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The debut title from Luminous Productions, Forspoken, sees you plucked out of New York and hurtled into the magical world of Athia. It’s a fairy tale-inspired adventure crafted by writers from TV and film. It features a massive, open-world map and allows you to explore and experience everything on offer. The game got a huge success after its release. Here is what you need to know from our point of view.
Let’s start with the environment and the story that revolves around a young woman named Frey Holland, who is transported to the broken land of Athia. The game takes place in a fantasy world where you fight monsters with the power of elemental spells. You will have the ability to run incredibly fast, climb and jump across beautiful, high-fidelity environments.
Charming 30 FPS Visuals against Dated Mission Design
These days, many developers think RPG games should be played at 30 FPS and 4K resolutions. This way, their games can offer the best quality to their players. However, many others don’t think the same.
Despite the fact that Forspoken is designed to be a PS5 exclusive, the game is capped at 30 frames-per-second, which doesn’t feel like enough for a modern action title, and it slows down the entire experience, especially when you’re magic-dashing around a gorgeous vista.
What’s more, Forspoken combines the mechanics of a classic 3D action shooter game with next-gen visuals that make you think of Dark Souls 1 and 3. The best part is that, when everything slows down, it’s really beautiful to look at a scene in the game’s late-game where you parkour through an opulent fantasy version of New York looks fantastic.
Forspoken has a lot going for it and a lot of potentials to be great. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite deliver that in every area, and there are some issues that stand out.
More like A Traditional RPG
Throughout her travels, Frey Holland encounters an array of enemies, ranging from corrupted bears and zombies to knights and soldiers. It’s here that Forspoken‘s parkour mechanics really come into play, with the game encouraging you to climb over walls, run through narrow spaces and leap across obstacles at breakneck speeds.
The gameplay takes a while to get used to, but once it does, it’s pretty addictive. The fusion of free-running parkour with magic spells in Forspoken makes for an experience that’s both thrilling and challenging.
Combat is a lot like a cross between a traditional RPG and an action game, with Frey casting spells that range from throwing a lump of explosive rocks to summoning a horde of barbed branches from the ground. Both types of magic offer intricate skill trees that can be used to unlock powerful new abilities.
Forspoken has a long way to go, but the small taste of its fluid and responsive combat intrigues us for the full experience. If it continues to introduce new ways for Frey to keep her combat and traversal fresh, Forspoken could become one of the most exciting open-world games to date.
There May be a Few Performance Problems
The graphics of Forspoken are based on the developer’s in-house Luminous Engine, which can render detailed models and expansive open worlds. The game will also support ray tracing for lighting and shadows, but you will need to adjust the settings accordingly.
One major issue with the graphics is visible pop-ins on faraway objects. These pop-ins are most noticeable when you’re in the middle of a battle with a monster or while looking at a large map in the distance.
To fix this problem, you can change the quality of the game’s image settings. There are three options: Quality-focused, which aims to achieve stable 30fps at 4K resolution; Performance-focused, which targets 60fps at 1440p; and Ray Tracing mode, which adds ray tracing light effects.
The Performance-focused option is best for gamers who want to get the most out of Forspoken‘s visuals without sacrificing performance. This option also offers a higher frame rate that matches the game’s fast-paced action.
Luminous Productions has revealed a new patch that will improve the game’s performance. The patch is aimed at fixing various technical issues, making graphical adjustments, and adding “general updates” to both the PlayStation 5 and PC versions.
