First impressions set the tone for new releases and Forspoken has done nothing but one up itself every time there’s a new glimpse. Very few titles manage to do that to this extent.
Square Enix is known for some of the best title series’ out there, including the ongoing Final Fantasy series (with the upcoming Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin & Switch exclusive Project Triangle Strategy), the Dragon Quest series and as of 2009, the Tomb Raider series.
Some of you might recall that in 2020 there was a title revealed as Project Athia? There was quite a bit of excitement that came with that but also a lot of doubt due to the fact that most games that are teased with “Project” in the name either don’t end up being released or at the very least take an age. Well, during the PlayStation Showcase 2021 we were pleasantly surprised with Forspoken; the finalised title name of Project Athia, with a release window of early 2022.
Project Athia – Teaser Trailer 2020 | PS5
What Is It All About?
Forspoken is a third-person, action-adventure RPG that takes you on an isekai journey following Frey Holland (played by actress Ella Balinska) who gets ripped away from all she knows in New York City and thrown into the mystical land of Athia.
Frey is a city girl who clearly has it tough out in The Big Apple, as is shown in the trailer where she is seen getting beaten by one of those self-proclaimed “cool” groups. It seems that all she has is her cat, Homer, who she confides in, letting him in on the secret that she’s a big deal and she is determined to get them out of this heck-hole (I’m using this term because, well, professionalism).
Holland longs for freedom, sunny days, and clean air and with that, comes about a mysterious incident that leads to her being teleported into another realm through a portal that holds the words “Holland Tunnel” within. Could we go based on what we hear from the trailer and say that she gets summoned by the Cuff? The voice that calls out to her as she gets pulled in sounds uncannily like her Cuff.
Inevitably the portal then closes up.
Holland was not wrong when she told Homer that she’s a “big deal”. Did she feel that she had a lot more going for herself and was only waiting for her time to shine once she could turn her life of struggle around? Or could she feel deep within that there was something more, something bigger; was it mere coincidence that she was to be the heroine of the otherworldly Athia?
As Frey navigates across the foreign lands, it becomes apparent that it’s up to her to face off with Sila, the “strongest and most formidable of all the Tanta’s” and that’s exactly what she plans on doing if she is to save her new home.
The Tanta’s seem to be the protagonists of the game, or at least Sila most certainly is. The Tanta’s are said to be destructive and cruel, the all-powerful matriarchs that hold dominion over Athia. Tanta Sila is clearly stated to be the most daunting and menacing of them all, which begs the question, how many are there, and will you be encountering them throughout the game? (the answer is almost certainly yes). Does this council hold the same imposing mannerism as Sila or is Sila that one who turned rogue and took their cruel ways to the next level?
Forspoken – Story Introduction Trailer | PS5
What To Expect Of Gameplay
I think that one of the first things that we can say about Forspoken is that the graphics are immaculate, the world of Athia looks gorgeous, to say the least, and to make the most of this beautiful environment Square Enix graced us with creating this as an open-world experience. From ancient fantasy ruins to the city (or cities?) and the expansive wildlands, how do you expect to reach it all without a vehicle or fast-travel? Well to answer that, Forspoken has its own way of incorporating fast-travel without missing out on any of the beauty and immersiveness.
Frey gets around by foot (which isn’t as slow as you might think) or by means of what is being deemed “magical parkour”. She scales cliffs, launches across rooftops & mountainous terrain, and reaches seemingly unreachable spots; all done in style with flips, twirls, and other various acrobatic styles – just remember that there’s a line; she does not fly.
What is also a really refreshing spin is the way they’ve incorporated the combat mechanics. It’s looking like you’ll be going weapon-free throughout the game, only relying on Frey’s magical abilities.
Just a few of the attacks and defences that we are shown include a magical shield that she conjures up, a powerful aqua-orb, conjuration of natural landmines (literal landmines), electrical charges of sorts, a grappling attack, a magical blade-looking hit, a sort of tidal wave that encompasses your foes which can be frozen & shattered and summoning roots to rip through the ground to have at it with your enemies.
In the mix, you’ll be able to go in for close-up melee combat but the focal point is emphasizing the magical attributes.
Along with the beauty of Athia of, course will come the dangers. I’ve already briefly mentioned the Tanta, which we will likely encounter as the build-up of mini-boss fights until we reach the formidable Sila, but among some of the revealed enemies that we can expect are goblin-like creatures, feathered aerial-beasts, some sort of human-ish guard force, golems (glamim?), menacing bear beasts, molten hounds, and a “FREAKING DRAGON” as Frey put it.
As for elaborating on Tanta Sila, we catch a snippet of what to expect with her confrontation. All in all, she looks to be a sorceress at the peak of her game as we see her deliver blow after blow against Frey. She refers to Frey being a demon, but that’s likely due to the fact that Frey’s not from their world and is here to defeat the reigning supreme. Purely out of interest’s sake I couldn’t ignore picking up on the faint Kenyan-English accent of Sila (that’s probably just me but we’ll stick to that for now).
To round things off, Frey’s unconventional companion is a cuff. This cuff seems to be the source of her power and somewhat advisor.
There will also be forms of telekinesis. The take that Square Enix and Luminous Productions (the team that also worked on FFXV) have gone with for the element of magic is truly impressive; they didn’t stick with the baseline magical abilities that most games use but really materialized the visuals and mechanics in a way that engraves this title into your mind.
Technicalities
For anyone interested, there’s quite the team on board for this title. We already know now that Ella Balinska will be playing as Frey Holland. Keala Settle will play as Johedy, Jonathan Cake voices Cuff, Monica Barbaro will be playing as Auden and Janina Gavankar will be taking on the role of Tanta Sila.
The titles’ writers include none other than Amy Hennig of Uncharted and Legacy of Kain, Gary Whitta of Star Wars: Rogue One alongside Allison Rymer and Todd Stashwick.
We can also thank Bear McCreary and Garry Schyman for the soundtracks of the game.
With Forspoken being developed on the same Luminous Engine as Final Fantasy XV, we can expect nothing but the best in visuals. Forspoken is being designed to especially take advantage of the PlayStation 5 features and will include ray tracing and procedural generation for this massive environment. The game also intends to make full use of the PS5 DualSense Haptic Feedback to really emphasize and build on that immersive gameplay that they’re aiming for.
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution Partner Showcase
We haven’t got confirmation on PC specs just yet but we’re going to guesstimate it as such:
Minimum Requirements
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz / AMD FX-8320
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 380 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2GB
VRAM: 2GB
RAM: 8 GB
HDD: 50 GB
DirectX 11 Compatible Graphics Card
Requirement of a Radeon R9 380 graphics card to play on low settings, with a Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz or FX-8320 processor to reach the minimum specs, achieving 30FPS on 1080p monitor res.
Recommended Requirements
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K 4-Core 4.0GHz / AMD Ryzen R5 1600
Graphics: AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
VRAM: 8GB
RAM: 16 GB
HDD: 50 GB
DirectX 11 Compatible Graphics Card
Requirement of a Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB graphics card with a Core i7-6700K 4-Core 4.0GHz or Ryzen R5 1600 processor to reach the recommended specs, achieving high graphics setting on 1080p.
Minimum RAM requirements are 8 GB system memory. Your graphics card will need to be capable of running DirectX 11.00.
Forspoken will be released for PS5 and PC. There’s not even a hint at it being released for Xbox so it’s likely that this will remain a PlayStation exclusive.
Also, there doesn’t seem to be any other appearances by Homer? I’m seriously hoping that he’ll pop up again sometime in the game, why would they abandon our little buddy and not give him an important role?