Forspoken is a game about movement and running. Protagonist Frey starts the game in front of the law and the debt collectors. She’s also in the midst of a plan to flee New York City with a gym bag full of cash. In the midst of this chaos, she falls into the land of Athia and is eager to leave the new, mysterious world where she inexplicably has superhuman fighting and running abilities. Getting from one place to another is the pinnacle of Forspoken, and while no other element is as fun to run and climb as it is, Frey’s adventure is not without its highlights.
Unfortunately, Forspoken makes a bad first impression. Athia’s environments look great, as does Frey as she moves through the world, but zooming in for cutscenes reveals some rough textures. The dialogues are also underwhelming and the storytelling is overly transparent. From Frey’s cat Homer to the little girl who wins Frey’s heart by stealing her phone in Athia, each character’s role as a means to humanize Frey is all too obvious, and their frequent and adamant denial of the hero’s reputation becomes hammered too hard. Thankfully, Forspoken’s story and dialogue improves the deeper you go.
In the end, I liked Frey’s overly vulgar and combative nature and her antagonistic relationship with Cuff, her invisible partner who lives on her wrist. I also liked the zoomed out main story path. None of the twists were particularly surprising, but they were well executed and helped to understand why Frey is so angry and why she’s so adamant about not being the heroine, even when everything obviously called for her to move in that direction. I was also pleased with where the game leaves Frey at the end, both from a character relationship perspective and from a post-game continued gameplay perspective.
The combat is mediocre throughout. Forspoken is an action game, but calling it a third-person shooter wouldn’t be inappropriate since most of Frey’s abilities work like magic weapons. Frey has dozens of abilities to switch between on the fly, and exploiting enemy weaknesses means you’re encouraged to do so often. I found a few that I favored, but success often meant switching to the inert weapon I didn’t necessarily want to use. Changing skills is complicated; Even late in the game, I had to stop and think about which buttons to hold down to access specific weapons.
The handful of bosses that Frey encounters are generally underwhelming, too. They have interesting designs and attacks that look great on the move but leave little room for a tactical approach. Most of the time I just hit them with as many magic bullets as I could. The final boss encourages a long overdue strategy, and this surge in challenge made for my most memorable encounter.
Where the story and general combat is hit-and-miss, the movement is excellent throughout. Sprinting through Athia and leaping over buildings feels great, and a handful of additional movement abilities make things even smoother. An early upgrade that allows Frey to jump far with well-timed button presses makes her moves even faster and smoother. I’ve made every effort to track down every move upgrade, and almost all of them have been extensive and fun. This joy of movement integrates into combat, where while shooting doesn’t feel great, dodging and jumping over enemy heads does.
Exploration is fun too, thanks to a helpful automatic waypoint numbering system. For example, on my way to a core destination, I’d mark a handful of locations to check out along the way and wouldn’t have to go back to the map much because of the numbers. In certain locations, you can even do this by gazing into the distance without even entering the map. Rewards are also worthwhile by offering new cloaks and items and even big stat boosts just for finding certain locations.
Forspoken’s story and combat doesn’t reach the heights of its movement and exploration, but thankfully those latter two elements make up the bulk of the experience. I’ve sprinted through the campaign in about 15 hours, often literally, and now I have a big world full of nooks and crannies that I’m dying to run through and explore. The narrative won’t stay with me, and I’ve often avoided combat in the open world, but I loved making Frey jump and fly around Athia to discover all of his treasure chests and secrets.
