Forspoken is an outstanding game filled with so many good ideas and imagination. It has unique and addictive gameplay that feels intrinsically rewarding. Once you adapt to the game's control scheme, moving through space feels better than second nature, and the wonderfully crafted parkouring animations always feel exciting to pull off. The mix of combat styles adds depth and variety to even easy battles. The open world is gigantic, beautifully rendered, and designed around the game's traversal mechanics. The way that enemies spawn and you the world seamlessly funnels you into different side objectives on the map is well integrated and makes each session with this game feel like you're making great progress.

Of course, the fatal flaw that turned millions off of this game is the tonal mismatch between wisecracking Frey & Cuff and the rather dour, serious dark fantasy world that they inhabit. It is so distracting that it cursed this game to be a flop. This game asks you to get invested in two worlds, the one with the concept, lore, and worldbuilding which feels very well considered. The there's the characters and isekai element that never feels natural, and the banter and lack of compelling character motives is grating. The player is not going to buy into both things because they are so disparate, and you get a constant reminder that your experience is compromised. They were terrified of having too dark of a story so they pulled back. They were terrified of making it too much of a comedy that people wouldn't take this world too seriously so they put some edge on it. The push and pull just doesn't feel artistically consistent and it's distracting.

The narrative also has its ups and its downs. I think that the initial hook of the game is not that strong, and the plot twists a little bit trite, leading to the ultimate twist that was both obvious and so abrupt that I can't really recommend the story on its own merits, or disaggregate it from the dialogue and characters.

But, I don't think these faults really define the game. This game deserves so much more love and appreciation. You can enjoy the scope and ambition that went into this game, and the fresh ideas they came up with. The character designs and landscape is beautiful and filled with nice touches. It's very well considered and we are at a loss that Luminous Productions dissolved after this game, because they had a lot of ideas and skill that wasn't necessarily directed the best way.

At some point, Square Enix knew they had to push this game out the door, so some elements do feel unfinished. You do have this big open world with a lot of procedural content, but without a lot of the personalization that you would want from doing sidequests or running errands for characters. From the middle of the game, it will suddenly rush you to the ending, dumping a lot of levels and new skills on you as the exposition slightly overstays its welcome. The postgame opens up the world even more, but I was not compelled to keep playing. I am comfortable to close the book on Athia, and will always appreciate it as the truly unique experience that it is.