Even before the launch of Forspoken, the action role-playing game received a lot of attention because of the names associated with the project. The writing team included both Uncharted veteran Amy Hennig and Star Wars: Rogue One writer Gary Whitta, but as the latter recently revealed, he contributed very little to the final product.
In a recent episode of Video Game Writing 101 — a podcast by Alanah Pearce of Sony Santa Monica — Whitta said he was only involved in the initial round of brainstorming.
Alanah Pearce talks to Gary Whitta in her latest podcast episode.
– Square came to me 5-6 years ago and said “We have an idea, but it’s just a simple concept. Can you help us build up the world, the mythology and the story?”. So I concocted some ideas that I presented and they liked them.
Whitta then took the lead on a multi-writer room, and together they concocted things like the game’s backstory and how magic works. Through this process the name of the game’s world – Athia – came about, but beyond this little remains of Whitta’s contribution.
A few months later, Square returned with plans for a completely new story. This time the plan was for the main character to be a young girl who is drawn into a fantasy world – which became the final story in Forspoken.
– The version we made was not like that at all, explained Whitta.
As the author was busy with other projects, he had to decline to continue. Hennig then came in for a period, but based on her place in the game’s scrolling text, she was not central to the work on story and dialogue either.
Hennig is credited for his work on the story concept, while Whitta is credited for the game’s original concept. Allison Rymer and Todd Stashwick were responsible for the main work on the story and script.
The story itself received a lot of criticism in our review of Forspoken. Writer Andreas Bjørnbekk reported, among other things, an awkward dialogue, which is only saved by a fantastic voice acting.
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