Forspoken Concept Writer Gary Whitta Reveals That Square Enix Completely Rebooted the Story from His Pitch

wccftech.com:

Shortly after its release, rumors that Forspoken had received significant changes throughout its development started circulating on the Web. The rumors may have been indirectly validated by the statements renowned writer Gary Whitta (Star Wars: A Rogue One) made in a recent video interview with Alanah Pearce. When Pearce asked Whitta whether he wrote any of the game's dialogues, he said he didn't. Whitta didn't play the game, but as far as he understands, only the name of the world (Athia) remains from his pitch after Square Enix decided to completely reboot the narrative and changed the writers a couple of times. Here's the full story relayed by Whitta.

I don't think so. I mean, I never wrote an actual line of dialogue, but at the same time, I haven't seen the finished game. I've not played Forspoken, so I honestly don't know. I think I'm credited for the original concept or something like that. What happened was that Square came to me five or six years ago and said 'We have this idea, but it's just a germ of an idea. Would you be willing to help us build out the world and the mythology and the story?'. I went away and came up with some ideas for them and presented them. They liked them and they said 'Would you run a writer's room to really build it out?' I love writer's rooms, it's one of my favorite places to be. I get no more joy out of anything like being in a room with other really talented writers and just like chewing the fat and talking about story. I've done a bunch of those.

[...] It's really fun and that's kind of what we did with what eventually became Forspoken. I said I'd like to do a room and I got to handpick a bunch of writers that I admire from film and television and video games and literature and