Screenwriter Gary Whitta (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), responsible for Forspoken’s original concept with Amy Hennig (Uncharted), reveals that the game’s story was radically different.
The weakness of the writing and the screenplay are criticisms that often come up when talking about Forspoken. And according to one of the project’s masterminds, the final version is unrecognizable.
The original Forspoken storyline was scrapped
An artistic project like a game is bound to evolve constantly over the course of its design, with certain things abandoned along the way because they are ultimately useless, non-functional, inappropriate with the rest, etc. And in the case of Forspoken, this is the story that has been severely reworked and even completely rebooted according to Gary Whitta. A Hollywood screenwriter (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The book of Eli ) which was drafted, with Amy Hennig (Uncharted), to develop the concept of the game based on a “germ of idea”.
From there, a scenario was born with the support of Todd Stashwick (Malcom, 12 Monkeys…) as well as Allison Rymer (the series Shadowhunters), but nothing remains. At some point in development, Square Enix indeed made the decision to reboot the story and wanted Whitta to oversee the new pitch that will ultimately be the one retained in the final version. He declined, for lack of a schedule, but in any case, he affirms that his scenario had nothing to do. Better or worse? He is careful not to provide any details.
A few months later they came back to me and one of the writers saying “we are going to rewrite history from scratch, and we want it to be like this now”. And what they presented to us was very close to the final version, namely a girl from the real world who finds herself sucked into a fantasy world. Our script had nothing to do with it.
Via Alannah Pearce (And PSU).
The developers are not giving up
Despite the generally cold feedback, the developers are keen to correct what can be corrected and are already planning several updates. The next patch will include improvements to performance, graphics, and gameplay, among other things. But in terms of the story, the dialogues and the narration, we will have to deal with the defects noted.
