After learning that I had taken over the review of Forspoken overtime during the Spring Festival, several of my friends said that it was "a big New Year's Eve, adding to my own blockage". After all, with the game's repeated delays, Forspoken's sales can be said to be getting worse and worse, and the demo version launched in December not only failed to whet the appetite, but because of the mediocre gameplay experience and poor graphics performance, many people discouraged the idea of pre-ordering.
To be reasonable, the SE luminous engine and open-world magic parkour alone are enough to get me interested in Forspoken - and the late-in-the-dark engine that has not been around for ten years finally has a second chance to show its strength to the world, and the open-world genre game can be regarded as ushering in a super-powered high-speed parkour game, how can I easily give up trying.
But look forward to it, my opinion of this game is at best an ordinary game, no success is stability, if you evaluate it from this aspect, Forspoken is indeed the kind of game that can only make some waves when the rating is lifted, and in a week, it will rarely be mentioned.
Glow-in-the-dark engine
The luminous engine and the luminous group are perhaps the most mysterious existence inside SE, and the luminous engine has been public for more than ten years, except for a few technical demonstrations, only the answer sheet of Final Fantasy 15 has been handed over. The luminous group established in 2018 is a money-losing commodity within the company, and the departure of the head Tabata Duan eight months after its establishment makes people worry about the future of the luminous group and the luminous engine.
If you remember, the console version of Final Fantasy 15 was difficult to satisfy in terms of visual performance at launch, and the unstable frame rate with obvious jagged edges and modeling really disappointed those who expected the luminous engine to show its strength, thanks to the game's magic visual effects, which are still somewhat distinctive, and the erratic particle effects can make people shine, otherwise it is really difficult to see what is outstanding about the exclusive engine that has been dormant for years.
If it were to be interpreted as Final Fantasy 15 testing the waters of the luminous engine, Forspoken should be the luminous group's work to make full use of the engine to create a new visual experience.
When it was announced in 2020, the title, tentatively titled Project Athia, featured a trailer for a richly detailed, open-world picture with lush vegetation, meticulously carved rock walls, and sweeping vistas. However, with the actual demonstration of the game being launched many times, "shrinkage" has gradually become a hot topic in the mouths of players, and the light and shadow and color tone of the game are much thinner than when they were first released.
Screenshot of Project Athia
Forspoken is a wilderness-based otherworld, divided into four realms based on a worldview, each with a unique design – plains, forests, loess slopes, waters, and volcanoes. The terrain and height difference are clearly segmented, and there is an anti-gravity area similar to the suspension zone in Avatar, which is extremely spectacular from a distance, and it is a striking map in open-world games.
But beyond the spectacular open-world performance, the game's graphics are also very obvious. The luminous engine has a very powerful hair simulation technology, whether it is the protagonist Frey's flowing long hair, or the ubiquitous cat cat, the fluttering performance of the hair is really worthy of the praise of "Sea Silk", the trees, vegetation and rock wall texture in the wild zone are very detailed, but the game seems to strangely not use obvious anti-aliasing or motion blur and other techniques, so that all the modeling edges have a clear jagged feeling, and the angle of view is even more obvious.
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The density of vegetation is still satisfactory to me
The game's default gamma value setting is obviously flawed, Forspoken's distinction between light and dark horizons is too extreme, in the dark can really do nothing to see, even Frey's appearance is hidden in the dark, and in some bright environments, the lighting is extremely dazzling, especially in the bedrooms of the main city, obviously there is not much sunlight spilling in, but the whole room is reflected by the reflection of the wall to dazzle.
Among the three picture modes of "Forspoken", although the frame rate mode can reach 60 frames, it often drops frames obviously because particle effects cover the full screen when the battle is fierce, and the picture is obviously sacrificed for the number of frames, so that the accuracy of the picture is visibly reduced, the focus of the front and rear scenes is also a mess, and the scenes that should not be problematic are also more mushy because of the loss of focus. On the contrary, the 30 frames in ray tracing mode are very stable, and the long-range, texture accuracy, and modeling edges all strive to match the performance of the promotional video of that year.
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Very inexplicably blurry
But I am still dissatisfied, this is a game created by the luminous group with a luminous engine, the developer is the one who is most familiar with the engine, and can make so many mistakes in the game's picture performance, the first producer of the engine has no way to fully master the luminous engine, so how can people be convinced that it may show real strength in the future?
I love magic parkour
One of the biggest failures of the Forspoken demo was that it made it impossible for players to experience the fun of magic parkour. It is very puzzling that the development team does not know what the player wants most in this game, and only places the two parkour skills of sprinting and elementary wall climbing and jumping in the demo version, which does not reflect the refreshing feeling of high-speed movement at all.
As mentioned earlier, the landform of the entire otherworldly continent has an obvious segmented design, the introduction of height difference and the integration of parkour skills is very good, and the grasping ability learned in the early stage can allow Frey to fly above the cliff at a long distance, and can also fly higher or swing hundreds of meters through Yellowstone regardless of the height. I don't think it's necessary to hide the parkour abilities you can get in the review - charging high jumps, landing jumps, fire sprints, wall jumps, etc., all make the movement more enjoyable. Parkour abilities can be acquired in two forms, one is to push the main line to learn automatically, and the other is to enter a special spring on the map to learn. The main story of the game is about ten hours, but it can only touch about half of the map of the entire other world, and the rest of the time is accumulated by collecting and completing challenges around with magic parkour, which is why it is difficult to show the charm of parkour in the demo version - the content is really limited.
With the delicate vibration feedback of the DualSense handle, the surge of magic particles in the parkour state, the vibration that stops abruptly when taking off, the rapid feedback when landing and jumping again, and the current pulse when using lightning to charge the feet to prepare for a high jump, can all be transmitted through vibration. It's amazing to see characters move as quickly as they defy the laws of physics in a spectacular wilderness environment. On a larger scale, Forspoken feels the same as Death Stranding, but completely different — 99% of open-world games treat movement as an insignificant system, but both also have open-world movement as their main selling point, Death Stranding is about exploring the terrain and planning every step to get from A to B, while Forspoken is about moving from A to B at high speed and freedom.
The battles in Forspoken are exciting. This thrill is based on the enemy's unlimited desire and frequency to attack, and you will find that as long as more than three enemies appear at the same time, the battle is basically a continuous dodge, followed by another punch and dodge. In addition to the Sierra magic that appears in the demo version is a relatively pure melee magic, the four magic provided in other games are all ranged + field control magic, and the battle is nothing more than using the ground magic control field to contain the enemy, long-range magic is charged and chained, Sierra magic is used to attack at a close range of 360 degrees, and because of the enemy's high desire to attack, it is common to be interrupted to attack.
Even harder, for the first time playing Forspoken, I felt I needed the edge handle. The output buttons of the game's combat are concentrated on LR, most of them are shooting magic, and the enemy is very mobile, so I need the thumb of my right hand to push the joystick frequently to adjust the perspective, but the frequency of enemy attacks makes me have to focus on adjusting my thumb to the circle button to dodge, and it would be much better if there was a back button that could free my thumb.
So by mid-game, I had all the combat aids available in the game, including shortened magic cooldowns, automatic dodging, and more. To be honest, this tweaking doubled the game's combat speed, fluidity, and gorgeousness, and Frey became able to navigate the enemy's magic rain and fight back flashily, which I found more fun than doing it manually.
But at the end of the day, the combat system is very shallow, and I had expected that there would be a chain reaction between the elemental magic of different witches, not just by tying enemies with grass and attacking, apparently Forspoken did not do this, and pressing the L2 and R2 keys for a long time made me doubt whether the controller could still hold on or not, remember to turn off the trigger feedback when playing, otherwise it is estimated that the controller may not last long.
Hire overseas screenwriters and go global, that's it?
A few days before the release of Forspoken, the game's developers were interviewed by Fami Tsu, mentioning that the worldview of this game is similar to "Alice in Wonderland", and the game has mentioned this famous book many times. The developers said that their goal was to create a game that players around the world would enjoy, but also to be a non-royal protagonist, so they chose a character like Frey that would easily resonate with players.
After I finished the game, I looked back at this interview and it was full of question marks.
I don't know if the developer's understanding of the word "vibes" is different from what I thought, I think it's hard to resonate as a "loser abandoned by his parents, living in a dilapidated cottage, stealing to save money", traveling to another world to start an adventure, and even finding relatives by the way.
"Forspoken" was written by the luminous group with screenwriters from Europe and the United States, including the famous Amy Hennig ("Uncharted"), Gary Whitta ("The Walking Dead" game) and others. To be good, Forspoken's grandeur of the world and the perfection of the setting are indeed rare in recent times, but the story routine of the game itself really leaves me speechless.
It includes almost all of the typical cases you can think of in the Japanese crossing plot, such as Frey's life and the murderer behind the disaster. What's more, this kind of script design itself runs counter to the so-called "player resonance" and becomes a flat Wang Daolong Aotian-style story, from one extreme to another, which is still difficult for me to substitute, because this kind of plot is really dirty.
So from Forspoken, you can see the obvious conflict between Eastern and Western scripts, the New Yorker full of swear, the partner with a British accent, the travel to a European medieval style of another world, the experience of Japanese other world stories, this sense of twisting makes me unable to digest and understand. The ending of the game also leaves a foreshadowing for the DLC that has been announced, and Frey's background has only been partially revealed, but I really don't look forward to the plot of the DLC anymore.
Forspoken is a work above the passing line, but it can't reach the ranks of excellent, and the game built with its own engine and postponed many times is unsatisfactory in terms of visual performance, how can people see the potential of the engine? Fortunately, the game's excellent parkour design and maps that make parkour more comfortable save some face, but this only makes the game less unbearable, as I said at the beginning, Forspoken is at best a normal game that will not be discussed by players and forgotten later.
Writing here, I feel a pity, if you don't go to the night light engine, although the picture is not so obvious, it will not have so many problems; If you can not pursue the so-called character resonance, will the script of "Forspoken" be more perfect? But that's all a thought.