“I’m talking to a cuff!”
Ultimately, Forspoken was spoken for by five words. Looking back at Square Enix’s ambitious action-RPG three years later, it’s not the kickass parkour, revelatory magic system, or genuinely surprising plot twists that people remember. It’s the (admittedly cringe-worthy) dialogue, which is a shame, as Forspoken had a lot more to offer than “I’m talking to a cuff!”
Forspoken’s death knell first sounded in August 2022, thanks to a gameplay trailer five months ahead of the game’s release. Almost instantly, gamers smelt blood. Voiceover from the trailer became the basis for a brutal wave of memes, as social media users applied its flippant tone to games like Bloodborne (“I’m talking to a doll!”), God of War (“It’s not easy fighting heckin’ vikings”), and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater ([insert dramatic reading of “Superman” by Goldfinger]).
Never mind that “I’m talking to a cuff” was, as with many conversations on the internet in the 2020s, entirely stripped of context. Forspoken stars a young woman named Frey, who discovers the now-infamous bracelet near Manhattan’s Holland Tunnel, then finds herself isekai’d into a fantasy realm that’s been ravaged by a mysterious blight worse than the smog clogging the Holland Tunnel. She discovers that the cuff (named, uh, “Cuff”) can talk, and has granted her superpowers. While Cuff tries to explain what’s happening, Frey focuses on herself, and actions she perceives are her doing but are really the result of teamwork. (“I just keep hearing ‘I, I, I,’” Cuff says.)
The scene is meant to illustrate Frey’s reticence to ask for help: she’s a loner, one who’s never been able to rely on anyone but herself, and might not even be capable of acknowledging assistance from someone else. Hard to convey all that in a meme, though.
The pre-release conversation around Forspoken’s script sucked the wind out of its sails. Shortly after release, Square Enix called Forspoken’s sales “lackluster” in an earnings call. Poor reviews didn’t help. (Forspoken is currently sitting at a 64 on Metacritic. gamexplore’s reviewer called it “bland.”) As a result, Square Enix folded Forspoken developer Luminous Productions back into the larger company’s wider structure, effectively killing any chances of a Fivespoken.
Forspoken had its issues, sure. But it also presented a ton of innovative gameplay ideas that could’ve flourished in a sequel. Its spell system, in particular, stood out. As Frey, you can wield four different colors of magic, with each one representing a different class of ability. (It was the second such color-coded fantasy action game of 2023, if you count the similarly ill-fated Immortals of Aveum. Pour one out for what should’ve been the trend du jour.) Red magic let you cast offensive fire-based spells, summoning flame swords and pools of molten lava. Blue magic was more defensive, focused on water-based spells that required smart positioning. Green magic gave you control over lightning. Purple magic, which probably should’ve been some shade of brown, let you go full earthbender.
Each type of magic also came with various traversal abilities, letting you zip, dash, sprint, and jump across its fantasy world with Spider-Man-like grace and speed. Rare is the open-world game where the movement is such a blast, you eschew fast traveling. When accounting for base attacks and traversal abilities, every “color” of magic included more than a dozen different moves you could perform. Forspoken actively encouraged you to switch between each in combat, and featured blessedly short cooldowns, so you effectively had access to dozens of flashy attacks at any given moment. It ruled.
Forspoken went wrong, though, by presenting players a wide range of brilliant tools to play with, but taking forever to give those tools to players. Even sticking to the critical path — which clocks in a bit over 15 hours — you won’t get that final color of magic until the halfway point. Had the game trusted players to use the whole toolkit from the start, would the conversation focused more on how fun it was than on its (again, admittedly cringe-worthy) dialogue? We’ll never know.
It’s practically a truism in gaming: Mass Effect, Halo, Assassin’s Creed, Borderlands, Gears of War, God of War, probably another series with “War” in it that I’m not considering right now. The first game offers a proof of concept. The second game refines that concept, often resulting in a widely hailed masterpiece. Forspoken never got that chance.
