While Athia is filled with magical jargon like the Break - a dark blight that’s corrupting the world when Frey joins and Tantas - a group of evil sorceresses who rule over Athia, Frey is not cut from this same cloth. Mixing and matching a fantasy world with a New York heroine certainly is a vibe, as they say. 'But at the time, I mean when you really thinking back about it, like there’s been a lot of fantasy novels and works like Narnia and Alice in Wonderland that dealt with these kinds of fish out of water type stories.” “We’re well aware there’s this popular kind of sub-genre, especially within Japanese anime and stuff,' says Luminous creative producer Raio Mitsuno. The premise, of a person in the real world being transported to a fantastical land, is a hot genre right now in Japanese anime and manga called Isekai, but Luminous says the inspirations for Forspoken predate the trend. The idea was created by writer Gary Whitta (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) and later included contributions from Uncharted’s Amy Hennig and finally Allison Rymer and Todd Stashwick. While struggling in our world, Frey is mysteriously transported to a fantasy realm called Athia where she gains powers through a sentient bracelet named Cuff. Frey Holland (played by Ella Balinska) is a troubled girl from New York City. While the powers are all from fantasy, your player character is a different kind of protagonist.

Visually, Forspoken looks to be shaping up to Luminous’ goal of achieving tech-driven visuals. The Luminous Engine certainly appears to be putting in the work, especially during the combat animations that mix all kinds of elemental effects like water, lightning, and fire. Frey can cycle through a collection of magic spells and fight enemies with a variety of long-range and close-range attacks, whether that’s firing lightning bolts from afar or dashing close to hit enemies with a magic sword. Combat is completely real-time and primarily magic-based. There appear to be several points of interests Frey can explore and no limit to where she can or can’t venture towards.Īlong the way, Frey will encounter various enemies and monsters in the wild. Protagonist Frey is seen traversing overland to various waypoints and mission markers. The presentation was hands-off, but the gameplay we saw will be familiar to anyone who has played a modern open-world RPG. While Terada says there’s room to grow, Forspoken will serve as a showcase for the studio in terms of the quality Luminous can bring to the gaming landscape. Through Forspoken, we believe we’ve been able to incorporate our concept for the studio and showcase that to a certain degree”

“So the goals are quite high as far as developing an open-world game that achieves the highest heights, essentially.

“When you look back to Luminous Productions and kind of a core concept or theme for the studio, it is to really blend art and technology,” Terada says. Speaking with IGN, Forspoken director Takefumi Terada explains that the open-world gameplay will reflect one of Luminous’ themes as a studio. And, to be perfectly frank, it looks more like an open-world RPG in the vein of Assassin’s Creed and The Witcher than anything I’ve previously seen from Square Enix. In a hands-off presentation, IGN was able to get a better sense of what Forspoken is.

Forspoken preview