If the recent Jumanji film reboots have taught us nothing else – and they haven’t – they have demonstrated how much fun there is to be had with dropping characters from our familiar world into outlandish fantasy settings. Forspoken has the same potential: its protagonist Frey is accustomed to the harsh realities of surviving in the scruffier corners of Hell’s Kitchen, New York, and her problems gravitate around harbouring debts to petty criminals and remembering to feed her cat. She’s not your typical crystal-bothering Final Fantasy type.
So when Frey puts on a bracelet in an abandoned tenement for reasons best not examined too closely and she’s transported into the quasi-medieval world of Athia, you think to yourself: here we go. It’s a great fish-out-of-water setup that allows for witty observations about video game fantasy worlds and the bizarre tropes within them that we generally don’t bat an eyelash at. And with a writing team including Uncharted’s Amy Hennig and Rogue One co-writer Gary Whitta, expectations are pitched high.
Forspoken does have at least some fun with that central juxtaposition, primarily through Frey’s interactions with Cuff – it turns out that bracelet is not only sentient, but quite chatty. He consistently refuses to grasp the pronunciation of “New York”, but proves a handy wearable source of exposition, explaining every new aspect of this strange land Frey’s been flung into like Alice through the looking glass.
But Forspoken is much more concerned with telling you about its world and dragging you through a meat-and-potatoes storyline than it is with being meta. It’s a world with some depth, and one that’s seen better days – a mysterious force known as the Break has left villages eerily abandoned and turned previously friendly, hardworking serfs into hostile undead. Worse, a clan of magic-wielding matriarchs known as the Tanta are running amok and they’re absolutely livid that Frey’s interloping all over their domain.
Forspoken tells you all of this in the process of unfurling itself as an open-world action-RPG with a vast space to explore and all sorts of upgrade paths. And yet, it’s oddly reluctant to let go of the reins and let you play around in all that space. The opening two hours are spent handing Frey off from one cutscene to the next with precious more than a brief walk in between. And even when she’s out of cutscenes and back in the world, she’s often frozen in place for a while longer so that she and Cuff can hold a conversation, while the player wanders her off somewhere inopportune.
The combat system, too, is drip-fed at such a stingy pace that by the time you’ve finally unlocked all the available abilities, there’s not much left to do but walk to the last boss encounter and cue the credits. Open-world games can be daunting and their many systems take time to learn. Luminous Productions seems to be trying to lessen that learning curve, but turning the whole game into a tutorial isn’t the answer. Elden Ring showed us how to teach players an open-world game’s rules: let them loose in it, and fill it with encounters they can experiment with. They’ll figure everything out because they want to, not because they’ve sat through eight hours of menus. A year after Elden Ring, Forspoken feels outmoded.
And that’s a shame, because if the player’s combat options were expanded earlier on they’d find the cool combos and most satisfying finishers for themselves and probably have much more fun doing so than aiming a magic peashooter at gangs of wolves. Frey is capable of some potent supernatural moves, from telekinetic rock-hurling to summoning great magical vines that whip groups of enemies into oblivion. The flow of her attacks meshes well with her “magic parkour” ability, which allows her to sprint and somersault through the whole game world on gilded kicks. When all of this lines up, and those moments aren’t infrequent, you feel quite glad to have been sucked into Athia.
And then the game takes over again and simply demands that you pay attention to the next lengthy chunk of plot. It isn’t just the cutscenes. The game’s design pins you in place even during what should be freewheeling gameplay sections. An early stealth sequence, for example, pauses the action to explain to you that you should remain hidden from the guards, then allows you to move within a very restricted field at the pace of molasses dripping off a kitchen counter, before kicking in the next cutscene and considering that stealth section complete. It’s as though the game itself is stalling for time; constantly sabotaging its own pacing so it can load in the next batch of textures and assets. A most frustrating experience.
What keeps you battling through the treacle are Frey herself; some well-drawn secondary characters such as Robian, a befuddled old man who also seems to have been sucked into Athia against his will; and the next boss on the world map to test your latest upgrades and skill unlocks on. This is an aspect in which Forspoken and Elden Ring do seem to be aligned – both know the pleasure of cresting a hill and finding an enormous beast with an even bigger health bar. They’re not going to further the plot in any way. You could just walk away from the fight and nobody would think less of you. But damn it, you’ve been given a few moments of freedom and you’re going to use them.
What a shame that Luminous Productions didn’t capitalise on its best assets. Frey’s taken some heat for being overly chatty in Forspoken, but without Ella Balinska’s fantastic performance, the game would be totally forgettable. In a parallel universe, this concept of a jaded New Yorker navigating a typical Final Fantasy-like universe makes for a fresh and witty adventure, but sadly until we find one of those bracelets for ourselves we’re stuck in this world. And in this world, Forspoken’s a grand missed opportunity.
• Forspoken is out now, £64.99
