Forspoken is something of an outlier in what it’s repping, as far as action-adventure gaming goes. It’s an open-world jaunt, in spirit, packed with Final Fantasy sensibilities and armed with a checklist torn straight from the pages of the Assassin’s Creed playdesignbook. But it’s also still very much its own thing, tropes be damned.

By now you know the setup (if you don’t watch this trailer) -- hapless young person is magically transported from the real-world, thrust into something, somewhere fantastical; armed with magic and-slash-or powers and an apparent spot on the destiny roster of “we’ve awaited your coming, for an age”. And usually smack-dab in the middle of some sort of conflict, though usually that’s an easy one with a clearly-defined good versus evil at play.

It’s a trope utilised across all forms of media and in games it’s a tried and true formula. Consider Mario, perhaps the first example of the trope in interactive form; a real-world plumber whisked away to a magical kingdom to save a princess. The Legend of Zelda is an in-world version of it, but still relevant as Link is usually pulled or awoken from otherwise nurtured safety to a larger world beset by an unimaginable evil. And, staying in Japan, oh-so-many a JRPG lives by this setup, to the point it’s almost sacrosanct and therefore a risk ever going off-script. And let’s not forget the larger, more esoteric uses of it in other games, where the player is that character, for all intents and purposes, with their avatar mildly aware of their station as your puppet. Guybrush Threepwood comes to mind here, or “The Kid” in Bastion -- always rollin’.



In Forspoken it’s a hip young New Yorker named, on-the-nosedly, Frey. Frey has been transported from the hustle and bustle of urban life to the barrens of Athia -- a magical world inhabited by flying creatures, floating Avatar-esque land masses and witches. In fact, now powered by a magical bracelet with a Giles-like voice and demeanour, Frey herself has become something of a witch and finds herself staring at this unfamiliar expanse armed only with the knowledge that she’s here to do something with those powers. Which is where you, the player, comes in and the game’s first main draw rears its head -- traversing to Downtown Athia, magic style.

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"Which revealed a game that certainly adheres to a handful of open-world ‘requirements’ but also works to break the mould and monotony...”

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Plenty of games of this ilk have centred themselves around a single mechanic or a standout feature. In Assassin’s Creed it was always the game’s parkour -- so ingrained now that we barely question why a viking is all-of-a-sudden expert at it, given the relatively flat and unparkour-friendly nature of most of Ancient Scandinavia. In the Batman: Arkham series, which progressively expanded in size with each entry, a best-in-class melee system drove the Batman fantasy (in addition to his gadget-defined traversal). And sticking with superheroes, in the most recent Marvel’s Spider-Man titles (and even those that came before, to a degree), web-slingin’ through a virtual New York via its myriad skyscrapers is key to that experience over everything else.



Thematically, finishing up with the Spidey experience and example there is apt, because in Forspoken the draw is what the studio behind the game, Luminous Productions, has dubbed “magical parkour” -- a movement system that employs Frey’s newfound witch powers through her talkative bracelet and the environment. They could have easily gone with a broom, but this is different and cool and fast. It’s also refreshing and helpful in the expanse that is Athia, at least in the portions of what I managed to get hands-on with, which revealed a game that certainly adheres to a handful of open-world ‘requirements’ but also works to break the mould and monotony of a lot of what fills that space currently.

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"Rather, Forspoken is a game designed around being reactive, capable and fast -- it features a near-stackable toolbox of casts available to the player across two forms...”

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I had roughly under two hours with the game, and this was certainly a demo-specific build (for PAX East), but what I gained from it was that magic is central to the experience but also that magic shouldn’t be a drawn out incantation-driven exercise. Rather, Forspoken is a game designed around being reactive, capable and fast -- it features a near-stackable toolbox of casts available to the player across two forms -- Attack Magic and Support Magic, and this is a toolbox that grows the further into the game you progress. And while these magic types aren’t new to the fray (heh), their use inside Forspoken feels unique. There’s agency here and each every cast you make does something workable to your situation.



But combat and the magic that drives it is just one part of a larger tale here. Frey’s journey to Athia raises numerous questions, as does the conflict that shakes the world. There are safe havens and places to go and converse and learn and even spend money, and riddled throughout the world you’ll come across huts that act as fast travel and places of respite. Within each of these you’ll also find treasures, items and slices of lore, fleshing out the Forspoken game-universe. You can also craft here and, from what I could ultimately gather from my short stint with the game, do potentially even more, which is to say it didn't seem rinse-repeat.

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"At bookshelves you can upgrade your Spellcraft, for example, but you can also make your own Spellcraft challenges -- these are chosen and created by you to complete, which is a refreshing concept...”

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The idea, it seems, is to embed Frey into the space; to flip the script on the fish-out-of-water trope at play here and have her a master of her domain (which might wind up being a tilt on any one of the ‘saviour’ topes), and for all intents and purposes it feels like it’ll work. Firstly, because Forspoken has a unique spin on the lore of witches and some of the fantasy that entails and, secondly, because the layers of power-building and knowledge-building here are clearly lifted from some of the best in the business.



I mentioned agency a bit earlier, which is also a huge part of this experience. Becoming powerful is one thing but being able to play with that power in a non-binary fashion is another. At bookshelves you can upgrade your Spellcraft, for example, but you can also make your own Spellcraft challenges -- these are chosen and created by you to complete, which is a refreshing concept. How deep it goes is yet to be revealed, but on the surface it was a tantalising prospect, especially once I started to see the countdown of my crafted challenge happening in real-time which immediately shifted my entire playstyle to satisfactory completion of it.

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"I foresaw the game being overcome with map markers, which tends to remove the ability to emergently discover parts of the world through just magically parkouring your way too and fro...”

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It’s a small thing but something I walked away with pretty chuffed over. In fact, Forspoken spoke to me in its persistent sense of "there's more"; the promise of adventure and discovery was a palpable one and it really grabbed me. It’s also a visual feast, with a landscape dotted with POIs (Points of Interest). Problematically though, I foresaw the game being overcome with map markers, which tends to remove the ability to emergently discover parts of the world through just magically parkouring your way to and fro. It’s a common pitfall with modern open-world games, and is something we’ve lamented in the past even with huge staples such as The Witcher 3. It’s early days yet, though, and my time with the game was limited so I could hopefully be proven pretty wrong.



Though stunted in what I could really learn, my takeaway from the experience was that it’ll be an explosion of magic for the eyes, full of speed and fury. But secondary to that is a world very ready to be learnt about and embedded within, in equal measure. I got over the New Yorker with an attitude element pretty quickly, because the game itself doesn’t dwell on that, which is the right choice. More importantly, I felt, was that Luminous has the player rightly fixated on what what’s in front of them and and then empowering them to get there, fast. Magical parkour, which on a page of text reads as buzzwordy as you can get could actually be a game-changer, akin in feel to web-slingin’ in Marvel’s Spider-Man. It is both fun and rewarding but also contextual. That it’s also upgradable and that the world will present more exploitable terrain to utilise it just falls into view as a ‘can’t wait’ bonus.

Stay tuned for more as we gain better access to Forspoken heading towards its 2023 release.