The 32-second trailer posted on the official Forspoken Twitter account shows plenty of impressive gameplay. The internet has been going wild over it, but not for the game itself; it’s the dialogue spoken by protagonist Frey Holland that has people rushing to reply. “So let me get this straight,” Holland says, in a semi-sarcastic/cynical tone that would make Chandler Bing blush. “I’m somewhere that’s not what I would call Earth, I’m seeing freaking dragons, and—oh yeah!—I’m talking to a cuff! Yeah, OK, that is something I do now. I do magic, kill jacked-up beasts, I’ll probably fly next.” There is some good to have come from the trailer—not from Square Enix’s point of view, obviously. It’s led to a slew of very funny imitations in which the dialogue is applied to other games. The God of War parody is a highlight: So is this Bloodborne one. There are absolutely loads more like this. PC Gamer notes that the surprising thing about all this is the number of high-profile writers attached to Forspoken. Veteran television scriptwriter Allison Rymer is one, as is Amy Hennig, known for her work on the Uncharted and Legacy of Kain series. Some of the comments aren’t humorous, though. A few people say the dialogue is so bad that it’s put them off playing a game they’d previously been looking forward to. Hopefully, or surely, what we hear in the final product won’t be as bad as what’s in the trailer. Forspoken was delayed for a second time last month, moving the launch from October to January 2023, meaning we’re now unlikely to see Microsoft DirectStorage technology running in Windows 11 this year.
