However, in my time with the game on PS5, the game had performance issues across all graphical modes. (At one point, when asked what she misses about New York, Frey offers up Central Park and knish, the latter of which plays a surprisingly important role in the game’s plot.)Ī quick note on Forspoken’s performance: I played on PS5, so I can’t comment on what’s going on with the eye-watering PC system requirements. The game, developed by Luminous Productions and published by Square Enix, opens in present-day New York City, a depiction that, even to a non-New Yorker like myself, feels less like New York and more like what an AI that has been fed Law & Order reruns and Tommy Wiseau’s The Room would produce. Suddenly, she spots a magical bracelet that is about to change her life.įrom the get-go, Forspoken’s tone feels unintentionally absurd. Alongside her cardboard decor, Frey has a few books ( Alice in Wonderland and a leather-bound hard copy of something called “Law and Order” are the most prominent) and a wall rack devoted to her beloved “kicks.” Her whole apartment promptly burns down, leading her to reflect on her life while leaning over the edge of the Crossroads Hotel as the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Day.
(Hence her name.) After leaving the courtroom, Frey gets beat up by two women (one in leopard print, the other in camo) before returning to her barren, boarded-up apartment, where she has written her plan to leave New York on a piece of cardboard taped to the wall. Only in her case it wasn’t wise men who found her in Bethlehem, but firefighters in the Holland Tunnel.
In that same scene, you learn that Frey, like the baby Jesus, had a mysterious birth. It begins a few days before the holiday, which, as it happens, is protagonist Frey Holland’s birthday, a fact you learn when the game forces you to review her printed-out arrest record in the first scene, where Frey stands in a New York City courtroom accused of grand larceny and resisting arrest. Forspoken, of all things, is a Christmas game.
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