After a long road full of anticipation and delays, Forspoken has finally graced players’ screens. However, from the moment the story trailers started coming out, gamers online couldn’t help but notice that something seemed off when it came to the dialogue featured throughout the trailers. One in particular dubbed the “Let Me Get This Straight” trailer, drew widespread attention for how cringy it was and has been lampooned by those across the community in the months since.
All the same, a lot of people were hopeful that it was just poor writing for the trailers and that the actual game would be better. Well, unfortunately, Forspoken’s dialogue is still pretty dreadful.
I do want to make it clear right off the bat, though, that this is a first impression look at the first six hours of playing Forspoken. So, of course, these impressions are not from someone who has played the whole game, but it is worth making it clear that this isn’t a look at all of Forspoken’s dialogue. All of this being said, first impressions mean a lot, and the dialogue found throughout the first six hours of Forspoken certainly makes a negative one.
As most people following the game know, the story follows the character of Frey, a young woman living in New York City who mysteriously gets brought to the fantastical world of Athia and meets a magic Cuff, who becomes her companion for the game. Frey finds that Athia is under the rule of the villainous Tantas, and whether she likes it or not, she needs to take on the tyrants and help the oppressed people while simultaneously looking for a way to get herself home.
That summary hints at one of the things that makes the dialogue of Forspoken pretty dreadful: Frey is an outsider. The game’s protagonist constantly lets the audience know how absurd she finds everything. Frey and her companion, Cuff, frequently have sarcastic banter as they come across new landmarks across Athia, digging at each other and the world around them.
Given that Frey is in a life-threatening situation, it makes perfect sense that she would be cynical about the situation, so the fact that she is voicing these concerns is not necessarily the problem. What is the problem is how many times Frey feels the need to express her frustrations.
She chimes in with quips all the time throughout the game’s exploration. Not only is it almost always not fun to hear, but the constant nature of her voicing it makes cynicism feel like Frey’s only character trait. This is someone who is supposed to save this fantastical world, but the game’s dialogue makes it feel like she has such contempt for it that you can’t help but wonder why exactly she is the protagonist.
It is, of course, very possible that Frey will go through a major character arc, and the game could totally be setting up a storyline where Frey and Cuff go on to boost each other up instead of tearing one another down as well.
Nevertheless, to have the characters be cynical and bicker back and forth constantly can still majorly turn players off, as first impressions are everything. I certainly didn’t want my introduction to a game to be characters continually complaining. It could easily result in people deciding against diving into what the rest of the game has to offer.
Something important to get out of the way before this next part is that I am fully aware that there is an option to reduce Cuff’s chatter. Yet this actually only serves to prove to me that the developers of the game know how poorly written the dialogue is and that they wanted an option available in order to reduce blowback to the game’s poor writing.
For me, though, I like to play games how the creators intended. I almost always play on Normal difficulty with as many settings as closely aligned to how they are defaulted as possible. So, to have someone like me constantly be tempted to turn down the banter is a sign of a major problem.
There would be moments when playing Forspoken where I would come across a beautiful clearing with magnificent structures in the distance. It would become easy to just want to take in the environment and see what the world offers. These moments were sadly almost always interrupted by Frey and Cuff discussing the area, with Frey saying something cynical and Cuff chiming in with his signature sarcasm.
It made me not want to explore anymore, as one couldn’t help but wonder why they were attempting to engage with the world if one of my rewards was some snarky dialogue that broke my immersion.
The point of the fantasy genre is that the world the audience is exploring is just that: a fantasy. Despite having plenty of dangers, fantasy worlds are meant to be an escape, and there are people who would love to have the opportunity to get away from their real-world troubles.
To take control of a character who constantly reminds players how much she finds everything to be absurd can totally break the immersion and prevents that from ever happening. Again, the traits that are given to Frey and Cuff aren’t bad, but the fact that the player repeatedly gets to hear from them makes these character traits feel way too negative and overwhelming.
One example of the game’s dialogue repeating something over and over again is how Frey will say something that only someone from Earth would understand, with Cuff and the residents of Athia not able to comprehend what Frey is saying.
This may be a cliche joke, but it did make me chuckle at first until I realized that they would go on to make the same joke again and again and again. It got to be ridiculous when it happened for the sixth and seventh time, in only the first part of the game, no less.
Thankfully, one area where the dialogue isn’t totally dreadful is, in fact, the dialogue that happens during Forspoken’s story cutscenes. Many of these scenes were clearly much more important to the development team, and it shows.