FORSPOKEN IGN MOVIE
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That involves sprinting across Athia’s rocky terrain using Frey’s magic parkour skills, flipping over obstacles and eventually using a grappling whip to swing long distances, and then beating the snot out of enemies at various points of interest for new equipment and other rewards.

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The performances throughout can actually be quite good, even when the writing leans heavily into telling rather than showing – but none of it is ever very fun to listen to thanks to long, awkward pauses between lines and occasional crowd noise or background music that’s so loud it drowns out everything being said.īetween visits to Cipal, you’re generally given a target on your map and free rein to get as distracted as you’d like along the way.

I don’t think the Cipal sections would have bothered me if conversations and cutscenes didn’t have such a stilted, strangely low-budget feel to them. Combat and parkour can be fun even if they never get too deep.įorspoken is essentially split into two parts: talking to townsfolk and doing mundane side quests like feeding sheep or chasing cats in Cipal, and making your way to some specific point of interest on its absurdly large map to further the story. This dynamic never really changes, even as Frey slowly goes through the motions of her predictable hero’s journey, and it is always exhausting. Frey is surprisingly vocal about her disdain for most of the tasks Forspoken asks you to complete, and Cuff constantly belittles her for no good reason in a manner that I think is supposed to come off as friendly ribbing but instead feels like awkwardly watching a couple argue at a dinner party. That means the snippy banter between Cuff and Frey come off as obnoxious rather than endearing.

FORSPOKEN IGN MOVIE

The most egregious example of this is the chemistry between Frey and Cuff, which frames most of the campaign as a sort of buddy cop movie but spends almost no time showing these two unlikely partners grow closer after their introduction.Īctual bonding apparently happens off-screen, and this story – which is mostly told through exposition dumps between large stretches of open-world exploration – felt fairly rushed across the 15 hours it took me to beat the campaign as a result. That’s not so offensive on its own, but the real crime is how poorly the writing establishes any of its characters and the relationships between them – it’s like it constantly assumed I must already be invested in these people in a way it never actually made me. The four realms of Athia have been afflicted with a corruption that has forced its populace into the last remaining city of Cipal, and it falls on Frey and her newly imbued powers to help its citizens and face four powerful rulers called Tantas – not that she’s very interested in doing so.įorspoken’s world and story are about as bland as they come, equal parts predictable and forgettable. The newest action-RPG from Square Enix puts you in the brooding shoes of Frey Holland, a well-acted but largely unlikable New Yorker who gets pulled through a portal to the fantasy realm of Athia after accidentally becoming bonded to an equally unlikable talking armband she calls Cuff. Thankfully its energetic combat and flashy parkour movement system do keep the relatively slim campaign decently entertaining throughout, but running through its boilerplate checklist of repetitive side tasks doesn’t hold much appeal beyond mindless trophy hunting after that. If that sounds like every fantasy book you’ve ever forgotten you read, it’s probably because Forspoken is a remarkably generic RPG – from its bland story to its lifeless open world. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a down-on-their-luck orphan has their life turned upside-down when they get whisked away to a fantastical new world where they suddenly have magical powers, reluctantly rising to become the hero its people need to stop an evil threat.

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