
Source: PC Games
This band, who keeps emphasizing that he likes “arm mountains” (no, we had never heard the term either), then gradually tells us what is actually going wrong in this kingdom. A catastrophe called “The Fracture” not only turned entire areas into death zones, but also people and animals to monsters.The formerly worshiped matriarchs of Athias, the tantas, have gone mad and are terrorizing the people who are imprisoned in the last intact city.
Frey is visibly overwhelmed by all this, but she doesn’t lose her loose mouth – at least the smug comments of the bracelet and the hostile behavior of Athia’s authorities give her enough reasons to swear. It is noticeable that even if some sayings seem a bit forced and the whole thing is not free of eye-rolling moments, the German speakers can be heard overall. After a short time we kind of took a liking to Frey and den Reif, also or precisely because the game likes to get a little cheesy from time to time.
It also helps that the character models are visually convincing. Frey’s detailed face shows her emotions clearly and the designers did a good job with the supporting characters as well. Standard NPCs, on the other hand, follow the JRPG cliché and move more like robots. But before we even meet other people, we have to escape from the starting zone, where we are taught the basics of gameplay.
