Forspoken is a lot more fun than I expected. It’s arguable its marketing campaign so far has actually done Forspoken a disservice by focusing on campy dialogue instead of what it’s doing best. Forspoken is actually an RPG lite with a very heavy emphasis on big, bombastic combat sequences that have an optional bonus challenge for try-hards like myself in a Devil May Cry-like combat rating system. Because of this misdirection, Forspoken surprised me with this focus on combat, roaming bosses to challenge, and a map filled with objectives to complete. I finished my demo excited to get better ratings in fights, and to see how this all ties into lead character Frey’s experiences in her fish out of water story. Forspoken PreviewThe majority of this demo was focused around world exploration, controls, and combat. However, the little bit of banter we got between Cuff and Frey did give some insight as to how the dynamic between Forspoken’s star and her magical, talking bracelet will work. Cuff will often give you the details about a person, place, or thing, while Frey continues playing her role as an unacquainted stranger asking a plethora of questions. Nothing seemed particularly forced or campy, which you’d think would be oozing out of every corner given how the team was lambasted on social media for their marketing campaign. So I was especially glad to not find any grating filler conversations as the two explored the world. The only hint of worry was when I heard Frey would spew out the same string of cuss words for the third time as things got heated during combat. Repetitive dialogue is never fun unless you’re laughing at it; isn’t that right, Mass Effect “I will destroy you” person?The majority of this demo was focused around world exploration, controls, and combat.“Otherwise, the world we explored was quite interesting. The entirety of the plot focuses around planet Athia and an event known as “The Break”, which has transformed animals into beasts, the dead into zombies, and introduced magic-bearing Tantas onto the playing field. The latter were sent by a mysterious character known as Prav, who we don’t learn much about besides some flavor text in the menus. What we do know is Prav is able to send Unjust Enforcers and a Pitless Arbiter mini-boss after Frey. This all took place during one of the five missions in our build, all focused on teaching usForspoken’s core mechanics.And that’s what the majority of this demo was for. The amount of combat options are a bit staggering at first. With over 100+ magical abilities to choose from it might be a tad overwhelming to be confronted with this many all at once. Thankfully, the 22 we had were split into two sets, Frey’s magic and Sila’s magic, and you could swap between them easily by pressing right or left on the d-pad. Additionally, to give you more time to plan each attack you can set your gameplay options to make your ability swaps on the radial user interface to either slow time, stop time entirely, or do nothing once you’ve become accustomed to the system and can knock out some nutty combinations with ease.With over 100+ magical abilities to choose from it might be a tad overwhelming“We didn’t have all 100+ magical abilities at our disposal, but the 22 abilities we did juggle were varied and interesting. This included two Surge abilities, aka your super moves, six main attacks, which are your go-to punchey or shootey moves, and 14 sub or support attacks – one-time magic abilities that enter a cooldown period after use. That sounds like a lot, but again it’s split into two separate types of magic: Frey’s magic, which is a bit more defensive and bind-based, and Sila’s magic, which is a bit more of an in-your-face-set-everything-on-fire style. Frey’s magic includes three main attacks – Burst Shot, Shield Shot, or Scatter Shot – which are typical projectile abilities that send various rock-type things outward to shoot things from a distance. Of course, all these main abilities can be charged to shoot larger projectiles, but we’re also left vulnerable during that time. The secondary attacks are support based so we’ll use things like Bind to tie up opponents, Leach to summon poison-curing plants, Screen to summon stones around Freyas a rock shield, Disperse and Implant to create plant turrets to auto attack, or Prime to lay a magic trap that will blow up should someone step onto it. The Surge ability, Genesis, creates a massive spike of roots from the ground that ensnares and damages anything caught within.Sila’s magic was by far my preferred method of approaching combat. The three main attacks that involve fire are Arc Slice and Blast Slice which give Frey a huge fire lance, or Rage Slice, which allows Frey’s fiery fists to become the weapon. Fire just makes everything a bit more fun. Even Sila’s sub-abilities are incredibly powerful. Charge sends Freydive kicking at top speed into an opponent’s face, pushing them back and damaging them at the same time. Bombardier does the same, but also triggers an explosion that does area-of-effect damage. Firetrap creates a lava bubble to burn away at anything stepping inside of it. There are also some less outright aggressive options here, like Aegis that cancels out an enemy attack or eliminates defense-reducing spells applied to Frey. Legion summons fire soldiers to attack for us, and my personal favorite Crucible will engulf a circular area in flames and allow Frey to do more attack damage to anything captured within. Combine that with the incredibly powerful Conflagration, which engulfs anything in front of Frey in a massive wave of fire, and the chances of walking away from most encounters victorious are strong.Both Frey and Sila’s magic also benefit from parkour abilities, offering additional options if airborne. As the parkour elements are separate we can also use the Spider-Man-style web-zip ability to get up close and personal should we need to, or simply dodge to the left or right and avoid an attack. Stacking all of this together started to be a lot of fun as I was constantly adding a new fire soldier or rock spewing turret onto the battlefield while engulfing everything in flames and staying agile as I moved quickly from combatant to combatant. Both Frey and Sila’s magic also benefit from parkour abilities“And all of this is combined with a combat rating that is constantly judging how well, or how poorly, we’ve been doing the entire time. I will admit I became obsessed with figuring out how to improve my score as that letter D lingered far longer than I liked, but looking at the gameplay provided for this piece and the assets Square Enix has released online that seems to be common. I’d be curious to see if the team adjusts that, or make the ways to score points clearer in the future because with all these abilities I’d love to see what a Frey S-tier combo looks like, hoping it would make even Dante from Devil May Cry blush.I was able to ask Forspoken co-director Takefumi Terada a bit more about how to improve my combat score and he hinted that using Frey’s parkour abilities would play a key part, but also combining those with all of the magic abilities when doing damage is key – especially when it comes to using the specific ability that preys upon an enemy’s weakness while looking as cool as possible doing it. Seems a bit obvious, of course, but as someone who obsesses over doing amazing-looking combos in games like Forspoken, I think it’ll help me improve when I’m able to play for a bit longer than our one-hour session.In addition to all of the combat elements, I was surprised by the amount of gear that can be added to Frey, because each item had several stats to bolster your attack, defense, or magic. Those items include cloaks, necklaces, and even what I assume are press-on nails that yes, we can paint if we choose to do so. I was surprised by the amount of gear that can be added to Frey“Cloaks have stats for attack, defense, and in this build a Purple or Red magic rating. In addition, there are 3 more slots for other buffs you can add to each piece of gear. These important equipment buffs could be anything from reducing damage taken when Cuff blocks, to a boost to Frey’s Surge magic recharge rate that’s amplified based on how many enemies are nearby.Necklaces buff health and defense stats with that same Purple or Red magic rating the Cloaks have, and seem to focus more on damage buffs. I noticed stats like Damage boosted when Surge magic isn’t fully charged on the Shrift Necklace – or, more interestingly, a Necklace that electrocutes enemies with a precision counter and buffs Frey’s general ability to knock them to the ground. Or on another, you can have an auto-heal effect that is triggered upon an enemy’s defeatFinally, the Nails; This is where spell buffs are located. Here I spotted everything from incremental percentage boosts to Frey’s overall spell damage to more fun stuff like ‘killer blows generate a shockwave, or ‘top-level attack magic will set enemies on fire.With that knowledge, you can start imagining what Frey’s powers will look like late-game, even early on in the game. Enemies are going to be knocked to the ground, electrocuted, and generate a shockwave on their death, all while boosting her Surge ability – meaning we can be ready with an ultra-strong attack to finish off anything remaining. With there already being electrical and shockwave abilities in just this small build we played, I can’t wait to see what other passive options we’ll be able to stat into later on.To put those skills to the test, developer Luminous Productions has littered the map with plenty to do. There are enemies we can hunt down for XP rewards, treasure chests to unlock new gear, townspeople to save for a mana reward that’ll upgrade Frey’s abilities, Monuments to Strength that’ll give her a stat increase and spawn something interesting to fight, and Gyuzel locations to scout that will reward new cloaks. And I think those are just a few of the items I happened to spot with my short amount of time in Forspoken.Luminous Productions has littered the map with plenty to do.“To find them you can use Cuff’s abilities, like Scan that’s activated by tapping up on the d-pad. Compass is also used by holding up, should you want to be directed to a location. Tapping down on the d-pad uses a healing consumable, and holding down outside of combat sets up a camp to get some rest and for crafting various items, like healing drafts. We can also do this at one of the hideaways that will also allow you to unlock new abilities with the mana we’ve collected, or craft and upgrade Frey’s Cloaks, Necklaces, and Nails. And the parkour abilities aren’t just limited to combat, either. You can also very quickly get around the map with the standard zip ability, which makes things like climbing up the face of a mountain much easier, or getting to the next point of interest a bit more fun than just walking there.Because I primarily played all of this on the Performance mode, as I prefer a faster framerate over pretty visuals, I did have to ask what some of the other graphical targets were. The Forspoken team told me that they’re targeting a maximum resolution of 2880x1620p with a framerate of 30fps for the Raytracing mode, and a maximum resolution of 2560x1440p at 60fps for the Performance mode. Having had the chance to swap between them, there’s an obvious difference in how the game feels and looks for both. As the demo was so focused on combat I felt the faster framerate was the way to go. That said, if visuals are your thing, Luminous Productions has clearly spent a lot of time working to make them the best looking they can be.Forspoken Resolution & FPS TargetsPerformance Mode – 2560x1440p maximum resolution at 60fpsRay Tracing Mode- 2880x1620p maximum resolution at 30fpsAs the Luminous Productions AMD presentation is what had me interested in Forspoken in the first place, I had to ask for more details about what it was up to on the tech side. Adding more insight, the studio told me that these visual targets were accomplished using AMD Fidelity SSSR (Stochastic Screen Space Reflections) and CACAO (Combined Adaptive Compute Ambient Occlusion) alongside more traditional tech like VRS (Variable Rate Shading), AMD hybrid shadow, and denoiser to optimize the graphical options. The studio did give a special shoutout to AMD Fidelity Super Resolution 2.0, which allowed it to “depict high-quality graphics on 4K televisions, even at the lower resolution of Performance mode.” So some interesting tidbits if you’re curious about these things, like I am.Once you start combining all of the things I’ve mentioned in my preview – the combat, gear bonuses, and the parkour – you start to see how fighting all of these enemies affected by the Break is going to be interesting. In addition to the combat, which I found to be quite fun, there are also traditional open-world perks for exploring. Solve one of the little square puzzles in the open world? Get a reward. Test your might at a Monument of Power? Get a reward. It all plays very well together and has me very excited to play more and see just how overpowered Frey can become. My biggest worry remains the story, which I didn’t experience much of, but from what I have seen I am intrigued by it. A modern-day Chronicles of Narnia, with a heavy focus on pulling off bombastic combos? I’m 100% in. Forspoken has not done many favors for itself in terms of marketing, but if all these elements can somehow come together in a cohesive manner I think we’re all in for a treat. I guess we’ll find out when the game launches in 2023.
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