(PS5/PC) Forspoken

[Stanley]

6 hours ago, amc said:

What it looks to me is (as someone who hasn't got a fucking clue) the devs/higher ups love huge vistas but their engine isn't up to the job. Hungry RAM requirements and mucho shitty textures and LOD ensues.

 

Oh, and similar to the post a couple above-

 

Forgotten.

Not making excuses for it, but the game does move at quite some pace, so I’d imagine that’s taking up quite a bit of resources. 

[thesnwmn]

Its fascinating that almost every impression in here is graphics and technology related. A few vague statements that it's not great as a game. But pretty damning I'd say when people would rather play armchair DF analyst.

[Thor]

Thought I'd give the demo a go. Visually it's rather nice, looks a lot like Elden Ring actually. But I did not like the gameplay (rsi-tastic) and that voice in her head that is absolutely definitely not Jarvis from Iron Man, is annoying. 

 

It looks like the game has potential though. Will try the full version when it's on PS+ premium. 

[Ferine]

I've put a decent amount of time into this now, so a few scattered thoughts:

 

Despite pre-release dogpiling, the dialogue is fine. The quality of lines and voice direction varies – some reads emphasise the wrong words, that kind of thing – but I'd say it wavers between decent and inoffensive. There's options to reduce the ambient chatter between Frey and Cuff, if it annoys you.

 

Combat has a lot going for it but is somewhat hampered by the game's progression. Basically you unlock a new type of magic each time you defeat one of the main bosses – opening up entirely new suites of combat, support and traversal spells – which is cool in the sense that your powers substantially change as the game goes on, but also means you start off with a relatively limited set of tools. I'd recommend focussing on the main plot until you've at least defeated the first Tanta.

 

Related to the above, the traversal abilities you unlock make a big difference to the play experience and unlock access to new areas. Upgrading abilities via the optional challenge system also makes a big difference, e.g. doing the one for your tether ability removes its stamina cost entirely.

 

I set magical parkour to a toggle rather a hold, which I think works better for dashing around the battlefield. Frey's propensity to vault over everything – environment and enemies alike – can be a bit fiddly at times as being in the air changes what some spells do, but in general I think moving around the environment feels good and improves a lot as you unlock new abilities.

 

Graphically if seems like a game designed for global illumination, but that doesn't even appear to be an option on the PC version. As such it can often look a bit 'flat', even though the general asset quality and density of environmental detail is good. The magic effects and number of enemies on screen can be impressive, though.

 

Generally I think it's a bit of an awkward game, by which I mean you can feel the seams where they've tried to squash everything together into a more cohesive whole. For example, the opening is lousy with weird fades to black during sequential cut scenes. Forspoken also has a repeatable activity where you chase cats around the central city, which is utterly without challenge and doesn't leverage the extensive non-magic parkour animations that must've taken a lot of effort to implement in the game. Feels like they pulled things together as best they could but needed to paper over certain cracks; FFXV gave me a similar feeling.

 

The combat and traversal are fun, however, and those are what you're doing 95% of the time. Not sure if this is one of those games that will improve a lot after 6-months of patches – I haven't found it buggy at all and I think we're well past them addressing the stuff that feels rushed – but I'd definitely recommend people give it a go once it inevitably comes down in price.

 

It's a different type of game but I wouldn't be surprised if Forspoken ultimately has a somewhat similar trajectory to Dragon's Dogma: largely written off before release, launches with obvious rough spots, but finds its audience thanks to the depth of its mechanics.

[stir fry]

I've not really put the time in yet, the technical issues and textures pushed me back to Prey for the moment, but I guess one thing I'd like to know if it's maybe a good idea to just mainline the story and unlock the full kit first, then do the side-content with all unlocked?

 

I put a good bit of time into the demo and came away with a solid understanding I think of the way you charge up attacks out of actions, so the small bit I've played so far has been a bit stultifying as it's sort of just a third person shooter with some cooldowns right now and it will take a long time to even just get back to demo power level. But some of the other magic schools look nuts and is the thing I plan on spending lots of time figuring out tech with, probably capture lots of OBS footage with.

[Ferine]

1 minute ago, stir fry said:

I've not really put the time in yet, the technical issues and textures pushed me back to Prey for the moment, but I guess one thing I'd like to know if it's maybe a good idea to just mainline the story and unlock the full kit first, then do the side-content with all unlocked?

At the very least I'd recommend taking the first Tanta down as quick as you can, as then you'll have access to Frey's nature magic and a suite of fire abilities. It also gets you the tether ability, which opens up a lot more of the map and makes traversing the world a lot better; you can use it on the ground to nullify fall damage, for example.

 

I haven't unlocked the third element myself yet, as I have been doing a decent amount of side stuff. I've had fun upgrading my gear and stats as it's actually made a pretty big difference to the combat – I started on Hard – but I do have a completionist streak and a fairly high tolerance for busywork. There's nothing stopping you running past basically all the points of interest, so I imagine you good burn through the story relatively quickly; my understanding is that there is some kind of post-game that allows you to roam about with all your abilities.

 

My main bit of advice would be check through all the game's options. Certain ones, such as toggling auto-pickup for items, make a huge difference to the experience. I also recommend turning off the adaptive triggers if you're using a DualSense, as the implementation doesn't add much except finger strain.

[Benny]

I tried the PC demo of this earlier. Instantly bad impression: it's one of the most boring and ugly looking games I've played in a while. And it doesn't help that there is no way to improve that fugly: there is some kind of bug that just causes textures to flicker everywhere from higher to lower detail ones, and that was even after I put the settings on standard and down to only 1080p, WITH DLSS Quality mode on a 3060TI.

 

Even when it's all stable for a point of comparison I put on the Horizon Zero Dawn PC version afterwards and it was just night and day. I don't normally worry too much about technical aspects of games if they play well, but in this case on the PC version at least it really looked and behaved like a broken mess.

 

I did try actually playing it however, and it was painfully, painfully generic and boring. Just little things like the neutral jump was weirdly weak and floaty - you can tell if a game is going to have a draw if it "feels" right to play and this really did not.

 

Maybe the full game is better, but on the strength of the PC demo I will not be rushing to find out.

 

I'm going right back to Hi-Fi Rush to wash my eyes and brain out

[Rorschach]

On 25/01/2023 at 07:27, thesnwmn said:

Its fascinating that almost every impression in here is graphics and technology related. A few vague statements that it's not great as a game. But pretty damning I'd say when people would rather play armchair DF analyst.

 

FWIW I had a bit of a go with the demo, and I definitely got the impression that the traversal and combat would be more fun if it could keep to 60 frames a second. I might have another go as apparently the settings are far from idiot proof and it's easy to select options which cause issues. It gives a bad first impression if a game is performing poorly, a lot of people are not going to want to try and power through and see if it's enjoyable besides that. Probably doesn't help that a lot of the people making comments in here are people who downloaded the demo on a whim, rather than people who were really looking forward to this game specifically.

[stir fry]

I think the game has been a bit of a magnet for outrage, but also a big deal was made of its 'next-gen-ness' and I don't blame people for picking it apart when it doesn't look particularly good and doesn't really seem to be have much in the way of features that seem to require the kind of hardware it's asking for. It seems like something went a bit wrong with it, FFXV* has better visuals. Stuff like RT doesn't seem to work right, the lighting in general seems a bit wrong. HDR blown out and over-exposed etc. Insane VRAM requirements when nothing much is happening on screen, LODs flickering in and out etc. List goes on

 

Anyway, I promise I'll make my next post actually about impressions on the gameplay itself, gonna get back into it this evening after TLOU HBO. The whole reason I wanted to get it in the first place was cause of the Dragon's Dogma-ness of its combat system and I'm still excited to figure that stuff out.

 

*(and that also had a great PC port with tons of high end PC exclusive options)

[Ferine]

I think the demo does the game a disservice, really. It's very much a trade show demo, plonking you midway through the game with threadbare explanation of how things work, but without a member of staff to talk you through things.

 

The actual game eases you into the mechanics fairly well: the general progression of individually unlocking spells, then upgrading them via challenges typically highlighting their use cases. There's a lot of spells to manage but similarly there's numerous ways to switch between the ability sets – radial menu, d-pad, touchpad, via certain attacks – so there's a several ways to comfortably chain things together.

 

The combat is somewhat reminiscent of Infamous and Control, although I'd say Forspoken's is better than both. I'm not sure the game presents it in the best light, though, as certain non-default options – like toggling parkour and slowing down time during spell selection – really help with the flow in fights.

 

I didn't talk about the story before, but I'm finding it pretty engaging. I'm curious in seeing where it goes and I like that Frey isn't your typical JRPG protagonist: she's abrasive and often retreats into selfishness, which is at least interesting. Unfortunately the majority of the side quests you can pick up in town are pure low-effort filler, which is a shame as the main quest barely encourages you to explore the massive world; mechanically it's worthwhile, but it's odd that they don't push you towards any of it.

[Curtis]

I am thoroughly enjoying this! Its kinda like Infamous meets Dragon's Dogma. 

 

The combat is ace once you unlock the second spell set because of the melee options it adds, allowing you to mix it up with the pew-pew-ing from afar. Some of the bigger spells and ultimates are absolutely insane and fill the screen with pure mayhem. 

 

I had to slow myself down from bee-lining the story (which is rather engaging and full of plot twists), to take some time and explore the massive map. Its strange the game doesn't encourage this because there are so many locations to discover, which upon clearing, boost your stats. I would definitely recommend doing a whole bunch of these if you don't wanna be super-squishy in the late game.

 

I'm soooooo glad i was bored last week and took a punt on this. I never tried the demo due to its download size, and i'm better off for it, because from what i've been reading in this thread the demo is clearly not a good representation of the full game.

[Benny]

I'm genuinely baffled they put that demo out, as I can't help but think it harmed rather than helped it. Even without the terrible technical issues on PC at least.

[stir fry]

One thing I found in the brief bit I played last night is I was really mixing up the rock powers in a way I didn't in the demo, where I overlooked them. Using shield shot at close range for a sort of safe crowd control, going back to the other two ranged ones at different ranges. Also finding ways to setup 'prime' (the ground mine) by bouncing enemies off into it with other rock spells or tendril. Chaos everywhere

 

One thing I'll say cause I don't know if the game will tutorialise it: when you do a support spell and a R2 attack right after, it will instantly charge to its highest level. Whether that is 1, 2 or 3. Same if you do parkour, or attack in the air. I actually think getting the R2 attack upgrades asap (at least to level 2) are the most impactful upgrades you can make

[stir fry]

Luminous getting reabsorbed within Square. Sounds like staff will be reassigned to other teams and probably some layoffs

 

I beat 2 of the tantas in this but have struggled to make my way back to the game. The combat stuff can be good but I think the game overall ended up feeling anemic, where the parkour and combat was the only really decent thing but nowhere near as deep or fluid enough to carry a game like this. It needed a bit more going on unfortunately.

 

I wonder what will happen with the DLC now (studio statement says it's on track)

 

 

[Qazimod]

On 28/02/2023 at 11:14, stir fry said:

I wonder what will happen with the DLC now (studio statement says it's on track)

 

 

[stir fry]

Sounds like a Kingdom Hearts soundtrack.

 

I've been meaning to wrap this up, I was going to see if I could learn how to play it on keyboard to see if I can escape the skill wheel part of the gameplay, cause it stops the game from feeling cool imo. The cooldown stuff is a bit of an obstacle to finding stylish ways to play, and auto cycling through cooldowns isn't a good fix for that.

[Girth Certificate]

Forspoken's pal there has the same taste in Too Many Accessories as Forspoken herself does.