The DF Tech review.
In that sense, Forspoken melds Japanese design with Western sensibilities to create a unique fusion.
At its core, Forspoken is an open world action RPG with a focus on magic and high-speed traversal.
It’sa lotto process but shortly after, she finds herself whisked away to a new world - Athia.
Survivors have built their home within the grand city of Cipal while keeping The Break at bay.
It’s here that the bulk of the gameplay takes place.
By this point, I was still unsure what to think of Forspoken.
Whether discussing the themes, gameplay or visuals, this is a game of two halves.
Let’s discuss the positives first - and there are many!
This is a key pillar of the next-gen ‘dream’ and here it is, fully realised.
See that distant, towering obelisk in the far distance?
Character rendering in terms of details and materials is excellent, while animation fluidity is also impressive.
Basic locomotion is satisfying and fluid.
Quality animation extends to characters too, and even hair rendering.
This does, however, only apply to primary characters.
Then there’s the excellent foliage system which features full touch bending that reacts as you move through it.
This isn’t a hot new feature but it’s welcome and helps increase immersion during exploration.
Moving beyond animation, the particle system is also superb.
Explosions and magical particles alike are beautifully realized in a way that helps sell the battle system.
I was also impressed by atmospheric effects, including cloud rendering and fog.
Forspoken utilises excellent frustum-aligned voxel fog, resulting in some deeply atmospheric moments.
The first and most egregious issue lies in its lighting.
Modelling the behaviour of light is one of the most challenging aspects of real-time computer graphics.
Ambient occlusion also looks extremely poor, slathered in AMD’s FidelityFX features including FidelityFX Ambient Occlusion.
This is obsolete tech these days, but vastly more effective.
Surely a solution of comparable quality could have been devised for this game too, right?
Offline ‘baking’ would be fine, as Forspoken does not have a dynamic time-of-day system.
Shadows also have problems.
Without ray tracing, shadow maps are deployed, and these are largely fine.
It’s the exact same problemHalo Infinitesuffered from back in 2021.
Combined with the odd colour choices and the world feels weirdly flat as a result.
With ray tracing, however, shadow quality is improved, but only near the player.
This is a problem RT shadows tend to solve, but not here.
Furthermore, RT shadows apply to opaque objects, so foliage and trees do not benefit.
As a current-gen only game, it would have been a good choice.
There’s also something strange with asset placement and blending with the environment.
Some of the major scenes are beautifully animated but the second tier cutscenes often fall a little short.
People already take issue with slow walking scenes in games but Forspoken has no walking scenes instead.
The issue is that the internal resolution from which FSR2 works is often quite low.
The quality mode can dip to 1080p while RT is right in the middle of the two.
Of all six modes, my preferred choice is the ray tracing mode at 40 frames per second.
It’s sharp enough and the most stable, especially with VRR.
It’s not even always clear why areas run slowly either.
That’s my technical critique of Forspoken, but what about the game?
It’s just a shame that it’s all let down somewhat by some curious technical decisions.
Final Fantasy 15 was a true lighting showcase and its sequel looks simply beautiful.
Ultimately, I walked away from Forspoken with mixed feelings.
