Athia is beautiful too, from its central medieval city to its decaying wasteland spoiled by a spreading corruption called the Break, despite some stiff NPC animation. It's typical open world stuff, sure, but it lends Frey's story an adventurous sense of exploration. Monuments unlock enhancements, while Founts of Blessing unlock new spells. Locked labyrinths transport Frey underground to crypts crawling with enemies and bosses. Pools of mana act like platformer collectibles to steer you across the land. Combat challenges provide an opportunity to permanently increase stats. Athia is an enticing world to explore, without an overabundance of map markers. Put all that in a small enclosed area and throw in a fireworks display of effects and it all becomes a little too disorientating, despite the developers aiming for clarity.įrey is freed in wide open spaces where she bounds and gallops. Locked on to enemies and using parkour to dodge their attacks, the camera sometimes swings dizzyingly. While she mostly speeds off as intended, she occasionally stumbles up buildings or leaps off cliffs into the empty abyss below. And just as Sega has struggled with the blue blur in 3D, Frey's speed cannot be contained. Aiming and shooting Frey's early spells is akin to magical pistols, machine guns, and shotguns. "And in the same way, we've also created spells where, say we had a sword or a spear or some sort of regular weapon, what if we made that magical? What if we really poured magic into that? I think we've managed to create things that are unlike anything players will have seen before, a completely new approach to the elements."įrey's magical abilities are unique, though parkour is hard to containīetween magical burst shots and high speed parkour, the result feels like a merge of Control and Sonic. "We started with normal parkour and thought what would happen if we added magic into that? Whether that would be super fast speed or whether it would be being able to jump great heights or, if we took something normal and then added magic into it, what would happen? "When we thought about approaching a new IP, we thought what would happen if we really focused in on this magic element and really brought that out to its full capacity," co-director Takefumi Terada told me. It's all handled with one button that sees Frey performing all manner of acrobatics. This is Frey's magical parkour that allows her to dash off at great speed, leap vast gaps, and flip around enemies. Whether the sheer amount of options offers welcome complexity or just overwhelms remains to be seen, but there's an arcane joy in whipping up spells and dishing out damage in a barrage of particles.įlow, however, is the game's key mechanic. These are split between offensive (right trigger) and support (left trigger). Luminous Productions has promised that Frey will eventually have access to one hundred spells. Tutorials and cutscenes occur every few steps as gameplay and plot layers unravel a laughable stealth section practically played itself and I didn't have enough time to truly get to grips with the range of magic that will be available. There's certainly the promise of depth to the game's combat, but the early chapters I played through were a little too scripted. The demo is a snapshot of the open world that provides more of a playground for Frey's abilities than the more linear preview build I played.) Here are seven things you need to know about Forspoken before heading in. (Having played the newly released demo at the weekend, I can confirm this is the case. The freedom to flip between its extensive collection of spells to deal elemental damage and exploit weaknesses. The freedom to fully customise Frey's abilities. The freedom to explore the wide open plains and crumbling ruins of Athia and complete its myriad side activities. I suspect that Forspoken will be at its best when it's most freeing. Yet after playing the game on PlayStation 5 at a recent preview event, I still have concerns about both its representation and its combat, despite its magical potential. There's a surprising dollop of comedy too among the occult grandeur. Athia is an other-world full of wonder and mysticism and evil sorceresses, while protagonist Frey is given spectacular superhuman elemental powers.
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