PlayStation’s DualSense Edge controller is now available in Canada.
Similar to Xbox’s Elite Controller, the high-end PS5 gamepad offers a fully customizable experience that includes a variety of swappable components and remappable buttons.
In Canada, it sports the rather steep price tag of $270. (By contrast, the standard DualSense costs $90.) Besides the controller itself, you’ll also get:
carrying case
connector housing
USB braided cable
two standard caps
two high dome caps
two low dome caps
two half-dome back buttons
two lever back buttons
Pre-orders went up in October, so availability may vary. That said, retailers that at least carry the controller include Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop Canada, The Source and Walmart. $25 replacement stick modules are also available.
Stay tuned to MobileSyrup for impressions of the controller.
It’s developed by Luminous Productions, the Japanese team comprised of many former Final Fantasy XV creators. But the actual story of the game hails from Todd Stashwick (12 Monkeys) and Allison Rymer (Shadowhunters), based on concepts by Gary Whitta (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) and Amy Hennig (Uncharted series). While this mixture of East and West doesn’t always mesh well, the end result is a uniquely compelling experience with exceptional gameplay and some decent narrative moments.
A diamond in the rough
In Forspoken, you play as Frey Holland (Ella Balinska), a 21-year-old New Yorker who’s struggling to get by. Upon discovering a magical vambrace she calls “Cuff” (Jonathan Cake), she’s whisked away to the mysterious world of Athia, where she must survive the threat of the tyrannical rulers known as the Tantas. Now, much has been made about this Alice in Wonderland-style premise and its awkward juxtaposition of Frey’s quippy ‘Whedonesque’ dialogue and this fantastical setting. It’s at the centre of why this game has basically been the internet’s punching bag.
But I think that’s largely undeserved. Beneath some admittedly clunky and edgy dialogue lies a game with more heart than you’d expect, and that all starts with Frey. Previously hidden from marketing and media previews, the entire first chapter of the game takes some time to explore Frey at rock bottom, revealing her to be a sympathetic character whose abrasiveness in the trailers feels a lot more justified in context. This sets the reluctant hero up on a compelling — and, at times, even emotional — journey to discover her own self-worth. Meanwhile, Cuff’s dulcet English tones and dry humour make for an engaging foil to the rambunctious and insolent Frey, all brought to life through solid performances from Balinska and Cake. Admittedly, some have found this banter grating, so Luminous has thankfully added an option to turn down the frequency of it. I actually mostly enjoyed these snarky exchanges, as they were reminiscent of an early 2000s buddy cop movie and a fun departure from the endearing “road trip between bros” vibes of Final Fantasy XV. My issues instead was that they simply lack variety; after just a few hours, I grew tired of hearing the same lines ad nauseum.
Frey’s attitude makes a lot more sense once you learn more about her tragic backstory.
What only grew on me more over time, however, was Athia itself. When Frey arrives, she finds it in a state of disarray due to a mystical corruption known as the Break. It’s decimated most of the world’s population, turned the wildlife into zombified beasts and forced humanity’s sole survivors to shack up in the bustling city of Cipal. Finding out the cause of the Break and what corrupted the once benevolent Tanta matriarchs proved to be a real highlight, especially towards the latter hours of the game when several revelations are made. I didn’t much care for the supporting cast beyond Frey and Cuff (the game even repeatedly tries and fails to make the death of a girl that Frey meets early on feel impactful), but the actual lore behind everything is rather interesting. You’d be hard-pressed to say any of this is great writing, but it’s definitely a lot better than people might have thought.
Enough spells to make Dr. Strange jealous
But even if the story and characters don’t grab you, Forspoken is absolutely worth playing for its gameplay. At its core, Forspoken is basically a superhero game, and a really engaging one, at that. Through a constantly growing set of powers, controlling Frey becomes a genuine power fantasy.
First, there’s her magical parkour, known as ‘Flow.’ Simply holding down the circle button will cause her to quickly zip forward, maintaining momentum with confident, rhythmic strides as she vaults over low-reaching obstacles like ledges and tree stumps. Over the course of the story, you’ll automatically develop powers that expand her mobility, including the ability to kick off walls for extra verticality, a zipline to quickly reach ledges or launch yourself upward and an ephemeral surfboard to glide across water. There’s also a handful of unlockable movesthat further enhance your parkour — my favourite being Shimmy,which lets you stylishly spring off the ground with a well-timed tap of the jump button to maintain momentum.
Running and jumping around Athia makes for some stylish entertainment.
All of these abilities work in tandem to create a remarkably fluid traversal system. It’s downright euphoric to bound towards the side of a canyon using Shimmy, parkour up the side of it, swing around a branch with my zipline to launch forward and land and glide over a body of water — all quite seamlessly, no less. The layout of the world is open enough to give you the freedom to reach pretty much anywhere once you have the necessary abilities, but also curated in places — such as through carefully placed floating platforms — to require you to be a bit precise so as to not overshoot your jumps. Through and through, it’s some of the most enjoyment I’ve had on a mechanical level of navigating an open-world since Insomniac’s two Marvel’s Spider-Man games.
The other half of the gameplay equation, combat, is equally rousing. In the lead-up to the game, Luminous has (for)spoken about there being 100 spells for Frey to use. I’ll confess that a part of me was skeptical; surely this is just marketing speak and many of these are palette swaps of one another. But much to my pleasant surprise is the fact that Frey’s magical arsenal is staggeringly diverse. On a base level, she has four different magic types — Purple (rock), Red (fire), Blue (water) and Green (electricity). But the utility of each can vary drastically when you get into all of the underlying abilities.
Frey’s powers offer quite the spectacle.
To start, each power has a few different base Attack Magic spells that can be charged into even more moves. Purple Magic’s standard Burst Shot has her blasting enemies with clump of dirt as you mash the shoot button, but you can unlock alternative firing methods that unleash a steady stream of pebbles (Scatter Shot) or a sturdy rock shield to protect you then explode to push enemies back (Shield Shot). Charging Burst Shot, meanwhile, will conjure up a large boulder that can be hurled at enemies to send them flying. Naturally, the use case for each can vary drastically, like carefully aiming your giant rocks to get around enemy shields. That’s to say nothing of the other powers’ base attacks, like Red Magic’s fiery sword for speedy melee attacks, Blue’s exploding balls of aquatic energy or Green’s jolts or electricity.
But it’s her Support abilities that really liven up combat by deviating from being purely elemental-based attacks. For instance, Purple’s powerset includes a Piranha Plant-esque sprout that fires projectiles at an enemy while Green’s Compulsion and Displacement summon floating exploding mines and create an illusory decoy of Frey to distract enemies, respectively. There are also moves that provide Frey with direct buffs, such as Blue’s Inundation to increase the critical hit rate of spells. Each Support ability has its own cooldown timer that can be sped up by using Attack Magic, an effective way to push you to alternate between offensive and defensive magic. To that point, using a mixture of both will charge your a devastating power-specific supermove called Surge Magic. My favourite of these was the Genesis Purple Magic, which calls forth barbed branches to come piercing through the earth to slam crowds of enemies.
Genesis never gets old.
What I most appreciated, though, is that using Mana (acquired by levelling up or finding collectibles on the map) to upgrade Surge Magic doesn’t simply improve their usefulness; you actually see the scope expand. Take Genesis; Level 1 only summons a moderately sized coil of branches, but Level 2’s range dramatically increases and Level 3 is so big that it’s like a giant Poison Ivy-esque outgrowth, venomous bulbs and all. In this way, Frey’s progression actually feels tangible and satisfying besides simply raising behind-the-scenes damage calculators. Upgrading Attack and Support Magic, meanwhile, is handled a bit differently. Here, you’re required to actually use the abilities to increase their usefulness, which I appreciated as a means to get me to experiment more and even play a little differently, like leaping over enemies to attack them from behind to upgrade my flaming sword. A particularly joyful move to discover was Green Magic’s Pulse Dart, which has you puncturing enemies with electric needles in quick succession that effectively paints targets for far more damaging piercing lightning bolts.
In other words, Forspoken‘s combat often has a satisfying brutality to it, enhanced by the spell-specific haptic feedback and adaptive triggers on the PS5’s DualSense controller. What’s more, each spell type is rendered with a dazzling display of particle effects that really sell the raw intensity of Frey’s powers. While the visual splendour definitely takes a hit in Performance Mode, it’s worth the resolution hit to get that consistent 60fps smoothness. An engrossing score from composers Bear McCreary (God of War Ragnarök) and Garry Schyman (BioShock) only further enhances the vibe.
Athia looks pretty, but it’s unfortunately pretty empty.
What holds Forspoken‘s gameplay back from true greatness, though, is its open-world. My biggest concern even after playing a three-hour preview in December was that it would be too empty, and that remains true even now. Unfortunately, there just isn’t much to do in Athia’s largely barren outdoor environments beyond the exhilarating parkour. Sure, there’s a bunch of activities littered throughout, but they’re mostly just variations on “defeat these enemies” to unlock rewards. There’s even a spin on the tired map-revealing ‘Ubisoft Towers,’ known here as Belfries, which only further makes Athia’s open-world design feel painfully dated.
Oddly, you’ll exclusively get actual sidequests — referred to as ‘Detours’ — from NPCs in Cipal, and the bulk of these take place within the city. These are at least more interesting and character-driven than the almost purely combat-focused fare in the open-world, but Forspoken still would have benefited from not relegating them all to a single setting. As it stands, though, Forspoken has a lot content for content’s sake, and little of it feels legitimately rewarding to complete. Thankfully, the game only includes two types of gear (cloaks and nail paintings) and you can unlock new equipment and craftable upgrades through these sidequests. With so many games featuring convoluted gear systems nowadays, I appreciated that it was streamlined so you can focus your time on magical parkour and combat — the real highlight of the game — instead of navigating through menus.
A mostly magical experience
Burn baby burn.
Forspoken is a prime example of why it’s important to go into a game with an open mind. Regardless of how you felt based on admittedly spotty marketing material, there is much to like about the actual experience as a whole. Yes, Forspoken‘s uneven writing and unfortunately lifeless open-world will be off-putting to some, but at the game’s core lies a fundamentally joyful and even euphoric gameplay experience that mixes thrilling traversal with fulfilling, empowering combat. Ultimately, a game should be enjoyable to play, and on that level, Forspoken is certainly worth your time.
Forspoken will launch exclusively on PlayStation 5 and PC on January 24th, 2023.
PlayStation has released a demo for The Last of Us Part Ito coincide with the premiere of HBO’s live-action adaptation of the game.
Now, PlayStation Plus Premium members can now download a two-hour trial of The Last of Us Part I, a remake of the original PS3 game, as part of their subscription. PlayStation Plus Premium starts at $21.99 CAD/month, while The Last of Us Part I costs $89.99.
HBO’s The Last of Us premiered on Sunday, January 15th, with the series streaming exclusively on Crave in Canada. It’s a direct adaptation of the first The Last of Us game and its Left Behind expansion — both of which are included in Part I. Neil Druckmann, the writer and co-director of the original PS3 game, serves as showrunner alongside Chernobyl‘s Craig Mazin.
In The Last of Us, a weary smuggler named Joel is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie across a zombie-infested America, facing all kinds of horrors along the way. The series stars Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) as Joel and Ellie, respectively. New episodes of the series premiere on Crave every Sunday at 9pm ET.
For more on The Last of Us, read our reviews of both the remake and the TV show and check out our interview with Druckmann, Mazin, Pascal and Ramsey. It’s also worth noting that the series was filmed in Alberta in what’s believed to be the biggest TV production in Canadian history.
During Sony’s CES 2023 keynote, the company’s gaming division leader, Jim Ryan, confirmed that the PlayStation 5 shortage is over.
Until recently, stories regarding PS5 restocks have been top traffic performers on MobileSyrup, but over the last few months, there’s been far less interest in restock coverage. Further, at least anecdotally and online, the console seems to remain in stock for far longer than it did even just a year ago.
Still, I’ve yet actually to see a PS5 in stock at a physical retailer, while the Xbox Series X seems to be everywhere.
During the keynote, Ryan said, “PS5 supply improved towards the end of last year,” before saying that “everyone who wants a PS5 should have a much easier time finding one at retailers globally, starting from this point forward.” Ryan also revealed that December was the biggest month of PlayStation 5 sales ever.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 was released in November 2020 amid the height of the pandemic and global supply chain issues, leading to scarcity and ridiculous prices from resellers.
At CES 2023, PlayStation unveiled ‘Project Leonardo,’ a highly customizable accessibility controller kit to help players with disabilities.
Developed in partnership with game developers, consultants and accessibility charities like AbleGamers and SpecialEffect, Project Leonardo aims to offer a variety of configurations that work alongside many third-party accessibility accessories.
It’s also been designed to address several disability barriers, such as limited motor control, difficulty in holding a controller for prolonged periods or standard thumb and finger positioning on a standard controller. Its flat, spherical form means that it can easily rest on tables and wheelchair trays or be secured to AMPS mounts and rotated 360 degrees.
Additionally, the kit includes swappable components like a series of analogue stick caps and buttons of various shapes and sizes. These components, plus the PS5’s own button remapping feature, will allow players to set up control layouts that best suit their needs.
Project Leonardo can also be used as a standalone controller or alongside an additional Leonardo controller and DualSense gamepad. This will effectively create a “single” virtual controller that offers mix-and-match input capabilities or co-op play with others.
On top of that, Leonardo sports four 3.5mm AUX ports to connect all kinds of external switches and third-party accessibility accessories. For example, some disabled players who like to use custom 3D-printed specialty switches for added comfort could be able to connect those.
PlayStation didn’t confirm launch timing or pricing for Leonardo, but promised to share more “in the future.” For context, Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller, which offers similar features for those with disabilities, is priced at $129 CAD.
For now, though, it’s certainly good to see PlayStation reveal Leonardo. Ever since Microsoft launched that configurable accessibility gamepad in 2018, there have been calls for Sony to follow suit. To its credit, PlayStation has been ramping up its accessibility efforts on the software side during this time, with titles like The Last of Us Part Iand IIand God of War Ragnarökbeing highly praised for their robust suite of accessibility features. And now, we know that PlayStation’s answer to the Xbox Adaptive Controller is officially on the way.
In other PlayStation CES news, the company revealed that it’s sold 30 million PS5 units worldwide since the console’s November 2020 launch and confirmed that more than 30 games are on track for the PS VR2’s “launch window” (the headset releases on February 22nd).
Every month, PlayStation offers a handful of games at no additional cost to its PlayStation Plus subscribers.
Now, the company has revealed the trio of titles hitting PlayStation Plus Essential in January 2023. (PlayStation will announce January’s PS Plus Extra and Premium games in the coming days.)
This month’s highlight is Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Respawn’s 2019 Souls-like action-adventure game, which is free on both PS4 and PS5. The sequel, Jedi: Survivor, will release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on March 17th, 2023.
January’s other two free PS Plus games are the platformer Axiom Verge 2 (PS4/PS5) and online action-RPG Fallout 76 (PS4).
All three games will be free through PS Plus starting January 3rd. Meanwhile, December’s free PS Plus Essential games will remain available until January 2nd.
It’s crazy to think that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt came out over seven years ago. At the time, I’d recently been laid off (RIP Future Shop) and jumped at the chance to lose myself in an expansive open-world. And boy, did it deliver, becoming one of my favourite games of all time.
Now, developer CD Projekt Red has given the last-gen RPG a fresh coat of paint on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S via a free update to Wild Hunt‘s Complete Edition. It couldn’t have come at a better time, too — as one of many people who felt burned by the studio’s mishandling of its most recent game, Cyberpunk 2077, there’s a lovely comfort in revisiting something so beloved, especially with a bevy of current-gen enhancements and bug fixes.
And after nearly 200 hours across the main game and its Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions (which are all included in the Complete Edition), the update has me finding even more enjoyment with the whole experience.
If you’re unfamiliar, Wild Hunt follows Geralt of Rivia, a magically enhanced monster hunter known as a witcher, who must find his adopted Ciri before the spectral warriors called The Wild Hunt. It’s a magnificently well-written tale that takes Geralt across the fantastical world of the Continent and embroils him in all kinds of fascinating political intrigue. The exceptional writing extends to the game’s many sidequests, which feel as high-quality as the main story missions and, as a result, flesh out the world even more. This all remains true in 2022, but it’s the technical improvements that have me falling in love once again with CDPR’s magnum opus, making it easily worth the time sink.
Like a lot of current-gen games, you now have a few graphical options, ranging from a 60fps performance mode with dynamic 4K resolution scaling and a 4K/30fps option with ray-tracing. The latter setting offers admittedly impressive lighting and shadow effects, but the trade-off for the reduced framerate ultimately wasn’t worth it for me.
But the 60fps performance mode is an absolute delight, adding a wonderful new level of smoothness to traversal and combat. On top of these options, CDPR has cleaned up several other aspects of the presentation, including crisper and more detailed character models, reworked foliage, richer foliage, a new ‘Gray Sky’ weather type and higher crowd density. Some fan-made mods have also been brought over from the PC version for further enhancements. The end result is something that looks and feels like a modern game, especially when you factor in how dense and NPC-heavy the world can be.
But beyond that, it actually encouraged me to play a bit differently. Admittedly, I sometimes rush through areas to get to the next quest or cutscene, in part because the experience is grabbing me but also because I just want to get to the next game in my ever-growing backlog. With the new Wild Hunt update, though, I found myself going through the Continent more methodically, even after I’d taken the time to initially take note of what’s improved.
I wanted to live and breathe in this world and soak in all of its refreshingly distinct Slavic-inspired touchstones, from the musky, sweltering swamps and lush, colourful forestry to the lively, bustling medieval cities. It’s a testament to the quality of both the original world design and the presentational overhaul that I felt this added layer of immersion. (The new photo mode is the perfect way to capture all this beauty.)
Gameplay-wise, CDPR has also made some smart changes. On a base level, there are new control and camera options to tweak how Geralt feels while moving, a nice way to address some complaints of clunky handling in the original game. But the bigger, more profound change is the utility of magic, known here as ‘Signs.’ As a witcher, Geralt can cast five basic Signs: Aard (a telekinetic blast), Axii (a Jedi mind trick-esque confusion spell), Igni (projectile fire), Yrden (slows down the enemy) and Quen (a temporary protective shield). In the original version of Wild Hunt, you would have to pull open a radial wheel to toggle equipped Signs, which could definitely slow the pace of battles.
Fight for Ciri. Fight to protect the helpless. Fight for principles. Fight as you were taught in a manner worthy of a witcher from the School of the Wolf 🐺
With the update, you can enable ‘Quick Sign Casting,’ which allows you to assign a spell to your controller’s face buttons and bring them using L2. My muscle memory had gotten accustomed to the wheel, but once I got the hang of the streamlined control option, it was a genuine revelation. All told, it significantly adds to the rhythm of the core combat, which is admittedly not terribly deep from a mechanical standpoint.
The layers instead came from how you respond to the staggeringly high number of enemies you encounter, like reading up on a monster’s strengths and weaknesses and brewing the necessary potions to counter that. That’s all still there, of course, but now you’re also encouraged to more actively switch between your Signs, making the already balletic swordplay feel more dynamic and engaging. For example, Yrden’s circular area of effect makes it effective for crowd control, but sometimes you just want to switch to Igni which, when upgraded, can have Geralt shooting a stream of flame out of fingers and incinerate foes.
Another noteworthy addition is a new questline that, upon completion, unlocks a set of armour inspired by Henry Cavill’s Geralt in Netflix’s The Witcher series. I could never get into the show, but it’s an undeniably cool way to add even more value to the update while paying homage to a popular part of The Witcher franchise. If nothing else, there’s a real novelty in hearing Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle reprise the role for some more charming and gravelly lines of dialogue.
In the end, I’ve really enjoyed my time with The Witcher 3‘s ‘next-gen’ update. From the litany of technical improvements to the small-but-meaningful gameplay additions, this really feels like a low-key remaster of an all-time great RPG. That CDPR is offering all of this for free is just brilliant, as it’s easy to see how other publishers would have sold this separately or even charged a small fee to upgrade. Whether you’re someone who’s never played The Witcher 3 or are an avid fan like I am, this update makes it absolutely worth your while to plan a trip to the Continent.
PlayStation has revealed that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will launch exclusively on the PlayStation 5 in fall 2023.
The publisher confirmed the release window in a PlayStation Blog post looking ahead to next year’s major game releases. A writer on the game had seemingly leaked a fall 2023 launch on their since-updated website, and PlayStation is now confirming this timing. Insomniac had previously only provided a vague “2023” window.
Little is known about the game currently, other than the fact that both Peter Parker and Miles Morales will be playable and Venom will be one of the main villains. It’s also been confirmed that Yuri Lowenthal and Nadji Jeter will reprise their roles of Peter and Miles, respectively, while Candyman‘s Tony Todd will voice Venom.
It should be noted that Insomniac is also working on Marvel’s Wolverine, although a release window for the X-Men game has yet to be confirmed.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.
It’s no secret that this current console generation has progressed rather slowly.
After more than two years, the majority of games are still cross-gen, with only a few others exclusive to the latest hardware. For that reason alone, I’ve had my eye on Square Enix’s Forspoken, as it’s being made solely for PS5 and PC. Further fuelling my interest is the fact that the game comes from developer Luminous Productions, a team made up of many Final Fantasy XV alums, the most recent numbered entry in my all-time favourite series. The central mix of magic-infused combat and parkour certainly didn’t hurt, either.
Now, after having played three hours of the open-world action-RPG, I have to say that I’ve come away largely impressed. Here’s why.
A lot more than a meme
My demo began in Chapter 2 as our protagonist, Frey Holland (Ella Balinska from Netflix’s Resident Evil), finds herself transported to a mysterious castle in the fantastic land of Athia. As evidenced by her plaid shirt and jeans, she doesn’t actually belong here; she’s a New Yorker. She then discovers a talking bangle on her wrist, which she quickly dubs “Cuff,” and ventures out to find a way home.
Now, before I go any further, I have to address the elephant in the room: Forspoken‘s dialogue. Earlier this year, one viral piece of marketing, in which Frey recaps all of her new outlandish abilities, was heavily criticized for being fast-talking, expository and unnatural. This led people to grow concerned about how grating the rest of the game could be. Luminous developers later responded by saying that these soundbites were taken out of context.
After seeing the full scene in action myself, I’m actually inclined to agree with the team. Several of those lines came early in my demo, after a fight in which Frey discovers her first magical powers, the ability to shoot rocks. With these new abilities, she makes quick work of a pack of wolf-like enemies, leading her to become overwhelmed with emotion — hence, the flurry of “wow, I just did that!”-style lines.
Is this “cringeworthy” like many have said? Sure, but I’d argue it’s cringeworthy in a way that’s reasonably believable and human. I could certainly see this girl, who very clearly has some sort of chip on her shoulder, feeling abundantly confident upon discovering she can fight off monsters with magical powers. It’s that momentary feeling of being on top of the world — invincible, even — that many youth fall prey to.
“Context is really that key thing. We’ve created what we believe is a very original character, a very fresh-feeling character, who is very complex and has so many different sides to her. She’s determined, she’s got a great sense of humour, but she’s also got a soft, kind of vulnerable side as well. And it’s hard to convey all that as a new IP, without any kind of past knowledge of the title or the story and try to introduce this new character out into the world,” says Raio Mitsuno, creative producer on Forspoken.
“It’s been a little bit of a challenge, because we don’t want to give away the story. We want to make sure that’s intact for players when they get to play the game. So we’ve been selective about what we show […] There’s a lot more to the character. She’s a character we could all go for. I think everyone’s going to feel a connection to her, and you’ll see her go through so many things. And I think she’s a character that a lot of people are going to fall in love with.”
Another side of this scene that was left out of the trailers is Cuff, who’s trying to keep Frey’s briefly inflated ego in check. In this way, I found myself quickly taking a liking to the sentient bracelet. With his soothing English tones, he initially seems like Iron Man’s AI J.A.R.V.I.S., but that betrays his decidedly droll and deprecating personality. This creates a humourous and engaging buddy cop-esque rapport between the two unwitting allies. Some of the barks during combat even elicited a chuckle, like Cuff asking the player to avoid getting hit again and Frey telling him to “shut the **** up” with a surprising bluntness.
“[Cuff] is partly a narrative tool to allow her to get a sense of the world and act as a guide, so to speak, but also be useful in battle and exploration. And the other idea with Cuff is, instead of just making it a useful tool, we wanted to give it a character and make it a personality on its own that can match the screen presence of Frey, even though it’s just a voice. Once we found [Balinska], who was perfect for the role, we wanted to find a personality that could create that great chemistry with Frey and have those kind of back-and-forth conversations,” says Mitsuno. “Their relationship is at the core of the story, too. As much as it is Frey’s journey, he’s there every step of the way, and you see their relationship go through these many changes as well. It’s very essential to the overall experience.”
It’s also clear that Luminous is looking to build up intrigue by leaving elements of Frey’s backstory a mystery, considering the demo began after the introductory New York chapter. As I played, there were certainly some hints sprinkled throughout; in one instance, she hints at having a complicated relationship with her father, and even when she’s sent through the portal to Athia, a sign that says “Holland Tunnel” can be seen behind her, suggesting she comes from some sort of wealth or influence. Seeing these seeds planted during my demo has me interested to find out where things go, especially since I’m a sucker for “daddy issues” stories.
According to Mitsuno, it’s the pursuit of such deeper character beats that resulted in Luminous tapping a Western writing team that consists of the likes of Uncharted creator Amy Hennig, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story co-writer Gary Whitta and Shadowhunters writer Allison Rymer.
“We’ve developed Final Fantasy games with these big, giant stories, but what they really excel at, what they really brought to Forspoken, is this micro level of looking at the human aspect of the story. Like, what Frey goes through and the relationships that she forms and how it all basically contributes to her growth and the trajectory that she goes on during this journey. So that was what we thought was really nice — that they were able to bring this really human element to the story.”
Not all of the story material has worked for me so far, though. For instance, Frey’s anger over the Chapter 3 death of a little girl named Olevia at the hands of one of the game’s villains, Tanta Sila, didn’t land quite as hard as it should given the relatively brief time they spend together. But in general, I like Frey and Cuff so far, and I enjoyed unpacking more of the game’s lore, which includes how the world and once-benevolent Tanta matriarchs have become corrupted by a mysterious force that Frey dubs the “Break.” It’s certainly not nearly as well-written as, say, Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy VII Remake, but it’s still much more promising than trailers would lead you to believe, and I’m looking forward to seeing more.
Quite the magical gameplay experience
With all of the story talk out of the way, I’ll get into what was easily the highlight of my time with Forspoken: the gameplay. Simply put, it’s some of the most fun I’ve had with combat and traversal systems in a while.
On a base level, the game just benefits from an unparalleled sense of flashiness that’s afforded by the PS5. Put another way: if Final Fantasy XV was awe-inspiring for the scale of its massive summons that strike the battlefield with earth-shattering, terrain-altering magic, then Forspoken takes that several steps further by letting you be such a force of nature yourself. And because of the added graphical power of the PS5, Forspoken has some of the most impressive display of particle effects and colourful environmental effects I’ve ever seen. From the way Frey’s vines smash out of the ground and spray debris everywhere to how she sears the ground with magmatic sparks, I was constantly marvelling at the visual splendour. It becomes quickly apparent how the game is benefiting from being current-gen-only, and that’s before you factor in the practically instantaneous fast-travel — the quickest I’ve ever seen in a console game.
“We felt that designing this new IP for the PS5, which is new hardware, was really an ideal opportunity to really showcase what the game can do with the high-speed SSD and adaptive triggers,” says Takeshi Aramaki, Forspoken co-director and head of Luminous. “These are all features that we’re really able to show off because we’re able to develop for the PS5, and the magic parkour and traversal and all of that high intensity, high-speed, is possible because of the PlayStation 5. So we really wanted to deliver a brand new game experience to new players.”
Spectacle aside, though, Frey’s moveset is just remarkably varied. Even when you first start off, her rock powers offer a surprising amount of versatility. For example, her standard Burst Shot fires clusters of rocks at the enemy, and you can charge this up to hurl a larger projectile. Initially, this starts as a small clump of earth, but I was pleased to see that upgrading this ability turned it into a sizeable boulder. These heavy-hitting attacks nicely contrast the Scatter Shot, in which Frey holds out her fingers, Emperor Palpatine-style, to pepper enemies with smaller debris before launching a big cluster, and the Shield Shot, which gives you a defensive rocky wall that you can charge up to then explode into smaller particles. It’s a rather ingenious system that keeps combat more manageable and less input-heavy than some other action games while still affording you a good amount of options.
Support abilities can also help turn the tides of battle. These include vines that can ensnare enemies and leave them open for follow-up attacks, a Venus Flytrap-esque plant that can whittle away at enemies on its own and a plantlike whip that can sap enemy health to replenish your own. And if that weren’t enough, large area of effect supermoves called ‘Surges’ are available once you fill up a metre by using attack and support abilities. Being able to summon hordes of thorny branches to skewer my enemies with the ‘Genesis’ Surge never got old during my demo.
“Since this is an action game, first and foremost, we wanted to make sure to maintain this balance of distance between the players and the different magic that they were using,” explains Takefumi Terada, co-director of Forspoken. “For example, at the start of the game, there’s a lot of mid-range magic that’s available to players and then as you progress in the game, there’s fire-based magic that’s more closer-range, and then later on there’s more water-based magic, which is like a further-range magic spell. So we were very conscious of making the distance between the player and then the battles and then we created four schools of magic as a basis.”
Indeed, my only real gripe with the combat early on was that Frey felt like she was lacking a melee option, and as Terada promised, one came towards the end of my demo. After beating Tanta Sila, Frey is able to absorb her powers, adding the villain’s sword-based fire attacks to her arsenal. Since I wasn’t allowed to go past this point, Square Enix instead booted up a different, more curated demo — the one that was just dropped for free onto the PlayStation Store — in which I could sample Sila’s abilities. Immediately, I fell in love with these moves. Besides a flaming sword always being inherently cool, it just felt gratifying to use, with Frey whirling around with delightful Devil May Cry-esque flair.
Complementing these close-range moves are Sila’s even more impressive Support abilities, which offer all sorts of crowd control benefits. My favourite, by far, was Crucible, in which Frey conjures up a giant wall of fire around her to entrap her foes; it felt like the ultimate power fantasy. But the other fire Support moves were well-worth using, too, like Bombardier, which sees Frey punt an enemy and cause a fiery explosion, or Legion, which calls forth enflamed zombie allies. The spectacle and utility of these moves is remarkable, and it made me feel like an absolute badass. In some ways, it’s the Dr. Strange game I’d always hoped for.
Altogether, Luminous says there are around 100 spells that Frey can use, including electric and water powers I didn’t get to play around with, and the thought of uncovering them all in the final game is quite tantalizing.
“This is really also well-suited to the open-world environment that players are placed in. Since it’s such a huge world with many different corners, there’s different areas where there’s magic that’s more in line with searching for things and then other parts where there’s magic that deals a lot of damage in combat,” adds Terada. “And since Athia has so many different areas, and there’s so many different magic spells that come out of that you can use, so this is very suited for just having a variety of 100 different spells that you can use, because the world is so large.”
I didn’t get too much of a bearing on how the new types of magic that Frey learns will actually help with traversal, but even at the start, her magical parkour is extremely fluid and satisfying. Her base movement ability, Flow, lets her run at high-speeds while vaulting over low objects in oh-so stylish twirls and tumbles. (Flow also allows for equally graceful dodges in combat.) Frey can also bound up walls with timed jumps to gain some verticality, which is essential in Athia’s often mountainous terrain. With so many open-world games relying on vehicles or even horses to get around, it’s refreshing to have this unique spin on parkour at the heart of Forspoken.
It feels appropriately paced, too, as Flow has a stamina metre that quickly replenishes. On-the-fly management of your stamina, including using abilities to instantly top it up at key moments, helps maintain a thrilling sense of momentum during traversal. Luminous has also teased several ways in which the parkour will only continue to expand, like a fire-based whip to pull Frey to new heights or a surfboard to glide along bodies of water. It’s easy to imagine how all of these could be used in conjunction to make zipping around the map feel immensely engaging and even rewarding.
I do, however, have some concerns with the open-world itself. It’s definitely pretty, like the rest of the game, and it’s got an old European-inspired vibe that feels lovingly reminiscent at times of classic Final Fantasy games. But it also feels a little barren at times, with NPCs seemingly relegated to cities, while the icon-filled map that includes timed challenges, stat-increasing landmarks and photo snapping missions feels a bit like a relic from the last console generation. Admittedly, my demo was primarily focused on going through story missions, so it’s certainly possible I’ll come to appreciate all of this more. For now, though, I have some reservations.
Just give it a chance!
After my extensive hands-on with Forspoken, I honestly have to say that the hate Forspoken has been getting is pretty overblown. Having actually played the game, I’m now a lot more confident in Luminous’ vision. While it remains to be seen how the broader story and open-world will play out, the moment-to-moment gameplay and character interactions have won me over so far. Frey’s magical abilities, in particular, are, so far, an absolute blast to use and well-worth the price of admission alone.
If you have a PS5 or PC and like action games, you should absolutely keep Forspoken on your radar when it releases on PlayStation 5 and PC on January 24th, 2023.
But beyond that, it actually encouraged me to play a bit differently. Admittedly, I sometimes rush through areas to get to the next quest or cutscene, in part because the experience is grabbing me but also because I just want to get to the next game in my ever-growing backlog. With the new Wild Hunt update, though, I found myself going through the Continent more methodically, even after I’d taken the time to initially take note of what’s improved.
