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Julius

Forspoken (24th January 2023)

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A breathtaking first look at Project Athia, a thrilling story-led, action-packed adventure from SQUARE ENIX’s new studio, Luminous Productions.

 

Edited by Julius

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Easy Allies have put up a video about Luminous Productions, for those who would like to know a little more behind the team working on this game. 

Great stuff, guessing this is Damiani who worked on the script, think he's done a really good job! Always nice to see the Allies growing out and trying different things. 

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Change the thread title, @Julius
DO IT NOW!

And yeah, this looks amazing.

Edited by drahkon
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Wow! It’s not vapourware? It might actually release!?

Well blow me down!

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On 18/03/2021 at 7:49 PM, drahkon said:

Change the thread title, @Julius
DO IT NOW!

And yeah, this looks amazing.

Someone else changed it to the title in my absence (thanks!), but I'll add the 2022 release year :p 

On 19/03/2021 at 12:31 PM, Dcubed said:

Wow! It’s not vapourware? It might actually release!?

Well blow me down!

It's been in the works for quite a while now, I'm more surprised that they're nailing down a year for it instead of keeping quiet (which I feel is the smarter option always, just given the potential for delays due to COVID).

Let it cook I say. 

I'm also surprised it showed up at Square Enix's event of all places :p

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After hearing the music in the trailer, I thought it sounded like Bear McCreary, and it turns out I was right. I'm really looking forward to the album.

 

 

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53 minutes ago, Cube said:

After hearing the music in the trailer, I thought it sounded like Bear McCreary, and it turns out I was right. I'm really looking forward to the album.

I feel like it's one of those unconfirmed truths we've known for a while, I think it was around the start of the year when there was that bit of news floating around that McCreary was following the Forspoken account, and if I'm remembering right Ella Balinska (Frey) also let it slip in a tweet at one point. Still, awesome to have that confirmation, he's a great composer and he'll be working alongside Garry Schyman (Bioshock) on the soundtrack, so that's exciting. 

Amy Henning here writing this too and getting Janina Gavankar in for Tanta Sila means it's got a pretty stacked staff at this point, Square Enix clearly really didn't want to cut their losses on Luminous. 

How the hell we got a release year - let alone a window - for this before Final Fantasy XVI is beyond me. 

(I blame XIV :p)

Edited by Julius

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Think the Game Awards trailer was much stronger than recent ones we've got for this. 

Also, we've got a release date: 24th May 2022!

So with this in May, Stranger of Paradise in March, and probably some kind of, oh I don't know, tapestry of classic Final Fantasy games coming to console for the 35th anniversary next year maybe in the summer...the back half of next year for Square Enix's Japanese side is looking real quiet. 

Just saying :p

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Pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t seem to be vapourware after all!

Not used to seeing flagship S-E games actually get released in a timely fashion.

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4 minutes of gameplay from over on IGN:

There are also some hands-off gameplay impressions going up:

 

On 10/12/2021 at 6:54 AM, Dcubed said:

Not used to seeing flagship S-E games actually get released in a timely fashion.

It's been nice to see change so much even just in the time I've been on here. The move to Unreal Engine has done them some massive favours with some of their other big projects which were stuck in development hell like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Kingdom Hearts III, and I really think the only reason Forspoken is on Luminous - with a dedicated team - is because Square Enix want to at least make good on the engine to some extent with how much they invested in it. 

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On 12/10/2021 at 6:54 AM, Dcubed said:

Pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t seem to be vapourware after all!

Not used to seeing flagship S-E games actually get released in a timely fashion.

After watching that trailer? Maybe it shouldn't be releasing in such a timely fashion after all...

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Oh no, oh no. That's a massively irritating, verbal-diarrhoea-afflicted playable character alright. And what's with the enemies? They look like zombies. Is "zombies" a magical catch all to excuse devs from creating convincing enemy AI now?

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Delayed four and a half months until October 11th. 

One part of me is saying RIP to the thought of having XVI out by the end of the year now, probably slipping into Q1 2023...

...but then the other part of me is holding onto a thread of hope in that we've been told to expect news in the next month's - and that we wouldn't be getting the next update to begin with until we were reasonably close to launch. 

Head honchos over at S-E have some pretty massive decisions to make here. A mid-October release date for this just doesn't seem the right decision if XVI is aiming for that same window. I haven't been wowed by anything from Forspoken that we've seen since the first trailer, so part of me selfishly would rather that game be pushed further back for XVI to step into the limelight. 

Edited by Julius

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Delayed again, a further three months this time to January 24th 2023...

 

Edited by Julius

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Honestly? They should just cancel this game.  It has massive flop written all over it.

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13 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Honestly? They should just cancel this game.  It has massive flop written all over it.

I was going to say it'll probably still ship a few million, but this is Square Enix, so yeah, definitely a flop in their eyes at least :laughing: I remember them saying that this was aiming to be a new pillar for them akin to Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, and well...yikes. 

I can't help but wonder what this means for Luminous Productions in the long run. New IP delayed twice in big ways (one down to needing more dev time and the other seemingly because they realised that they'd accidentally positioned the game in the busiest part of the gaming calendar?), likely never going to match S-E's absurd sales figure hopes, using a proprietary engine which they've avoided using in some of their other massive projects (like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Dragon Quest XI using Unreal Engine 4) – I don't want to be too down on it, because the game could still be great, but from the outside looking in, I think the writing has to be on the wall for them, surely? 

Edited by Julius
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10 minutes ago, Julius said:

I was going to say it'll probably still ship a few million, but this is Square Enix, so yeah, definitely a flop in their eyes at least :laughing: I remember them saying that this was aiming to be a new pillar for them akin to Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, and well...yikes. 

I can't help but wonder what this means for Luminous Productions in the long run. New IP delayed twice in big ways (one down to needing more dev time and the other seemingly because they realised that they'd accidentally positioned the game in the busiest part of the gaming calendar?), likely never going to match S-E's absurd sales figure hopes, using a proprietary engine which they've avoided using in some of their other massive projects (like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Dragon Quest XI using Unreal Engine 4) – I don't want to be too down on it, because the game could still be great, but from the outside looking in, I think the writing has to be on the wall for them, surely? 

They may well ship that, but I don't think it'll actually manage to sell more than 1 million.  I don't think it'll even manage to outship Triangle Strategy, let alone outsell it.

And considering that this game has had a budget that is on par with a mainline Final Fantasy? That would be massive failure that'll almost surely seal the fate of Luminous Productions as a going concern.

I imagine that this will kill any chance of further AAA budget new-IP coming from Square Enix ever again.  Thank God for Team Asano! (until Nintendo inevitably end up headhunting him and his team of course ;))

Edited by Dcubed

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They may well ship that, but I don't think it'll actually manage to sell more than 1 million.  I don't think it'll even manage to outship Triangle Strategy, let alone outsell it.
And considering that this game has had a budget that is on par with a mainline Final Fantasy? That would be massive failure that'll almost surely seal the fate of Luminous Productions as a going concern.
I imagine that this will kill any chance of further AAA budget new-IP coming from Square Enix ever again.  Thank God for Team Asano! (until Nintendo inevitably end up headhunting him and his team of course )

If it doesn't sell too well I suppose they can always flog it to Sony to be included as a Plus game.
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Sweet. Much more interesting to me than the SF leak :D 

Will defo give it a try. Wanna see how it plays.

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Looks like a Linkin Park music video.

 

What the fuck does 'Forspoken' mean anyway?

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Looks like a Linkin Park music video.
 
What the fuck does 'Forspoken' mean anyway?
It means bewitched or charmed, apparently. You're welcome.

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So this got a cinematic trailer today:

Which leads into my next question two weeks from launch: is anyone planning on picking this anytime soon? 

I'll be giving it a pass, at least for now – which I don't mind, I'm hoping to be a bit more purposeful with the games I pick up on Day 1 this year. For me, I think I've said it before, but that first trailer when it was unveiled as Project Athia was fantastic before my interest ended up trailing off with each subsequent showing of the game. 

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16 hours ago, Julius said:

is anyone planning on picking this anytime soon? 

Nope.

I found the demo to be pretty cool and would love to play it sooner rather than later. But I wanna continue being thrifty with games this year, so I'm gonna wait for a big discount :p

 

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