YMMV / Forspoken

• Adorkable: Frey has more than a few moments where her fascination and delight with the "weird shit" in Athia gets the better of her, like jumping up and down on the surface of the condensed Break in the first corrupted region (and then screaming like she's on a roller coaster the whole way down), her giddy delight over learning the levitation spell, or her obvious pride and enjoyment when she starts picking up the Athian script.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Many of Frey's self-centered priorities and limited social graces might not be simply due to being a Jerkass, but could be from her difficult upbringing as a street kid who's grown up being juggled from foster home to foster home without any real positive social influences in her life.
  • How much of Cuff's relationship with Frey is genuine, as opposed to self-preservation? Is he only helping her because he'll be stranded if she dies (and because she's the only one who can kill the Tantas and free him), or has he grown genuinely fond of her by the end of the game, in spite of all that happens?
    • His relationship with Rheddah is also left ambiguous. How much of a say in the Rheddig revenge plot did he actually have? Was it entirely voluntary, or was he as much their prisoner as he was the Tantas'? Or is he just lying about that?
    Cuff: It's not about what I want. I was given life so that Athia might burn.
  • Athia itself. The Tantas are presented as having been benevolent, wise, and Universally Beloved Leaders before The Corruption, but their conflict with Rheddah seems like way more than a simple territory dispute. The way Susurrus frames it, his release and the creation of the Break is less about the Tantas' defense against the first invasion, and more a last-ditch attempt to bring Athia down with them. There's also the fact that the Tantas' victory is widely known as the "Purge of the Rheddig," a term which historically holds some pretty grim implications.
    Susurrus: Do you really think the Rheddig would just crawl away and die after what the Tantas did to them?
• Cliché Storm: The plot of the game combines just about every single idea of a The Chosen One being Trapped in Another World, taking the From Zero to Hero path. It can get grating at times for those players who think the plot feels more like a checklist of clichés than a genuine script.
• Critical Dissonance: It got decent to okay reviews from critics due to its gameplay, but audiences have been far more negative towards the game due to the cliché plot and non-existent optimization.
• Ending Fatigue: A signifigant portion of the eleventh chapter (of twelve) of the game is a prolonged exposition dump that's basically a Walking Simulator punctuated by the occasional plot-irrelevant miniboss fight, and then you go straight to chapter 12 which is the Final Boss.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Two Worlds II fandom, of all games, chiefly due to the announcement trailers of Forspoken making the magic system at least appear similar to the creative system used in Two Worlds II, on top of a massive open world, and the main characters of both games being people Trapped in Another World.
• Fandom Rivalry: Forspoken had an unusual one with Hi-Fi RUSH. While the games have little in common aside from being console exclusives released in January 2023, one of the few things they did share became a subject of debate; the snarky, irreverent dialogue that the main character sprouts in each. Fans of Forspoken were annoyed and thought it hypocritical that their game was heavily lambasted for it, while Hi-Fi Rush was praised for it, on top of the latter seeing greater critical and commercial success despite a Surprise Release. Meanwhile, fans of Hi-Fi RUSH argued that the style of dialogue is much more tonally consistent with the setting and narrative of their game, while it clashes too much with Forspoken's more serious, grounded story.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The game can be finished in 12-15 hours, making it significantly shorter than the average action-adventure title of the time. While the time it would take to 100% complete everything is on par with its contemporaries, the short completion time for the main story meant that even favorable reviews criticized the title for having a $70US price tag while not having enough for more casual players who wouldn't engage much with any side content. It doesn't help that the majority of said side content is grindy collectible collection rather than anything involving further plot development or unique gameplay.
• Magnificent Bastard: Susurrus is an intimidating Divinely Appearing Demon who was summoned to destroy the world of Athia by the destroyed people of Rheddig. Over twenty years before the events of the present, Susurrus was sealed within the protectors of Athia, the four Tantas. In the present, corrupting the Tantas from within, Sussurus sets about a plan to return himself to glory and full power. Susurrus manipulates Frey Holland into putting him on in his form of a golden "Cuff" and then stirs her into taking out the other Tantas so he can reabsorb his divided power into himself. Susurrus also acts as her seemingly affable companion "Cuff" while helping her to best various threats to make his return to full power smoother. Reviving himself fully, Susurrus sets about destroying Athia for good to avenge the Rheddig and very nearly succeeds before being sealed again by Frey. Even after his defeat, Surrus simply calmly accepts it and now helps Frey in undoing the damage caused by his machinations.
• Memetic Mutation: Most of the dialogue, particularly from the trailer, has been snowcloned a lot in reference to clumsy attempts at Bathos or Buffy Speak - Particularly "I just [x] with my freaking MIND!" and the "So let me get this straight..." speech.
• Narm: A cutscene late into the game has Tanta Cinta showing Frey the moment where she decided to send her as an infant through a portal to New York in order to keep her safe from the corruption. What was intended to be a somber scene is hampered by the fact that she straight-up throws the baby into the portal without even looking at the other side to see where she'll end up.
• Never Live It Down: Frey's Gosh Dang It to Heck! dialogue that starts with "So let me get this straight" became famous after being featured in a promotional trailer on August 2022. This led some of the non-player demographic to believe this is how she speaks the whole time. While the dialogue itself appears in the game, it's not how Frey normally talks; she drops Cluster F-Bomb casually. While most don't mind quoting this line due to how unintentionally funny it sounds, the player only has to beat the prologue to realize the trailer is misleading.
• Padding: Most of the open world consists of rather bland "unlock this landmark" type activities, with nothing in the way of interesting storyline-related sidequests or dynamic world events. One of the only meaningful side events are the Labyrinth Dungeons, combat arenas with unique bosses that give you a piece of lore at the end that ties into the main plot.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The consensus from critics and some players is that the core gameplay mechanics, while not perfect, can be legitimately fun and immensely satisfying once one gets the hang of them, with many critics praising the traversal system for how fun and exhilarating it is to run, jump, and parkour through Athia at insanely fast speeds; on top of regarding the magic combat system to be the game's strongest attribute. By contrast, others consider the story to be an incredibly predictable and bland Cliché Storm that suffers from uneven pacing and weak writing.
• Shipping: The biggest ship in the fandom is Frey and Auden, mainly due to the chemistry between them and the fact that Auden is the first person in Athia to believe in Frey, even when Frey herself doesn't.
• Shocking Moments: In Tanta We Trust ends with a very surprising Wham Line that'll throw everyone off, with The Reveal being that Rheddah, the Arch-Enemy of Athia, have their own Tantas.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The game starts with a solid 45-50 minutes of cutscenes and "Walking Simulator" style interactions, with it taking almost an hour before you actually get to the magic combat and parkour which is supposed to be the core gameplay. To make it far worse, it takes about 9-10 hours in total to finish the main quest—the slow opening included. Something that compounds this is that Frey receiving the rest of her magic powers is very back-loaded in the game. The main story is 12 chapters long, and Frey doesn't get her second type of magic until the end of chapter 5. She gets her third type of magic at the end of chapter 8, and her fourth and final type of magic during chapter 11. So for nearly the first half of the game, you only have access to a quarter of Frey's total skillset.
• So Okay, It's Average: While some elements of the gameplay, like the magic system and traversal mechanics, are praised, at the same time the plot and dialogue are often seen as cliché. As such, reviews are hovering around the 63-65 range on Metacritic.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • A made-for-Twitter TV spot undeniably tainted the game's online reputation in the months leading up to its release. As explained by a professional game trailer editor, the stark Mood Whiplash between the fantastical imagery and the jocular, "in your face" tone of the narration (made further egregious by: 1.) the overlaying text drawing further attention to said dialogue instead of the gameplay, and 2.) the absence of a sincere narrative "hook" to draw emotional investment) leaves a poor impression on anyone who doesn't know anything else about the game's world or story.
  • The reveal of the PC specs shortly before launch set off quite a few alarm bells for PC players. With the game requiring monstrously high specs^Specs32 GB of RAM, Intel I7 12700K/AMD 5800X, and an RTX 4080/RX6800 to run at 4K and 60 frames per second, and even the minimum specs for 720P 30 frames per second are fairly high. This has led to many fears among PC players that the game is poorly optimized on PC, itself a recurring issue with Square Enix games.^note The only benefit is one of the first PC games utilizing DirectStorage 1.1 for near-instant load times while limiting the CPU's bottleneck percentage for players having an NVMe SSD (Gen3 or faster) setup.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Basically the beginning of the game, showing Frey's miserable life as she tries to survive in New York by resorting to crime. She even saves money so that she can get out of New York and find a better life. When she gets in trouble with a gang, they set her apartment on fire, and she loses everything in the arson except her cat Homer.
  • After the fire, she gives up Homer to Judge Bird, the only person shown to be nice to her. It is obvious that Frey is trying so hard to not break down in front of her during their conversation. Props to Ella Balinska's heartbreaking performance for selling Frey's sorrow and misery.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One of the central plot points, adventuring around a fantasy land with a Clingy Macguffin sidekick who is actually the Big Bad in a depowered state, has been done quite successfully in several games of the past, from Okage: Shadow King (which had a very similar core premise), to spending the first half of Fallout 3 with Malcolm McDowell on your shoulder telling you how the two of you are going to make America great again. Unfortunately, Forspoken does nothing interesting with the premise, none of Cuff's dialogue has significant added or hidden meaning if you go over it again in hindsight after The Reveal, and Cuff's performance doesn't really have the personal charisma or depth of character to make him a compelling character.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Despite the game's issues, some actors manage to have their performance highlights:
  • Ella Balinska's performance has been praised as being the best that could have been done with the dialogue she was given, and praise has been given to a genuine heartfelt performance in the beginning that establishes Frey's loneliness in the real world.
  • Monica Barbaro manages to sound nearly unrecognisable with her compelling performance as Auden Keen.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: According to the Analysis Channel Digital Foundry, the game has excellent character and object models and poor lighting technology, which combine to make all sorts of things look not quite real enough. Several players have pointed out that the faces in particular contribute to the uncanny nature of the game, making it hard to ignore. On the whole the characters look a good one or two console generations behind the times, even for an open-world game. This is most apparent for the supporting characters like Auden and Pilo, but even Frey's character model doesn't seem to capture Ella Balinska's likeness with the same visual fidelity as games released years before that used Ink-Suit Actors, such as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Death Stranding, or even the much lower-budget Days Gone. The one character whose model seems to accurately capture their actress' appearance is Debra Wilson as Councilwoman Belette, perhaps due to her distinct sharp and angular features translating well to a virtual medium.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While Frey is an orphan who was found abandoned on the streets and fell into the dystopian land of Athia, her cynical Deadpan Snarker tendencies can have her come off as more of a sarcastic and self-centered jerk. It also doesn't help that her first action in the game is to refuse the help of a judge who gives her community service instead of life in prison under the Three-strikes Law ^note  Frey is being arraigned on attempted grand larceny in the opening and her rapsheet shows she has been previously charged on two counts of felony theft . As for the crisis that Athia finds itself in, Frey is constantly reluctant to help its people at best, and at worst telling someone who needs help that she doesn't want to and doesn't care. While Auden does give her a dose of What the Hell, Hero?, it comes far later in the story than players would have expected, and it doesn't affect Frey enough to change her attitude in the long run.

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