After being delayed not once but twice, abandoned is finally at the cusp of its january 24the release date. We’ve spent the last week magically parkouring across the lands of Athia, fighting hundreds of zombie-like enemies and corrupting so many to deliver our verdict. Have the delays been fruitful or did Luminous Productions still need more time for their debut game?
Oh girl she just wanna…go home
Forspoken begins its story in a New York courthouse, with an awkwardly handled setup for its story that casts orphaned protagonist Alfre “Frey” Holland as a petty criminal with a long rap sheet. The opening of this courtroom drama is dull and misguided, with Frey’s initial characterization rather muffled in today’s climate, and not helped by jarring dialogue that contrasts his history of gang violence with MCU-style cringe humor. Fortunately, things improve with both Frey and the story in general after she finds a sentient gold bracelet called the Cuff, which inexplicably thrust her into a whole new world, Athia.
This once beautiful and peaceful world is ruled by four Tantas, or goddesses, who have become corrupted by something called Break, a miasma that infects everything organic it touches and, in extreme cases, kills them outright. Anything but Frey, which is to say, he seems to be immune to its effects in most cases.
This sets Frey up with one main goal: to return home. Why exactly he wants to go back to a life she was so stubborn to leave behind is a bit confusing, as the game itself points out many times. But the voice acting is excellent, even if the dialogue is noticeably gritty, though Frey is bound to divide opinion as the lead. She is a 21-year-old girl who swears a lot, she doesn’t want to be bothered by other people’s problems and is pretty fed up with everyone’s nonsense.
Storytelling is not one of Forspoken’s strong points, and this is best evidenced by this nonchalant introduction, but the lore that can be found throughout the land of Athia is better, as there are many tales of love, loss, reconstruction and more to come. found in various notes and memorabilia found during Frey’s travels. Athia is divided into several states, and those states are further divided into (former) towns and cities. The map is huge, but not overwhelming, and easy to navigate. Zooming in enough on the map causes it to transform from an aerial view to an isometric view, like a miniature version that has much more detail about the geography and architecture.
A rough introduction, but a fun fight.
The Forspoken intro might not set the tone well, but it’s worth following through the early chapters and getting to the open world section. Like most open-world games released in recent years, the entire map is open to the player upon completing the intro, complete with huge mini-boss enemies that can and will kill you in a hit or two.
There’s all kinds of terrain to climb over, though with the Frey’s Flow traversal mechanic, you can do it in a much more orchestrated way. Holding the circle button activates a sort of autopilot mode for Frey, both in terms of how he moves and how he dodges attacks.
Whenever a dodgeable attack is received, if the player holds the circle button (and has enough stamina), Frey will automatically dodge it. Shooting with R2 is buffed during his dodge animation, resulting in a fancy way to finish off your would-be assassin. However, certain attacks cannot be blocked, and just like someone using the Tesla Autopilot functionality must still be aware of road conditions, the player must also know where to go and where threats are coming from. potentials, since this does not magically. turning Forspoken into a kind of autoplay idle game.
The combat is as varied as promised during our preview last month. Frey starts with his basic purple magic and defeating the Tantas of the world grants new magic in different colors and wildly different fighting styles. Holding L1 allows the player to select a support magic which, as the name suggests, casts spells designed to aid Frey in battle. This usually means creating a shield or sapping nearby enemies’ health, but there are also offensive support options, such as setting booby traps, spawning a flower that doubles as a turret (especially useful against flying enemies), or creating a dome. of fire that increases your attacks when you are inside it. A third type of spell called surge magic serves as Frey’s super moves, which are devastating area-damaging attacks.
unlimited ammo’
Rather than having a mana pool from which to cast these spells, each of Frey’s support abilities has a separate cooldown timer, while her main attack spells are effectively unlimited (and usually have the option to charge them for obtain a greater effect). Bigger/more powerful spells naturally have a longer cooldown timer, and of course the aforementioned wave magic has the longest cooldown timer of all. An option in Forspoken allows the game to automatically switch to a cooled power if you so desire, which can be useful if you simply want to shoot all you’ve got at an enemy without having to slow down and decide what you want. I would like to shoot.
Early in the story, Frey stumbles upon havens dotted across the shattered landscape, serving as places to recuperate and create. But they also contain bookshelves, where he can choose to track up to three Spellcraft challenges. These are mini quests that task the player with performing certain feats with the selected spell. This is a great way to get players used to all the options at their disposal. An example would be using Frey’s purple magic against enemies that are weak to it, thus teaching you to scan an enemy using Cuff’s scan ability before fighting, or another challenge that asks players to jump on enemies and then attack them using the sword of Tanta Sila. melee magic Completing these challenges results in an increase in some of Frey’s stats, in addition to mastering the skill she has learned.
Beyond enhancing spells, Frey also has capes, necklaces, and nail polish to enhance her stats. There are dozens of different resources to collect, from plants to rocks and various other items. The nail polish is interesting because each hand can have a different design painted on it, with various effects like increased attacks, decreased cooldowns, etc. Finding the right combination of gear with upgrades unlocked can make Frey immune to poison with a much faster stamina recharge rate, making the player feel almost unstoppable as the story progresses.
a visual treat
Being an exclusive PS5 console, some DualSense features are used in Forspoken. Cuff’s voices come through the controller’s speaker, while haptic feedback is used for things as subtle as Frey’s footsteps, explosions, and other more traditional actions. Lastly, adaptive triggers are used to cast magic spells, although the effect is not as immersive as that used for a trigger point that triggers the chosen spell.
Graphically, Forspoken is a delight. There are three graphics modes to choose from, or six if you’re playing on a newer TV or monitor. Performance mode obviously looks “worse” while quality mode features the most detail and sometimes drops the frame rate.
Between the two is Ray Tracing mode, which offers the best lighting while preserving the most detail in Quality mode. If you’re connected to a display capable of 120Hz refresh rates, you can also turn this on or off for each graphics mode. I had this on for most of my time with Forspoken, and turning it off was a jarring experience as the frame rate suddenly dropped to a crawl. In any case, whichever mode you run the game in, it will be hard to spot the differences in detail when you actually play the game, because things are so fast that you hardly have time to discern if there are any additional aliases. with some foliage in the distance.
While there has been some concern on the internet that Forspoken is poorly optimized, I can happily report that this is not the case on the PS5. With the exception of looking down on certain open areas with large buildings in them, the custom Luminous Engine maintained any frame rate targets set by the selected graphics mode. Even when dozens of “breakzombies” started attacking, things held steady and the motor stayed out of the way and allowed me to focus on raining down the pain.
Load times on Forspoken are also impressively fast. On average, it takes less than two seconds to continue a saved game and about the same amount of time to fast travel to any destination on the game’s rather large map. Frey and Cuff even comment on this most of the time at the end of fast travel, like a blatant pseudo-breaking of the fourth wall. Sure, the PS5’s SSD helps achieve such fast load times, but it’s still so good that this is the generation where long load times have effectively evaporated.
Forspoken Review: The Final Verdict
Forspoken is a well-rounded experience, with an estimated play time of around 30 hours if you’re playing the main campaign, and perhaps double that if you opt to complete all the activities and side quests. It’s single player only, with no online options or microtransactions to contend with. Forspoken is a great game to lose yourself in, precisely because there are no distractions associated with online-focused gaming.
Forspoken represented a huge risk taken by newcomer Luminous Productions. While the story can feel a bit contrived at times, the flow method of traversal and combat more than makes up for it. Frey can annoy some people as the protagonist, but chaining together a chain of magical commands in just a few seconds while deftly dodging incoming fireballs is rewarding, and ultimately I left Forspoken having enjoyed my time helping the people of Athia.
8.0 
Great look and feel Combat is incredibly varied Epic single player adventure Contrived story First two chapters are slow
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