Forspoken's Potential Is Held Back By A Complete Lack Of Personality

thegamer.com:

Square Enix just released an extensive Forspoken gameplay trailer, and it looks pretty great. The combat has flashes of Devil May Cry and Nier Automata, while its open world traversal that prioritises parkour manages to feel like a strange mixture of Sunset Overdrive and Final Fantasy 15. The potential is there, but it’s sorely lacking a sense of personality to its setting and characters. Without this vital ingredient, I fear the entire experience will fall apart.

The upcoming JRPG hasn’t had a good time since its initial reveal. I wasn’t kind to its underwhelming world and bland lead character in my original preview, while haphazard marketing and multiple delays have resulted in it becoming a half-baked meme of sorts across the internet. A brief clip on social media was lambasted for its Whedonesque dialogue and delivery so corny that it made the entire game feel like an expensive joke.

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Unfortunately for Square Enix, Forspoken hasn’t quite managed to usurp its polarising reputation, largely because it hasn’t provided us with a good enough reason to leave it behind. Continued delays and a lack of communication has meant that the memes have been able to drive the conversation, and not nearly enough has been explored within the game itself to ignite passion or prove it’s doing something we’ve never seen before. The new gameplay trailer seeks to challenge that perspective, but it doesn’t do quite enough.

Protagonist Frey Holland is seen exploring the massive open world of Athia, with a narrator taking us through a variety of locations filled with regular citizens and corrupt monsters for us to encounter. It’s fairly predictable stuff, with viewers