Square Enix’s newest role-playing game, Forspoken, has been causing controversy for all the wrong reasons. Critics have called the game’s dialogue cringeworthy, poorly written, and completely incomprehensible.
Forspoken's horrible writing makes it come across as an instant turn-off for so many, despite its fantastic traversal and passable combat.
It feels like an example of having to many cooks in the Kitchen as there was 4 writers for this alone and it's sad because Amy Hennig was one of them who has a great track record for female characters or writing in general.
i cant believe people are still pretending or being willfully ignorant about why forspoken failed and it hasnt anything to do with storyline bad gameplay or performance issues like some would try to assert. ive seen so many games get lauded for being amazing while having terrible storylines and having terrible performance issues that i know quite a lot of gamers encounters but theyll be quiet because the games were highly praised by reviewers. i think forspoken is a very good game.
To name some
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Soul Reaver 2
Jak 3
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
@silverhawk
Good point. I didnt think Forspoken was a bad game by any means and I see what you mean about how strangely inconsistent and chaotic people are in general with their expectations. I call it the “They Live” phenomena, in which people will wear the shades that show the “flaws” with games they dont want to like, but take the shades off when looking at things that they want to like.
One of my favorite games in the last few years is Star Ocean: The Divine force. The story and it's main male character are absolutely trash and far worse than this game by miles . But I still like the game because I love the crafting and combat system.
Not all games need to have a great story. I actually prefer gameplay over story any day. Forspoken also has an excellent combat system which is what sells it for me.
People will enjoy this game if they’re open minded. Character and writing isn’t bad at all. The marketing was kind of bad but honestly give it a shot and see how you like it.
I guess I get to be the "ACKSHUALLY" guy, so here goes. Amy Henning is only credited as a "consultant" and there were actually *more* than 4 writers credited for Forspoken's story.
https://www.imdb.com/title/...
But there's also more to it. On a Kinda Funny Podcast episode after Forspoken's release, Gary Whitta (Rogue One, Book of Eli) talked about the strange situation Square Enix & the main developer set up for him. According to him, he and a few others (maybe Henning too?) were paid to discuss various concepts and lore background together in a writer's room. The idea was to iron out the grander historical details of Forspoken's Wonderland while in a dialogue with the developer about the gameplay mechanics. It's essentially paid-for workshopping which then gets turned over to another group of writers to write dialogue, quest descriptions, etc.
Your overarching point about too many cooks is still correct, but the details are more nuanced. And there seems to be a growing cottage industry of different storytelling layers to most AAA games. One potential cluster of people are paid to essentially write a spec script, another group writes the game's screenplay & storyboards, and then maybe another group are sensitivity readers who filter through it and make their own notes about problematic content. There's no way it's sustainable in the long run.
has it rly been two years already?
i wonder if they had to stick to a certain narrative instead of just write good characters.
Or... A quick fix would be to do a crossover and reskin the character to look like eve from steller Blade! Boobs, behind and all! Boom! Instant sales spike!
A surface level joke that ignores the mediocre gameplay, samey open world that lacked a strong identity, and an annoying pair of main characters that had no chemistry whatsoever.
But sure, blame it all on people not gooning for her hard enough.
i wouldnt say incompetence.
id say its more lack of understanding what makes a good conversation between chsracters ha.
if it's your job to write for a game and you can't write good conversations between characters, that's a prime example of incompetence
The writing is bad like 99% of games. The trick is to figure out how sh%& it is in a sea of sh&%. Seems like a waste of rescues to explore this, but content is content.
Writing is definitely horrible across the board and just like how you have people who act like every movie needs to be Oscar worthy to be viewable.
You have a ton of people who believe writing in games is phenomenal because a few do it well. None of the devil may cry or bayonetta games have comprehensible story or even makes a lick of sense. All souls games are literally find the story in the items which no one but devotes do.
Gaming being arbitrarily judge on writing as if the reason we are playing it is for dialogue. We are playing for core mechanics, engaging power ups gorgeous graphics and THEN we look for the narrative. Most narratives ALWAYS are last on the list because regardless how great a story is, if the game is boring you won’t get the story.
But even if a game story is trash if it’s fun literally makes a world of difference.
The devil may cry games have simple stories...if you can't tell what's going on in those games then you can't tell what's going on in any story.
Kingdom hearts is a better example.
Every movie that costs millions to make should be Oscar worthy and to accept anything less sets a low bar. For the money they demand, the people who work on these projects are supposed to be the top of the creative food chain. Accepting less is rewarding expensive mediocrity.
Some of the visual novels I've experienced have some of the best writing I've ever seen in any medium so I guess that's the 1%, lol
Were you expecting the script to change? A lot of games lack in the story department but don’t get the same criticism
Wonder why 🤔. Smh. I beat the game and it was good. Just like I'll be doing with Intergalactic.
Yes people have an absurd obsession with beating down on black female leads in videogames. You can't really get them to admit it or even acknowledge it. There is zero self awareness and there is a clear effort to censor them from existing.
No. They won't admit it. But woke folks know what it is. 👀. Using that ^ with its intended meaning. If you know, you know.
Its kinda fun but open world missing the npc’s is bland and her standing in one spot talking to her arm annoying why cant we move?. But for free its definably worth it gameplay fantastic.
I'm sure this says more about us than the game but I totally agree with you on the talking in place issue. In FF7: R I noticed that there are a lot of intentional pauses where you can't move, run or enter certain menus at points in the game. I find it really annoying. Am I trally that impatient or is it bad design?
VGChartz's Craig S: "Who doesn't love a good dose of schadenfreude every now and then? There was no shortage of that on offer in terms of video games last year, hidden in plain sight amongst the more genuine disappointments (I'll leave it for you to decide which category each of the following games falls into).
One unfortunate trend when it comes to the biggest disappointments of the last year was that so many were new IPs, including Bethesda's latest major release Starfield, the Arkane Studio B-team's abortive attempt at a co-op vampire shooter, and Square Enix's action RPG Forspoken. Mega-franchise Call of Duty and the perennially delayed The Lord of the Rings: Gollum round out the list of Nominees."
I think disappointing and bad are not the same thing.
The article calls out lotr Gollum that was not disappointing it was bad
Redfall is both disappointing and bad.
starfield, MW3 sure disappointing.
But if I was to add some disappointments of the year I'd add
firewall ultra absolutely a dumpster fire that killed the studio.
007 goldeneye the port of the N64 game it's disappointing as we didn't get the rare remaster version and the switch version has very poor controls.
Rdr was not the remake we wanted a simple port that didn't even run at 60 fps on launch on ps5
Jedi survivor Just broken on day 1
-"The article calls out lotr Gollum that was not disappointing it was bad"
I personally fall on the 'Gollum disappointing' spectrum. Here's why: even though Daedalic Entertainment was hopping out of their point-n-click lane, they *were* a solid group of devs that had an unexpected concept. Those two things, cheering on a dev taking a risk with a brand and the odd-yet-intriguing template, at least made me hope for something decent; instead, it's the reason they're only publishing now.
But the concept never stood a chance, even in the heyday of the Metal Gear/Splinter Cell days. When this was announced, no one was intrigued by its premise. Fell flat on its face. Even if Gollum had come out to glowing reviews the game would've struggled to perform financially. That's why it's not disappointing, just bad. Had no hype. All the other games Prof listed had the potential to sell great or be reviewed better but failed. Low effort remasters like the GTA collection, the RDR port, and MGS Collection could all sell well but still be severely disappointing. Gollum was uninteresting at concept, terrible in its execution. The result was expected sadly.
I don’t know but i don't even would put Gollum on a disappointment list, those list would be for games people expected much more than what they delivered and most people expected Gollum to be bad!
Goldeneye is so weird
We got no proper remaster for it despite the fact it was being worked on and it was almost done apparently then the Xbox version didn't come with online play but the Nintendo Switch one did...the Switch...the system where online play is a f***** ballache.
https://youtu.be/6B8ssbyAeR...
I recently came back to Redfall, my lord...the controls and movement were a disgrace! I felt like my character was drunk. Zero fine movement control. The XBOX producers on this game should be fired.
I think Diablo IV deserves to be on this list. While not the worst made game, it was one of the most disappointing. Many of us had such high expectations for it and it turned out to be so incredibly dull, a slog to play.
Diablo 3 was as much as a dumpster fire at launch, but a year later, it became a very good game and was well worth playing. Give Diablo 4 the same time. In a year, it's going to be awesome I bet.
K I'll try reinstalling in a year or 2.
I didn't play D3 until after the first year, so I will certainly give it another shot.. especially to try and get my money's worth out of it. But at launch, I was bored out of my mind and uninstalled it.
That's the biggest issue. Unfinished games with lots of flaws and issues during launch. Unfortunately, most gamers don't forget or forgive that and would rather spend their money on another game
Jedi Survivor was disappointing for me because I waited until a month ago to play it and it still has major issues. My saves were getting corrupted so I had to restart an old save however many times and a plethora of other bugs.
Of course there is Redfall Starfield but to me it’s MS overhype underdeliver so I expected it to some extent but not as bad as it was.
Gollum had little to no expectations.
Forspoken was a disappointment but not as bad as it was made out to be especially if you turned on Japanese voice acting. It was a 7 type of game but it looked like it could have been better.
Diablo 4 was scored well at launch but all my friends that loved and played 3 (after years of swasons) up until 4 were disappointed with 4 and don’t play it anymore .
Factions getting canceled was a bit of a disappointment. Not huge as I don’t play gaas much but it was disappointing.
Nintendo not releasing Switch 2 again was disappointing to me. I don’t use my Switch much it’s just so outdated and mosty kiddy games release some more games that I want to play not my kids!
No physical copy for Alan Wake 3 disappointing as hell, actually beyond that it is upsetting (to some extent,I will live of course)
Gamers getting used to owning nothing and renting games is very disappointing. I don’t watch Netflix anymore it’s mosty mediocre crap and rental services will go that direction if allowed.
this whole gen has been a major disappointment to me. Least amount of gaming I've done since bar/clubbing days. Watching fanboys argue now is akin to a couple of kids fighting over the front seat of a short bus. They can't even argue over games anymore.....cuz there aren't any! With two of the console manufacturers "switching' over to x86 architecture we shouldn't be having these draughts but here we are. And the third happily chugs along selling games on decade old microchips with an OLED screen.
X86 is a shared architecture but both run different development pipelines so they still have to Dev for those consoles plus PC and Arm if a switch port is included.
None of this will reduce Dev times games are complex now probably more than they need to be honestly but if every studio takes 3 to 5 or even 10 years to bring out their big titles there's going to be many dry spells
On that note arm processing is far more efficient than x86 I think Nintendo is making the right call sticking with that and we will probably see Sony and Microsoft do the same next gen as more effort is being made to bring arm into desktop space lately
Being disappointed that Nintendo isn't releasing ultra violent games is like being disappointed that the the next GTA game is open world. Plus totk and Metroid prime remaster did come out this year that's about as violent as they will even get
Im pretty certain that one experiment in publishing devils third is one they would like to forget.
Plus all rumours for the switch 2 places it's release in 2024 they make killer numbers at Christmas if they announce they are making a switch 2 those sales dwindle and shareholders get upset. If a switch 2 doesn't release this year that's disappointing. And if third party's don't develop for it even more so there's zero garuntee they will
I agree gamers getting used to owning nothing is a huge disappointment I don't think many will go silently into that one though
Ahmed from eXputer writes "The quality of PC ports has been seeing a severe decline recently, and many gamers have had enough."
I'm not going to lie it's really cringy at times but I still enjoyed the game overall.
The clips they show in this article aren't even the worst examples of the dialogue, but they definitely serve to demonstrate the tone of the game and how the cringe is relentless. It's so bad.
The constant swearing drives me nuts
like i have no issue with "bad" words but like
mix it up a bit, hearing "fuck, shit, asshole" so much is hard not to laugh at
Wild how hyper sensitive people all of a sudden are, even though the most offensive game with swearing every 5 second and offensive dialogue galore EVERY GRAND THEFT AUTO GAME.
Which also has the most laughable dialogue with people constantly making fun of its cringy writings and core mechanics. But this game…. Oh it’s just so so so offensive with the cussing. And oh the dialogue it to much!