It doesn’t help that there’s plenty of fog and smoke that covers your line of sight, probably there for technical reasons. The lands look and feel uninspired, not enticing enough for the curious eye to go around and see “Ooh this looks interesting! Let’s head there!” which is something you don’t want to happen for an open-world game. There are plenty of well-sculpted rocky cliffs in Athia, but other than that, this supposedly fantasy land looks too real and grounded for its own good. The design of buildings, abandoned towns and the few man-made monuments do look extravagant and impressive at times, but when the few buildings that you actually interact with like the Pilgrim Refuges and the Guild Towers are all copy-pasted in looks and layout, that impressiveness is drowned by excessive asset reuse. It feels plain, both figuratively and literally since most of the lands are just empty plain after empty plains. However, the world design of Athia in general feels… bland. There’s great attention to detail in each magic power being channelled, and pair that with the impressive particle effects and mesmerising geometries that appear when you use magic, and it makes for an audio/video splendour. The swooshes and vooshes when you go magical parkouring, the impact of falling off a cliff only to be protected by magical wards that sonically shatter like they are made of brittle glass, the crisp of fiery rage when you channel red magic. The sound effect design is impeccable too. But for those that can stick to 30 fps but want consistent resolution, or want those sweet sweet ray tracing effects, those are available too. You’re trading off visual clarity (read: blurry and smoothen-out imagery) for something averaging 60 fps in performance mode, and it’s totally a fair trade. It runs well enough on performance mode with only a few noticeable framerate drops despite having twenty or so small enemies on screen with the particle effects all popping off. Yet somehow, its fleeting freedom is shackled by numerous design and writing issues.įorspoken looks good on PS5. It’s a shame, because there are definitely some good aspects and ideas in Luminous Productions’ first new game free from the baggage and mounting expectations of the Final Fantasy name. That later became Forspoken, and once the publisher revealed the next numbered Final Fantasy entry and the sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake are also coming to PS5, Forspoken seemed to become somewhat estranged.įorspoken is still a PS5 console exclusive (there is a PC version available), but most of the Squenix fanbase have all left Forspoken forsaken. At one point in time, the biggest game Square Enix has when the PS5 was announced was Project Athia, a new IP from the team behind Final Fantasy XV (now rebranded as Luminous Productions).
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