Forspoken Gameplay Shows The Locales In Athia, Combo Meter, Cats

So let me get this straight. So there’s this new Square Enix game (that recently got delayed so it won’t be out yet in a bit), it’s called Forspoken, and it has some new gameplay shown off at Gamescom 2022?

Jokes aside, Forspoken showed a good 10 minutes worth of gameplay for the upcoming open world adventure by Luminous Productions. It’s a guided tour through a side quest in the game which follows protagonist Frey doing a sidequest after meeting a smither named Johedy.

The lands of fantastical Athia are being corrupted by what’s called the Break, so there are monsters and corrupted men and animals that roam the land. Refugees escaping the corruption are settling at Cipal, one of the many locales you’ll encounter in Forspoken. In towns like this, Frey can find cats that will guide her to various points of interest.

In the open world, Frey has access to various traversal moves which include a super sprint, a slingshot to grab on to spiky rocks of a cliff’s edge and leapfrog higher, and even a surfboard made of presumably magical ice.

Combat looks hectic in Forspoken. Players can equip two spells at a time- one for each trigger on the controller- and can switch what spells are in the slots by opening a weapon wheel. All of Frey’s attacks are magic-based, with ridiculous particle effects that should explain why this title is only available on next-gen consoles and PC.

During combat, there’s also a combo meter, like the ones featured in the Devil May Cry series. Don’t expect silly names for the letter grading- we see it only goes from E to A. But at least there are incentives for doing smokin’ sexy style combos- higher combo meter increases the drop rate of loot and EXP gain.

Forspoken also ticks a lot of the boxes for an open world action-RPG title of modern times. There’s a place to uncover all the points of interest in an area (thankfully you don’t climb a tower for this). There is a crafting system. There are optional things hidden in the open world like stats increases and treasure chests to find and distract you from completing quests. But there are also various gear and stats to allow you to make different builds and play a different style. Interesting to see that there are four damage types and it’s divided as purple magic, red magic, blue magic and green magic.

Also, the game UI when paused having a fish-eye lens view that goes convex (moving away from the screen at the edges) rather than concave (so it gives the illusion that it wraps you around it) is a choice. Also, not many memeable one-liners or quips are heard in this gameplay trailer.

Forspoken is set for release on January 24, 2023 for the PS5 and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store).