There’s nothing quite like a poorly constructed AAA title to get the Internet all ablaze. Setting aside the usual detritus that pegs any failed game on certain aspects which have absolutely nothing to do with anything it’s clear that something went wrong with Forspoken. Whilst I can’t clearly remember what attracted me to it in the first place I’ve been tracking it since it was originally known as Project Athia, where it looked to be the kind of fantasy action-RPG that I’m usually quite fond of. What I played however was an unoptimised mess, made no better by the massive but barren world capped off with terrible dialogue and uninteresting story. To be sure, there’s a good core game in there somewhere, but it’s hidden under so many problems that few players are ever going to find it.
Frey has always been in trouble with the law. Abandoned as a child, found in the middle of a highway no less, she bounced around the system before she escaped into the cruel world of homelessness in New York. There she made a name for herself as a small time thief, doing odd jobs here and there so she could save up enough money to get out of New York City for good. However her job caught up to her, seeing the entirety of her life going up in flames including the nest egg she’d worked so hard for. It seemed all was over until she stumbled across an elaborate cuff which, upon touching, transported her to the medieval world of Athia. Now all she’s focused on is her survival and, hopefully, finding a way home.
Forspoken has that typical, slightly lower end graphics look that all open world games tend towards. This is done for a reason of course, you’re likely going to be thrown into numerous large areas along with troves of enemies. So that part is largely forgivable as it’s quite clear that the game expects you to spend most of your time out in the very large open world. What I can’t let slide is the absolutely horrendous performance it has, routinely dropping to slideshow frame rates in all manner of places. This is even after spending quite a bit of time researching settings, tweaking things and even deliberately scaling a lot of effects down (making the game look noticeably worse) in order to try and get some semblance of a smooth experience. This unfortunately did not help at all, culminating in a steady 10 fps during a boss fight that did not let up until I was in a completely different area. The last week has apparently seen a patch come out to address these issues although that’s not going to help the rest of the problems with the game.
The tried and true open world action RPG model that Ubisoft popularised is in full swing here, giving you a giant world to explore at your leisure whilst you pursue (or don’t) the main campaign mission. You’ll level up in a kind of 2 step process, first through the usual XP system and secondly by gathering “mana” that’s scattered all around the map. You can upgrade your gear in a couple different ways and there’s also some other ancillary progression mechanics to improve your abilities through combat challenges. You can indulge yourself in the usual array of hunting down collectibles, chasing side quests and all sorts of other really meaningless tasks if you’ve really got nothing better to do with your time. If you’ve played one modern open world action-rpg in the last 5 years then you’re going to be instantly familiar with what Forspoken has to offer.
Combat, when it’s not turning to a near unplayable slideshow, is actually pretty enjoyable. Whilst I lament the use of scoring systems for combat encounters once you get the hand of the base mechanics it’s usually pretty easy to top everything out to ensure you’re getting the best loot drops possible. Some of the abilities are very satisfying to use, like your Surge ability which, when upgraded, can easily clear out an entire area of enemies in one hit. It’s clear though that some challenges are meant to be tackled later when you unlock different kinds of damage. There are a good number of mini-bosses around the place that are basically immune to your base attacks, meaning you either spend 10+ minutes fighting them for a meagre reward or simply ignore them until you come back around to it.
One thing I did appreciate was the lack of limits that are imposed on you after a certain point. It’s pretty easy to gather enough mana, stack enough challenges and certain bits of gear early on to really ramp up your damage potential beyond what’s needed. This then turns most of the challenges into a fun experience of figuring out how fast you can decimate everything in your path. This doesn’t work for enemies that are resistant to your damage type though of course which often means your feeling of being a total superhero comes to an unceremonious halt, sending you packing in the opposite direction. It’s clear that this over-progression would get much harder as the game continues on, although I honestly could not be stuffed trying to find out.
You’ll never be far away from being able to upgrade something, whether that’s a skill, spell or piece of gear. To be sure doing that is somewhat optional but the game definitely pushes you more towards exploring vast areas and gathering upgrade materials as you go. This is somewhat laborious given the sheer number of different things to engage with as you travel towards the main campaign objective, which is typically on the other side of the world to where you are. This wouldn’t be so bad if the upgrades weren’t so minimal in their impact or the loot (which is exceptionally rare) really didn’t impact the core game loop much. So whilst you might be able to ramp up your powers significantly by collecting mana the rest of the progression systems feel pretty ineffective by comparison.
In addition to the horrendous graphical performance Forspoken also comes along with a wide variety of weird glitches and strange behaviours that do their best to make your game time as laborious as it can be. Whilst the parkour mechanic is mostly well implemented, how it interacts with combat feels really hit and miss, with the same input combinations rendering completely different outcomes on screen for seemingly no reason at all. The enemy AI is also dumb as rocks, routinely falling for the usual stuck on wall/can’t hit something above it issue that I thought was a solved issue more than a decade ago. Inputs for quicktime events are also a bit mushy, often failing to connect when they feel like they should. Honestly the overall construction of the PC port just doesn’t feel like it’s up to scratch at all, needing some serious work to make it properly playable.
This isn’t helped by the game’s narrative which commits far too many of the well known storytelling sins to be considered even passable. The core story is predictable to a fault, the overarching narrative failing to pull off the reluctant hero trope it was shooting for. The interactions between NPCs in the world, between you and cuff and just the writing in general is just bad. The interactions between Frey and Cuff are especially bad which is only made worse by the fact that they’ll repeat the same lines over and over again to each other with the same flat, disdainful attitude towards each other (or perhaps the game itself?). There’s also a bunch of supposedly high emotional moments which are just simply not earned, Frey reacting in the most cliche way possible. I don’t know if I’d be able to play for longer if the story was more engaging but, suffice to say, it did absolutely nothing to keep me playing.
Forspoken might be one of those games that gets better with age but, as it stands now, I think the damage has been done. It’s an undercooked experience in almost all aspects, taking the standard open world action-rpg formula and doing nothing to make that experience more compelling. The performance issues, especially on a system as modern as mine, aren’t the kind of thing I’m going to be able to readily forgive especially when I can’t even tweak the graphics settings to alleviate it. Really I think it’s a shame as a more slimmed down, optimised, possibly more linear experience built in this world with the mechanics they put forward could actually be something worth playing. As it stands right now though I don’t think it’s worth your time as it certainly wasn’t worth mine.
Rating: 5.5/10
Forspoken is available on PC and PlayStation 5 right now for $114.95., Game was played on the PC with a total of 8 hours playtime and 26% of the achievements unlocked.
