Forspoken preview - magical parkour game is wonderfully weird

It's strange, but good.

I love weird stuff. Spider-legged sharks in Junji Ito artwork, cherry pie being the enemy of electricity in Twin Peaks, and ketchup chips — yes, Canadians deep-fry potato slices, cover them in artificial tomato dust, and sell them at corner stores. Anything that yields a good belly laugh or cocked brow is good by me. 

Forspoken is pretty damn weird.

It may not seem so from a glance, though. During my hands-off preview with Forspoken, the opening was more like a CW drama than any of the aforementioned oddities. Frey Holland, the protagonist, is a New Yorker in her early 20s who wants nothing more than to get the hell out of dodge so she might get a fresh crack at life. She’s the kind of person you’d never expect to have demons since she’s such a people pleaser. Making room erupt in laughter comes naturally to her. I was immediately impressed with how startlingly human Frey’s humble beginnings are in Forspoken.

Then suddenly, Frey is doing quadruple backflips up a mountain engulfed in purple lightning in the harsh fantasy world of Athia. In this preview session, there’s no explanation as to how she got there.

That sharp tonal shift left me stunned. It was as if this was secretly a Drakengard follow-up all along. Raio Mitsuno, creative director on Forspoken, tells me that contrast is integral to the story.

“One of our core concepts when we first started this project is this idea of duality,” Mitsuno says. “We created a fantasy world filled with magic, but we want players to experience through the lens of a modern perspective. And that’s where Frey comes in. She’s a reflection of ourselves, of how we would react in this situation.”

That sentiment certainly holds up, considering Frey spends a good chunk of the time cursing like a sailor at all the otherworldly elements around her, which is precisely how I would react. You see, an evil power clings to the air in Athia, turning man and beast alike into monsters should they take enough of it in. Frey, however, is not only immune to these effects — she’s inexplicably able to wield it as a means to explore the vast open-world landscapes in Athia. Takefumi Terada, co-director of Forspoken, has a curious name for Frey’s unique talents.

“Magical parkour,” Terada says. “It allows for exhilarating, high-speed traversal through terrain. The fantasy aspect is what makes it unique. It builds on the player’s imagination when scaling a vertical cliffside or darting around. There’s a lot of additional skills that will expand on Frey’s abilities that we haven’t shown yet too.”

Straight away, it’s clear that Forspoken’s world is overflowing with ambition, arguably more so than Luminous Production’s prior effort, Final Fantasy 15. As someone who was left wanting more from that game’s curtain call, I was surprised how candid the team was about Final Fantasy 15’s less-than-glowing reception and the lengths they’ve gone to ensure Forspoken doesn’t follow a similar path.

“After Final Fantasy 15 came out, we looked at our weaknesses, and a common criticism was on the narrative end of things on that game,” Mitsuno explains. “For our next project, we wanted to have global appeal, and we thought the best way to do that is to get some creative minds from the west that have worked on so many fantastic projects of their own to write this kind of story together.”

Luminous Productions certainly spared no expense in this regard, enlisting the talents of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story co-writer Gary Whitta and the original Uncharted trilogy’s creative director Amy Hennig during pre-production. Whitta came up with Forpoken’s original narrative concept, while Hennig ensured the story complimented the gameplay. Neither Whitta nor Hennig are still actively working on Forspoken, though, as lead writing duties now fall on the shoulders of Allison Rymer (Chasing Life, Shadowhunters) and Todd Stashwick. Working with external parties was new for Luminous Productions, but Mitsuno is happy with the result.

“We’ve always worked with domestic staff, whether it’s internal or external, so working with a western team was a new thing for us,” Mitsuno says. “But having some fantastic people like Todd, Allison, and even going back to Amy Hennig and Gary Whitta — we have some amazing talent putting their thoughts and ideas into the story.”

Despite the change in who was penning the story, combat in Forspoken leaves little doubt that this is a Luminous Productions title. For example, Frey has loads of gap-closing abilities during combat that look like Final Fantasy 15’s Noctis gave her warp-strike pointers on a Sunday afternoon. The parallels are uncanny, though Terada claims it wasn’t necessarily intentional.

“So we didn’t set out to create a combat system that was a direct evolution from Final Fantasy 15,” Terada explains. “I’ve seen some comments from people noting similarities between the two games, but none of it was intentional on our part. We took a lot of care with UI designs and the general feel of the magic combat system that’s unique to Forspoken.”

That’s by no means the only bit of online speculation Luminous Productions have noticed either. The tonal contrast between reality and fantasy pervades Forspoken’s trailers, which has led to some referring to it as Final Fantasy meets Life Is Strange. Maybe it’s simply because Frey is a young girl with superpowers that drops the occasional somewhat corny one-liner, but in any case, Mitsuno isn’t quite sure what to make of the analogy.

“I wouldn’t say it’s right or wrong,” Mitsuno explains. “Obviously, with us having worked on Final Fantasy, there’s probably always going to be a connection that people make to it. But we’re carving our own path with Forspoken in terms of the tone and storyline. I think when people finally play the game, it’s going to feel fresh and not what they were expecting from our team.”

Were it not for how unapologetically bizarre Forspoken is, it likely would’ve never materialized as a blip on my radar. I’m not confident its strange tone is intentional or just the result missing context, but in any case, I think Frey’s story will be one worth checking out when it comes out for PS5 and PC on May 24, 2022. 

Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.