Forspoken Developers Discuss Magic Parkour System and More – Tokyo Game Show 2021

The team behind upcoming open world RPG Forspoken has discussed a number of details about the game, including its spells, antagonists, and ‘magic parkour’.

During an extended special showcase as part of Tokyo Game Show 2021, co-director Takefumi Terada and creative producer Raio Mitsuno shed a little more light on the game. Forspoken centers around the main character Frey, a young woman who falls through a portal and ends up in the strange land of Athia, and the adventures she embarks on in order to get home. 

As already seen in trailers for the game, Frey can wield magic, and Terada mentioned that her learning to use magical abilities is a big part of the story. As you’d expect after seeing the trailers, magic will also be central to Forspoken’s combat system. Frey can use various spells to attack enemies or set traps, among other things. In the game’s trailer, she’s seen setting off an explosive spell on the floor in one scene and encasing an enemy in a ball of water in another. 

There will be a vast array of spells to learn and many ways to make them stronger. “Our goal was to allow players to learn a wide variety of spells,” Terada said. He went on to say the game was designed to encourage players to experiment with various types of magic. 

Athia is a vast open world that Frey will traverse via what Terada called ‘Magic Parkour’. “I really feel like it captures what makes our style of development at Luminous Productions so special,” Terada said. Frey is seen quickly zipping from place to place, covering great distances through the air and performing moves similar to the bullet jumping mechanic in the early 2010s action game Warframe. 

Terada also mentioned the game’s controls are simple and that magic or parkour skills can each be used with one button. 

Forspoken was first introduced to the world as Project Athia in June 2020. Even in the early stages, the team wanted to show what next-generation hardware could do. They once again said their goal is to make a game with the best graphics in the world. 

“We’ve been working on polishing the graphics every day,” Mitsuno said. The team hopes to convey this through the game’s varied environments, from ruins to forests and other areas. The game is being developed using the Luminous Engine, which was developed by Square Enix and Luminous Productions.

Speaking of the world of Forspoken, the developers talked a little bit about the setting, but without revealing too much. When we meet Frey she’s having a tough time in New York and promises her cat they’ll end up somewhere better soon. She’s half right, as she gets her wish to be free of the Big Apple, but tumbles through a portal to the strange land of Athia.

Frey, isn’t alone, however, she’s joined by Cuff, a sentient, talking golden bracelet that somehow wrapped around her right arm between the trip from New York to Athia. The developers said they could not yet fully elaborate on the exact role Cuff will play, only that it’s vital to the story and will help players get to their next targets. They did say, however, there will be plenty of banter between the two. “They both say whatever they think,” Mitsuno said. “This means they are fighting all the time.”

Athia, where Frey now finds herself, was once a beautiful and peaceful land ruled by the Tantas. After an event the developers did not reveal, the land has become a harsh and cruel place. The aforementioned Tantas also seem to have taken a turn for the worse, as Frey is seen fighting a type named Tanta Sila in the trailer for the game. The Tantas have each been designed with a specific characteristic in mind. Tanta Sila’s, for example, is strength, which can be seen in her muscular arms. 

Terada said the team is at peak production right now as they push toward the release of the game on the PS5 and PC in Spring 2022. 

Jason Coskrey is a writer based in Tokyo. Find him on Twitter at @JCoskrey