Video Gamers Podcast - Forspoken Review - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Gaming hosts Michael, Josh and Paul are here with our full gaming breakdown of Forspoken. Forspoken released to middling reviews, but how accurate were they? We break down everything gaming related on this new release, from story, to combat, to magic parkour and more in a deep dive episode you absolutely can’t afford to miss. Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Toro, Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Hello, citizens of Athia, and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are a group of three lifelong gamer dads, and today we will be deep-diving Luminous Productions' game Forspoken. Please take a brief moment to hit the follow button so you don't miss any of our content, and please rate our show 5 stars and leave a written review. You can also help support our show while getting bonus Squadcast episodes by joining our Patreon. Support starts at $5 a month, and you can sign up over at

MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, Paul, and since all the tauntas in Forspoken are matriarchs, I don't know, I'm going to say that I have two fellow tauntos with me. Coming up first, there's no one around, Josh. Did you do something to annoy them all? Oh, that's pretty fitting, paul are you saying i'm the annoying one of the this group i'm i'm saying i heard that 700 times in this game to make it stick in my head so uh yeah thought i'd pull out that voice line all right and then joining josh and me he's busy weaving enchantments by painting his fingernails with his own blood. It's Michael. Oh, man. Incredible crimson nails. Everyone's like,

how'd you nail the color? It's my own body's secret. Oh, goodness gracious. All right. Well, before jumping into today's deep dive, we have just a little bit of housekeeping. We did have two new Patreon supporters that we need to thank. The first one is a certain someone who is not in our discord but his name is john he is a rare supporter of the show and he's actually a very close friend of mine josh and i are known to hang out on occasion for gaming nights with him and his wife jackie and i did just want to throw out there that he actually does host an NBA podcast. So if any of you are basketball fans, his podcast is called JNR. Just those three letters.

JNR Basketball Podcast. And we also had an Epic supporter sign up as well, who goes by the name Connor James. So thank you so much to both of you for signing up on Patreon. You are the true heroes of Athia. If you put them together too like in that order it's john connor james there you go john connor james oh i love it and uh we we need some some more reviews left on the show guys who wants to go ahead and beg our audience oh that's this is my specialty guys go for it all right play play the sar the Sarah McLachlan on the arms of an angel, Paul.

Nice. Do you want to help your favorite podcast? Do you want other people in the world to experience the joy that is the multiplayer gaming podcast? Do you want to help us troll Michael in multiple episodes every week? If so, leave us a review. Pull out your Apple phone, go to the podcast app, and hit leave review. Write something snazzy, and I'll read it on the show. If you're a Spotify person, click that star and rate us five stars. Thank you. There you go.

Was that good? I feel like that was very soothing. Hopefully nobody crashed by being hypnotized in their car. Well, you forgot the part where less than a dollar a day, you can pay for your Apple iPhone to make the review. See, we've got to put that dollar a day in there, because it's always in those things. This podcast is free for most people, except for the superheroes that support the show. Over at MultiplayerSquad.com!

There you go. Go do that, too. All right, we've got so much to cover here today. I think that we've now harnessed the powers of Earth, Fire, Water, and Light. These Athians aren't going to save themselves from demons and corruption. Let's start our deep dive of Forspoken. Okay, here is the description according to Steam. Forspoken follows the journey of Frey, a young New Yorker transported to the beautiful and cruel land of Athia. In search of a way home, Frey must use her newfound magical abilities to traverse

sprawling landscapes and battle monstrous creatures. On top of that, I'll just go ahead and toss in that this game's genre is, I guess, open world fantasy RPG. There is a very heavy focus on story. I think this game was kind of aspiring to be somewhere in the likes of Dragon Age Inquisition, maybe The Witcher, you know, big map, lots of collectibles gear to craft you know things of that nature i i will say this game did prove to be pretty divisive upon release and i think this is probably going to be a pretty lively episode because i think most people have very strong opinions about first spoken do you guys think that's fair uh they're about to they're about to hear them paul yeah i think we'll strap in people we got a lot to say oh we sure do and we're gonna keep things spoiler free at least here in the beginning i don't know if we're gonna get into end game spoilers or not but if we do we'll

make sure to give you guys a warning so whenever we cover a game like this that story forward michael i always toss it to you why don't you tell us a little bit about Frey in the beginning of this story? How does she end up going from New York to Athia? Yeah, so Frey is a 21-year-old from the greatest place on Earth, which is New York City, right? She's got a rough past. She grew up in foster care. She was found at the Holland Tunnel, so she's an orphan. Has some legal issues.

Just a very checkered past. She's got some stuff in her past that she's an orphan uh has some legal issues uh you know just just a very checkered past you know she's got some stuff in her past that she's trying to get through but she leaves court gets mugged it's actually her fault because she stole the car and forgot to give the money or didn't give the money to the guy that told her to steal the car she gets home her house gets set on fire a whole bunch of bad things happen and she comes across this abandoned store and there's this bracelet bracer thing in there and somehow this vambrace yeah this vambrace gets fused to her arm and she gets whooshed i'll say it again whoosh yeah she gets whooshed away to a faraway land and ultimately the vambrace becomes her companion and it teaches her

about this new world that she's been teleported to called Athia. And she ends up becoming entangled in the saving of the world of Athia, even though she doesn't really want to help. She tries to find her way home, and the two goals kind of get linked together. And so her need to stop the spread of corruption or what happened after what's called the break basically parallels her path to find a way home. And she goes on adventures trying to do just that. Yeah. Guys, let's just get it out of the way now okay i think the character of fray has really met with a lot of criticism from audiences a lot of people have said that it's fair other people

say look this is just because it's a female person of color that you don't like her let's just talk about her a little bit did you guys find fray to be interesting as a character and did you like playing as her do you know how something like it can be so bad do you know do you know what i mean that it's almost like you just stare at it like like if i'm driving down the street and and and and off out of the corner of my eye, I see a train just burst into flames, go flying off the tracks, explode into a ball of fire. It's going to draw my eye. I'm going to look at that and I'll be like,

whoa, that was terrible. I just saw something incredibly terrible. And that is Freay, guys. That's fray. That's fray. Michael? Can you wait? Michael, turn this into a plane crash analogy.

Because then I'll have done the train, you'll have done the plane, and then Paul can do the automobiles. I was hoping you were going to say automobiles. Nice. You know, I understand, like, when people have a chip on their shoulder because of things that have happened in their past. That being said, it is no excuse to be an absolutely insufferable human being, which is basically how I feel about Frey.

So here's the thing is, like, I like her path in the game. I understand that, you know, there's got to be a low point to start in some narratives so you can become something different that being said like she literally only even accepts the main mission in the game because it benefits her um she is downright rude to almost every single person or item that she meets example cuff who is just as confused about being fused to her as she is but tries to help her and And she's rude to him

on every occasion. And so I kept waiting for something to change, and we won't get into spoiler territory yet. But anyways, I just don't understand why even good people, even people trying to help her are met with just rudeness. There's no other way to say it. She's rude. Oh, she's incredibly rude, and they intentionally make the character as annoying as possible. And to be clear, I'm not talking about the voice acting work. I think the voice acting work is just fine.

She did a great job. I'm talking about the written character. Guys, if you put a marker on the map and start running toward it, they literally wrote for her to go, are we there yet? And she literally says it like that. Like, they made her annoying on purpose.

She opens treasure chests and goes, eh. And then Cuff is like, oh, let's not be too selfish now. Like, at every corner, I feel like they tried to make her as insufferable as possible. I mean, even I noticed the very first time I fell off a cliff and I landed and Cuff was like, oh, are you okay? And she goes, what do you think, genius? Like, who wants to play as this kind of character? Nobody. I get what they were going for. I joke around about the train wreck, but I'll be serious for

a moment here too, because I think I get what they were going for. They were going for this girl led an incredibly hard life. She's alone. She's struggling. The weight of the world has basically beaten her down. And now she gets through mystical circumstances. She's thrust into a completely different world. She has to figure out what the heck is going on. There's people that all of a sudden are counting on her and saying, we need your help. And she's going, look, I can't even get my own life together. Like, how am I supposed to help you guys? The problem with that is, is that they never let up on it.

If you want to be angsty and grumpy and stuff like that for the first 30, 40 minutes of the game. And then you get to this magical world where it's like, whoa, this is incredible, guys. My life's finally turned around. Fine. We've seen transitions and characters in multiple games. But the problem that this one is is that they just went with it. And instead of easing up and changing it they only leaned into it harder as the game went on and and by the time you're a few hours into this game i don't know that i have ever hated controlling a character more to be honest i was like i don't want to be this character like you have caused me to dislike literally the person that i am playing right now. And it's just... It leaves a bad taste very early in the game. And it's like, for me, at least, you're never able to actually

overcome that. Well, and I think that on top of that, what really got me is that I understand that there's one part when she's being nice to a little girl, and she hamm in the fact that, hey, you know, you've got to look out for yourself. And I totally understand perspective, like everyone's lives and where they've gone has gotten to this point. And you are right to have your perspective and your beliefs. But at the same point, the people that she's being downright nasty to have also lived horrible, miserable, terrible lives. It's not like she's going against something that is completely polar opposite. These people are refugees from their homes who have been brought to this terrible place. Let up a little bit when you kind of understand that.

Yeah. I'll even take things a step further. I don't think she's just one of the most annoying protagonists in gaming. I think even in movies and books books i think she's right up there as one of the most annoyingly written characters which is really sad how you can take an orphan who gets mugged and then they try to murder her and her whole life falls apart and you still hate her is almost impossible like honestly a monkey a monkey could write, and you would be more sympathetic toward the character. I don't know why they made this choice. Whatever. We got to move on. All right. Phrase sucks. Next topic. Let's talk about combat, because the story in this game drove me nuts. You're not going to hear me say a single good thing about story, but let's talk a little bit about

the combat, because I do think the combat worked quite a bit better. Josh, do you want to kind of break down in general how it works? I do, because the combat... Spo a bit better. Josh, do you want to kind of break down in general how it works? I do, because the combat... Spoiler right here, the combat is where this game shines. If anybody knows anything about Forspoken, if you've read any sort of snippet on the internet, the combat is the part that, generally speaking, people tend to enjoy in this game.

And they did a good job. Honestly, this has got a pretty darn fleshed out combat system, which caught me off guard. Because after the initial part of the game where you wind up hating Frey and it just gets worse, you kind of go, man, I really hope that this game has something redeeming about it. And it does. Because the combat is a lot of fun. So basically, Frey is a magic user. She winds up getting these spells. She casts different categories of magic.

Schools of magic. Schools. Thank you. That's the word I was looking for. She starts off with her purple magic, which is innate to her. It's basically earth. So you are an earth caster. Not green.

Pink. Yeah. Keep going. Keep going. But going, keep going. So, you know, but basically the way the combat works is it is fast-paced. It is action-oriented. You move around the battlefield. You lock onto your targets.

You cast spells at them. You have a wide array of offensive spells, and then you get some support spells that are on cooldowns and timers and things like that. As far as your offensive magic goes, you can use that as much as you want. And I thought that was actually kind of a neat thing that they did there to where it's like, hey, do you like this spell offensively or do you like this spell offensively in the Earth magic pool? Well, you can use them to your heart's content. There's nothing that's there's nothing that's limiting that if your support spells which are a little bit more you know effective in combat those are on cooldowns and you can't use them all the time and the alt is on cooldown as well

right you do build up an alt um you know that i i'll be honest i found the alts a little lackluster these are not like alts in like overwatch where they make a vast difference these are kind of like they're a little bit flashier and okay maybe they do a little bit more damage but i will say that in regards to the combat in this game it was the shining part of the game for me i like the fact that all of the magic had skill trees you know and that you do throughout the game, even, even a little late in the game, you get like a brand new school of magic in probably the last quarter of the game. Probably. And I went like, I mean, yeah, like maybe even later. And honestly, I kind of went, I really liked that school of magic. I don't want to spoil things for people,

but I really liked that one. It actually wound up being my favorite. And then I went, dude, why did you wait so long to give me this? So, I mean, that's the combat system in a nutshell. I don't know how deep you want to get, Paul. No, I think that's pretty good. I did enjoy swapping between them all. So maybe you go into one school of magic and throw poison on the enemy, then you switch to fire where you basically use a lightsaber or whatever. I did really love the colors, you know, purple being earth and then green being light. Like, I didn't totally understand some of these, but, you know, whatever. I will say that the game at times did almost feel a little button mashy. And the combat I found to be very easy in this it was easy some

of the boss fights are tough but in the open world i was actually a little surprised at how easy the combat is um the only other thing i'd throw in is that enemies are resistant or vulnerable to certain forms of magic so sometimes you have to like scan them and you know cuff will tell you what they're more vulnerable to. So the game does encourage you to swap out your forms of magic as you play. And it's easy to swap, too, which I like. You can just use, like on my controller I played on a PS5, you can just use left or right on the D-pad and you go in between. I found myself quite often using all of the ones that we had available.

Wanted to just use supports and so forth, because in my fire school I had these two two minions that i'd summon and i'd send them out and they'd be fighting with me um i gotta be honest on combat this was such a uniquely different combat system you know you don't see a lot of games where you're using combat whereas left and left bumper and left trigger are like a completely separate thing normally it's like's like you go through X square triangle on a PlayStation or whatever it is on whatever remote you have. But you're using the triggers. Left side is going to be your support spells. Right side is going to be your damage spells. And then you can easily switch between different spells as you go. I found it to be very, very seamless.

Very well fleshed out. It was probably some of the most combat, most fun I've really had with combat in a game in a very long time, partly because it was different. Second, because I think that I just got really good at it really early as far as just like using the parkour. Like recently, I've been playing a lot of Horizon where you can't block and Gears of War, or God of War, where I chose not to block. And so like I'm used to evading and using the parkour evading just made it even better. So it was easy. I did have to turn the difficulty up a little bit so I would take damage because I just

wasn't taking any damage once I mastered the parkour. But it was a lot of fun. I really thought it was a breath of fresh air to see something different that actually worked. We see different a lot, but it doesn't work. I felt like for a new IP, the combat, the last game I can think of that felt this satisfying was Outriders, where it's fast paced and you're evading and you're using abilities that you don't always see in other games. So even having a fire tree, it's not just fireball, fire blast,

pyro ball, like they're actually giving you pretty inventive spells to use. And I really appreciated that and the fact that the default setting is whenever you swap between schools of magic it doesn't freeze the game but it drastically slows down but enemies are still coming at you so it allows you to like swap quickly without falling behind in battle so it's very fast paced and frenetic um which i really liked and some of the bosses require that you keep swapping back and forth which i really appreciated uh just on the whole i was surprised at how easy this game was i don't i don't know that i died in the first 10 hours of playing

other than like maybe once on accident because i didn't know what button was heal yeah that's about it i i died a couple times and that was it. I do remember one fight being somewhat difficult to where the enemies are shielded. They, you know, the combat is the best part of this game. I will say personally, you know, I liked some of the things that they did. There were other parts of the combat that just really didn't resonate a whole lot with me. But I wish, I wish that they had leaned into, because they did this later in the game and you just mentioned it,

Paul, I wish they had leaned into the, you, you must swap, you know, like, and you, and you need to swap quickly and you need to do it for a reason. You touched on it as well,

that some of the monsters are resistant. So you'll, and you'll see it like, you know, if I'm using fire and I'm wailing away on something and it's like resistant, resistant, resistant, I can still kill it is the thing. It's not immune. It's just taking less damage. But the combat's so easy that you could just kind of brute force your way through that if you wanted to.

It's just going to take longer. Which, honestly, I found myself doing more often than not because it was like, oh, I could switch and figure out which element it's weak to. But by the time I scan it and figure that out and then switch to that one and then start using it, I'm just going to brute force my way through this resistant monster anyway. And so I didn't do that naturally, but there are parts of the game that force it to where it's like, dude, you have to switch to the correct magic. And that to me was like the highlight of combat. And I think maybe it was a boss. I don't remember the exact part. I'm pretty sure it was one of the boss fights. I wish they had leaned into that from the very beginning because it is really neat

to have all these different schools of magic. but in the open world and combat in general you don't need to use like any of the variety it's flavor at that point which is like i'm glad that that happened but i wish they had leaned into it i guess they give you all the tools and in the end all you need is a sledgehammer right to get through each wall that's really all you need yeah so let's let's talk a little bit about the opening chapters of the game oh boy because um i don't know how you guys felt i i know a little bit josh because i couldn't help but dm josh a little bit in the beginning of this game this game blissfully ignorant by the way they'll talk back and forth and they're

just like michael's never gonna know we're talking about he'll just be blissfully ignorant josh and i always play on day of release and we know michael's gonna start nine days later and play the whole game in one day so yeah this game tries so hard to get in its own way oh my that you never are able to take off in the plane this game has two feet fully down on the gas and brakes equally. The game is throwing awesome combat and parkour at you. And you know what else they're giving you guys? I don't know that I'm exaggerating when I say this. I think you get 200 tutorial windows in probably the first two and a half hours. Is that in between the talking where you cannot move or do anything else while somebody's talking part? Right.

So here's the thing about the first third of the game. And it continued later on in the game. But the first third was obviously the most egregious about it. Is that, like Josh just mentioned, I hate that you can't move when you're having a conversation in any way. And even five seconds after the conversation. So there's a whole bunch of cutscenes at the beginning, but I feel like they're completely pasted together, even inside the same cutscene. So often you're having a simple conversation, right? And in that conversation, the screen will fade to black and then unfade

from black, and you're having the same conversation. And I can see it if the choices you made up at that point had changed the conversation, like Detroit becoming human. But no, that didn't happen. You're just in the middle of a cutscene. It's like they couldn't even somehow optimize the loading of anything to get through a cutscene in this game. It also seemed like the voice acting was edited together very poorly. There was big delays in conversation, like responses. Someone would say something, and you've got a delay of like two seconds of silence,

which you'll never hear come out of my mouth, ever. But you'll hear two seconds of silence, and then like the response comes. You're like, how is it so, it's annoying that there's so much of the tutorials and so much of the cut scenes and almost no combat at the beginning. But on top of that,

you seem like you're clunking through this. Like, it's just not, it's like they said, we're getting, we get combat. Let's make this game about combat. Okay.

Throw the story together in a month. I don't know. It just, the first three chapters were outrageously negative for me. I even told my wife at one point, I said, this might be the first game that I have to tell Josh and Paul that I'm not going to,

I'm not going to play it. I don't want to play this game. I was so frustrated i will say i will for me the two the first two hours the first two hours of this game now this game i mean if you do every single thing in the open world you probably get 30 maybe 40 hours out of this game if you play a few of the side quests and then play the campaign it's like 12 hours long it's really not that long of a game so two hours of this game one sixth is literally slow walking and listening to people talk and when you when they're talking you don't get to walk

you have to move the camera you can look around and that that's it. But that is it, man. And I'll tell you, this is where I really started to feel like an inner rage boiling within me because, Paul, you said it. And I don't take notes on games, but I actually wrote this down because I wanted to make sure that I brought it up there i said this game could not get out of its own way and the biggest problem is is that it insisted it insisted on trying to have this grand story you know in this game and it failed so hard at the story part and at the character part and it just wouldn't stop it wouldn't stop quit having people talk to me quit making my character talk for 10 minutes straight i want to run the worst thing in the world is the vambrace is literally fused to your arm if you want to make

them talk have them talk to me while i'm running through the world because at least i'm enjoying that part but no every single time cuff talks to you guess what oh oh you stop everything freezes and cuff starts talking and then you know what the worst part about it is every single time somebody stops talking to you whether it's cuff or 20 different npcs that don't matter there's a five second pause before the game lets you go back to controlling your character oh my goodness i wanted to i dude i wanted to punch my monitor so bad because it was just like dude let me play this game yeah i was gonna say we uh when you play this game the first two hours are literally a cycle of read a tutorial window of something that sounds awesome they let

you do it for exactly 2.1 seconds and then the game pauses you hear dialogue that doesn't matter cuff says oh what do you want to talk about guess what i clicked every time never mind i don't care because this is taking too long you're you've promised me magic parkour let me use it it's it's so frustrating that you are continually stopped right in your tracks and you can't just play the game that is promised i think that there's a really good highlight here between what is done right and what is done wrong in a great game versus this game god of war we talked about it on that episode when sindri and brock are talking and you don't have to be around them but you listen and it entices you this game was trying to do that by forcing you to listen instead of just having it be part of the world and it took me out of the world

yeah i really don't understand why cuff couldn't just say on the fly press space bar well i guess that would make sense that would kind of break immersion but uh yeah the game is just continually stopping you in your tracks it's like you're trying to run through a swamp wearing concrete boots yeah that's exactly what it feels he did say level up one time so i guess he kind of broke his own fourth wall. I'd rather than break the fourth wall. Just let Cuff say, press spacebar now, and then just let me keep playing, right? All right. So let's talk a little bit about the open world. The map is incredibly large. This game was a lot bigger than I think I anticipated it being. And the way that you travel in this game you do unlock fast travel points which is nice and fray runs around the world famously through magic parkour we've seen videos and trailers

about this we covered it in past twig episodes you can run and jump over just about everything in the world the game is littered with things like labyrinth dungeons uh shrines where you sneak up on cats using stealth in order to pet them. No, I'm not making that up. There are chests with little puzzles to unlock, monuments of wisdom that give you timed challenges where you have to defeat a certain number of enemies within a time period to get rewards. I thought the open world in this game was absolutely incredible. The combat rules, the open world rules. I never once wanted to go to my objective because that's when the game hits the brakes and Frey starts talking more. Just turn

down the option for chatter in this game and just go do every objective in the open world and you're going to have a great time. I loved the open world. Yeah, I think that to your point though i i'm 100 on team paul with this i i love the open world um i think though you want to wait to explore it too much until you get through part of the game because you do unlock more schools of magic that make the open world more fun as you go and that's kind of a bad thing like you want to get to your objectives for the first half of the game first but here's the thing's a huge world, but it didn't seem too big because you traverse it so easily. It's so much fun to parkour over mountains

and through these areas, but it is enormous. Like, this might be one of the biggest worlds I've ever been in. Like, it might be World of Warcraft big. It's huge. I literally today spent like 15 minutes trying to go from one side to the other,

like for 15 minutes. I'm like a third of the way across it. No joke. But here's the thing about it is that it does feel very devoid of human life but that's kind of part of the story i think that's the point but there is something to do almost everywhere and they're fun things to do like there's a glimpse in the past where you're supposed to fight these bosses in a short amount of time i don't know how that's a glimpse of the past i guess you're fighting a boss in the past but i found those to be really fun the cat thing was interesting i have like four cats now i'm not a

person but i have like four cats and they visit me at my home when i visit my home um overall though i think that the open world is one of the things this game also did brilliantly well i never was annoyed at the open world i loved it i loved looking over the next crest seeing the next environment uh the landscapes weren't too different they're kind of made in quadrants that was the only annoying part is like i know if i'm going south it's going to be bleak and awful and if i'm going west i know it's going to be beautiful trees yeah what about you josh what'd you think of the open world it was fine here here's my so the the combat and traversal it's the best part of this game. The open world is good. Honestly, I can't complain too much about what they did with the open world. The game did not

need to be nearly as large as it was. They could have pared down the size and put some more things in there. The only complaint that I have about the open world... And I actually did enjoy some of the stuff. The Labyrinth Dungeons were fun because it was all combat focused and kind of trials based. And I like that. You know, anytime that there was a new fountain of blessing or what were the fountains called where you get new spells? Like, you know, if you get into one of these fountains, you fall in and you kind of float around and you learn a new spell. Because the spells are the combat and that's the redeeming part of this game. I was always going to these fountains and making sure that I got those. My problem with the open world

is that none of it matters. Honestly, dude, I don't know that I've ever wished for an Ubisoft game before, because at least in an Ubisoft game, the stuff you do in the open world matters in some way. Whether you climb a stupid tower and it unveils part of the map, or you get an ally that helps you, or you unlock a new gun or something. You know what I mean? Or maybe it's just a car that you find and then now you're racetracking around a Far Cry game. Something like that. But what I found in Forspoken's open world was that none of it mattered. It was just a distraction to the game. Gear in this game does not matter. Yes, you can get cloaks and you can get fingernails and you can get amulets and this kind of stuff, but none of it matters. You don't need it to get through combat. So it's kind of like, why? What am I doing all of this for other than just something to do

at that point? An open world is great, but if the only reason that you're putting things in the open world is so I have something, so that it's not a six-hour game. It just doesn't land with me a whole lot. That's the one thing I was going to say, is there's not a lot of motivation to go do the open world stuff other than just for the fun of it, because the combat is neat. I enjoyed jumping and climbing over buildings to find that treasure chest, or I can have Cuff scan the landscape and i can see there's a chest there how do i work my way around to parkour my way up there that stuff i actually enjoyed i didn't even need a lot of enticement to do it similarly with like the crafting and stuff like this game is

littered with so many mats that you'll never use and they don't really matter wait um i do have a question about that i know we have to move on really quick, but I got thousands of materials, and I kept unlocking. Every time you'd get a new piece of gear or something, it would be like you've unlocked the ability to craft plus two to something or whatever. Every single time I went to craft anything, I couldn't craft anything.

You can only ever upgrade your gear using these different things, but it's like I'm not actually crafting new amulets. I'm not crafting gear. The only thing I could craft were health potions and kind of like Elden Ring where it's like, hey, you get more uses of your heal and your heal is stronger. Those are literally the only three things that were craftable in this game the other side on the upgrade path was basically like you go from seven health to eight health and you spent 10

you know daisies or something like that yeah when you when you get the you have the ability to craft this i think it's just crafting one of the three slots you have on your necklace or your cloak that allows you to be like hey you get plus two this just enchantments yeah yeah you're not crafting gear this is like this is honestly one of the lamest crafting systems i've ever seen in a game like why even say i'm crafting at that point well and you look at the bonuses and they're not even that strong it's like plus two to purple magic and it's like oh great that's you know pretty minor when it's at a certain level that's pretty high all right well let's go ahead and take a short break here we'll be right back

with more multiplayer gaming podcast get groceries delivered across the gta from real canadian superstore with pc express shop online for super prices and super savings try it today and get up to 75 in pc optimum points visit superstore. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Okay, we are back. Let's talk a little bit about how this game worked from a technical perspective, because famously, and we did cover this, I think, on one of our This Week in Gaming episodes, this game had wildly high requirements to run on PC. Michael picked it up for PS5. Josh and I both played on PC.

So I'm a little more curious with Josh, although I do want to know from you also, Michael, how did this game run for you? And what did you also think of the graphics? We did a Twig episode where we talked about the requirements and we said, dude, if this game is another Callisto Protocol, I might be like Michael where I just refused to play it at that point. Honestly, I just built a new PC that is fairly top of the line at this point. And I was like, dude, I don't know that my PC is going to be able to run this game. I am happy to report this game ran

fine. I don't know where their requirements came from, or maybe they just found a way to optimize it in the last week before they released it or something like that. But I found that a lot of the claims from people or the fears for performance issues in this game were gone. It ran fine for me. Honestly, maybe there was a hiccup or two or a frame rate drop or two, but I'm kind of used to that stuff. There was nothing so glaring and forespoken that I went, this game sucks because of the technical aspects. So thankfully, none of that wound up being an issue for me. I guess my biggest thing is more of a question for you guys, because I mentioned it earlier, where in the middle of a cutscene, all of a sudden, your face-to-face of the character

fades to black for a second, unfades from and you're doing the same thing was that a ps5 thing or did you guys experience that as well i don't remember that happening that might be a console thing okay so i'm wondering if it was a console thing because it was it was literally like getting through a cut scene was like pulling my teeth i'm like why are they having no that's just the game in between right the game's the the thing with the fade to black is the game takes away your ability to move so they want to take away your ability to see also that's it you can't see also i did notice though when it when it did actually fade to black or fade to white it was like 10 seconds of waiting

before something would happen um i thought the graphics ran fine. I more have complaints about the graphics in the game. Like, the game looked great. Yeah, so here's my problem. And it's not a fault of this game. It's a fault of where we're going with technology. Having played games where there's motion capture now, it is now very difficult for me to watch people talk

when it's not motion captured. God of War, Horizon, facial animations, expressions. If it wasn't a cutscene and Frey was talking, there was zero expression on her face. It was just a mouth moving like a Muppet. And that kind of takes me out of it now because now we're moving in the direction where these $70 AAA games, which I'm sorry, this game is not a AAA $70 game. Hold on, it is. They do spend money on things like motion capture and stuff. And so it was just kind of weird for me.

I also noticed that sometimes if it was a background character, like their mouth wouldn't move at all. Words were coming from their closed mouth, which might have been just a console thing. But there was some issues with that. But overall, the graphics I I thought, looked great. It looked fine. It's just weird for me to get past Muppet Mouth now, which I'll probably look for in every game now that I've been spoiled. Oh, that's funny. See, I guess I just never moved the camera during open world.

So I was always staring at the back of Frey's head. So that never bothered me. I don't have quite as beefy of a PC as Josh, but I do have a 2080 Ti, so it's well above average for your average PC gamer. And for the most part, the game ran okay. It wanted to run things on high, and I did that. And almost always, I was getting 40 frames a second or higher, although during the final boss fight, which I won't go into spoilers, but there are three phases. And during the second phase, there's a lot of stuff flying in the air. And mine was running at 9 to 11 frames per second during those cutscenes.

But other than a couple moments like that, it actually ran rather okay. And I really loved the, for lack of a better word, level design, because each of the different biomes are able to look so drastically different because it's a fantasy setting. It's almost like Star Wars. If you want to make a Tatooine desert land, you can do it. If you want to make whatever the jungle area is called in Return of the Jedi, Endor, you can go ahead and do that. So there's like one biome in this game where you look up in the sky, and the sky is pink and purple, and there's green shimmers everywhere. And I was like, this is really cool, because they're able to just do whatever they want.

I thought that they were very artistic in how they created the biomes. I actually liked that quite a bit. I thought it was a very beautiful world to look at and i really appreciated the design in that sense so it passed the call up the paul color test yeah yeah this is gorgeous lots of colors the whole spectrum we need to start a new like it doesn't have to be a segment but literally just a rating what's the paul color rating on this is it one paint can two paint cans cans, or five paint cans? Oh, there you go. This one gets five paint cans from Paul, for sure. There you go. You heard it first, guys.

All right. So we don't need to spend too much time on this, but I just want to point out the fact that I felt like this game was incredibly uneven. You can almost split the game into thirds. I would say out of a 12-hour game, the first four hours are basically like an extended tutorial. This game takes forever to teach you how it runs. The middle third, I felt like, is when the game shines its best, when you have a few of your schools of magic already and you're getting stuff done in the open world. But in particular, I want to call out Chapter 11 without going into details. Holy exposition dump guys. This is about two straight hours of running eight seconds to your next marker.

And you stand still while listening to narration, filling in the gaps on the story. And I want to say it does that for about two hours. And I've never seen a game. Try so hard to leave a bad taste in your mouth right at the end. This game is only 12 chapters and chapter 11 is by far the longest and it's by far the worst so of a 12-hour game the first two hours is tutorial boxes the almost last two hours before the the end of the game

is exposition dump so really you're only playing the game for eight hours. In the middle. Yeah. Yeah. In the middle. Might I add that the last third of the game is actually only two chapters, and that's literally like four hours of work in two chapters. So buckle up. I felt this too. The beginning of the game was really lame. The last two hours plus of this game were really lame. The middle of this game was fine, honestly. I don't know how they could not just manage to keep a consistent pacing throughout the game, but they could not do that at all. So if you think a hamburger needs a bun,

then this game may not be for you. If you're fine with just the meat patty in the middle, then chow down, man. A keto burger. I found myself literally trying to see if i could read the subtitles faster than i could click the skip lines but it doesn't matter because i was literally just mashing you're gonna be locked out of going anywhere anyway yeah it still took me two hours didn't save much time all right so we are actually introducing a brand new segment here. I like this one. This one's going to be fun. This is just going to be our segment called Hot Takes. All right. So each one of us has brought one hot take to share.

Maybe we're kind of over-exaggerating. Maybe we really believe this. Who knows? This is our time to shine and we're going to bring our hot takes. Who wants to go first? Ooh, ooh, me, me. You do, Josh? All right. I don't want one of you guys to steal my hot take on this. Oh, don't steal my hot take. Everybody talks about how awesome the parkour in this game is. And I did not enjoy the parkour in this game.

That's not my hot take. I found it to be buggy. I found it to be frustrating. I found it to be like, this is supposed to be the pepperoni on the pizza. This is the flavor for this game is this parkour. And half the time I was accidentally jumping off of a wall when I'm trying to just dash through a doorway, it gives you abilities to like multi jump up cliffs, but then it didn't work half the time because my character would just kick off the cliff and then fall back down to the ground. You unlock these new parkour abilities that are supposed to be awesome and amazing. And it's like, no, the only ability I need is the one that gets me to my objective the fastest because you made a world that is so large that even running through it has become a chore at that point. I'm not saying that the parkour is bad. I'm saying that what I hear from most

people is that they enjoyed the parkour in this game. And I found that i did not enjoy it give me anthem where i can fly around this girl's got magic you're telling me she can't fly come on man she can she can uh waterboard on rivers like sail on rivers yeah let us do that in the air yeah i did not care i that that's my hot take is i could care less about the stupid parkour in this game. I know it was supposed to be like the crowning achievement of it, but I found it to be super lackluster. I think we can work on the wording for a hot take. You need to just come in and say the magic parkour sucks. Yeah, there you go. And it's the worst part. Well, there you go. It's buggy and I got frustrated by it. There's your hot take. Just put that in the game. What about you, Michael? What's your hot take? This is what about you michael what's your hot take this is the only

game that i think i've ever played where the game actually starts and is significantly better after the game is over like what i mean by this because you don't have to play it anymore no no i actually found myself playing it today like i'm playing it and i finished the story yesterday the reason why is because it takes so long. You don't get your fourth magic tree until the end of the first game. Literally, you get to use it on the boss fight. And that's about it. Like a couple of small bosses.

It's also one of the best magic trees in the game. It's also one of the best magic trees. Now, after the game is over, there is two after credit scenes in this game. And the very last one explains why you are able to go back out into the open world and still fight things in Athia with cuff on your wrist. And when you go out, the monsters are harder. They're actually they actually now you have to do more of that switching between the different magic trees because the resistant is stronger. Like you're hitting them for ones and twos as opposed to hitting for threes and sevens and thirties and i found like i'm like now i want to go explore this world because i'm not being held back by this janky story that won't let me progress like i want to and i'm having a lot of fun going and finding new things in this

world like i literally said today i'm like i'm trying to go as far as i can it's a huge world i want to see if it changes when i go 2.6 miles that way which i did set a pin that was 2.6 miles away and it took me like 15 minutes to not get there but the whole thing is like on my way there the reason i didn't get there quickly is because i want to stop and kill everything on the way because i did have fun with the parkour and i had a great time with the fighting but the whole rest of the other 14 hours this game or 12 before that is you're fighting the fighting. But the whole rest of the other 14 hours of this game or 12 before that is you're fighting the story, not fighting the bad guys in the game. So this game is significantly better if you play it after you get to the first 12 hours and finish the game and then

play. Yeah. And then go do open world stuff after. Yep. All right. You have all your spells at that point. You don't have them earlier during the game. I was thinking of hot takes, and I had so many that were positive and so many that were negative. I thought about just saying Frey's the worst character of all time in all media. And honestly, I think you could probably even say that. I'm going to go the other way. I'm going to put a positive spin because I feel like I've been really negative on this game up to this point. I'm going to say, if this game put a big solid strikeout through 95% of the story, just give me her name, let her voosh here to Athia, and just say, go save Athia. And she just starts running around in the open world. So strip out 95% of the story, make the game

about five times harder, and give me crafting opportunities with blueprints i think this game would be better than elden ring i love the magic parkour i love the combat i think if you tweaked it properly it would be a better open world game than elden ring if you just made honestly not even that big of a difference to the game if it just had a different focus and a different goal this game could have been a thousand times better than what we actually got, which is a very subpar product. You guys can't see the video, but Josh's eyes got bigger than my ring light that I'm staring at right now during this episode.

That's not a hot take. That's like a sun take right there. That's what we're going for. You know when they say a house has good bones and on the outside it looks like a complete trash pile? This game has something to it. There's something here I really did feel drawn to and really appreciated, and it's all dressed up in the worst way possible.

I don't know. I don't know how to describe it because it's such a great, fantastic idea, and the execution could not have been worse, if that makes any sense. It does. I don't think we need to get into any spoilers. There's no point. All right. Yeah, you're both shaking your heads. I completely agree. All right. That's a little bit about what we think about the game. Josh, I believe you've pulled a couple community reviews to share. I did, as we always do. We like to pull reviews on a game so that you don't just have to

take our word for it. You can hear what other people think about a game. And so I always go to Steam to pull some reviews from there. So this first one is not recommended. They have 11 hours on record, so it's possible to beat the game in that time. And this review says, annoying character, annoying sidekick, annoying cut scenes. One of the few games that time. And this review says, annoying character, annoying sidekick, annoying cut scenes. One of the few games that would benefit from content being removed. Literally just let me play the game. Now that review is spot on with what we were saying. Now again, people need to understand we do not tell each other what we think about a game before we record. So I am finding out that Paul liked parts of this game.

Paul and I will hint, but we are actually very careful to not tell each other what we think about a game. We'll just, Paul will say like, hey, you know, are you like, can you not move while people are talking? You know, I'd be like, yeah, I can't do that. And then it's like, I think maybe the frustration comes through a little bit, but we do not know what people like, what each other thinks before recording. I did send Josh a screenshot of you have completed chapter 11 and said, I've never been more excited in my life. So I did let Josh know how much I hated that

chapter. So it's funny because when I pull these reviews, I have zero clue what you guys think about stuff. And then it's just funny that all three of us have literally just written the same review where it's like, get out of the way, let me play the game. Okay, so this next one is not recommended. And it says, if video games were movies, this would be a 2020 Steven Seagal straight to Blu-ray release that you paid 80 pounds for. Wow. I get it. All right. Okay, this next one, I had to pull this one cause this is actually a decent review here. So this one is not recommended and 10 and a half hours on record. And it says,

are you serious? Every aspect of this game is trash. What did you make this or what? Did you make this in 2005 and just released it now? What a waste of money. The graphics suck. The open world sucks and it's empty. The AI is so cringe that it looks like a toddler did the animations in the cut scenes.

The story is so slow and unbearable. The stupid game tutorial is two hours, which makes it impossible to return. The conversations with Cuff are unbearable. And why does she have to stand there and do nothing while they talk? The decisions she makes are pathetic and cheap. The story is cringe and is so bad the delay in the cut scenes is way too awkward and way too long there is no flow in the conversations open world forces you back on the path why have an open world if you're going to

lock me onto a path the only good in this game is the parkour the magic is so basic and the crafting is a joke for this amount of money and for the game to be nowhere as good as red dead redemption 2 is a crime y'all literally stole my money at this point this game is a joke the worst is the pre-video drops you did explaining how well the graphics are in the terrain you hyped everyone up and changed it to garbage trash can't even be compared to this y'all robbed me yeah i. I love that one. I mean, this was the first $70 game that we purchased. Yeah. You know, I mean, $70. Okay.

$210 combined. Yeah. All right. And then, okay, so this next review is not recommended. And it says, I tried really hard to like this game. I really did. The dialogue is cringe. My PC is more than capable enough to run the game, and it looks terrible graphically. There's pauses in the cutscenes, long black screens,

long loading times. The map takes a solid five seconds to load as well. The open world isn't open at all. You can barely do anything starting out, and every location and unlockable on the minimap is very repetitive. The maps are very uninspired and linear. Combat is boring after a while, and I feel like this game was extremely rushed. Unlocking new powers is fun, but that's literally it. Buy this game only on sale. I get it. All right.

And then I'm going a little bit long here. This next one is not recommended. Of the first 71 minutes of game time, most of it has been, you have to walk really slowly because of x reason or cut scene of the cut scenes two of them were narratively important the rest were that last cut scene yeah we're just going to drill that point home because we think you're idiots i want the first two hours of the game to be two hours of gameplay so that i can decide if i want to play the game or get a refund now 74 minutes into the game and still not having access to the actual

gameplay part of the game, I'm inclined to refund it because the ratio of agency to cutscene is atrocious. Having given the game another 25 minutes, I have requested a refund because it was another 25 minutes of cutscene and slow walking. Why is the walking so slow, by

the way? It's so slow. I have not an idea. All right. Okay, last one, guys, because I don't know if you noticed, but there's been no positive reviews on this so far. I have noticed. Yeah, me too. The first one had silver lining.

I did pull a positive review. If you want a story game, this is not great, as far as dialogue goes. But the combat is fun. It was a recommended review. That's my review. That's basically what I said. Oh, man. All right.

Well, that is what the community thought about this game. And so now what we do is we play a little game where we try to guess the overall score for Forspoken as the Steam ratings go on a scale of 0 to 100. Paul, you are on a hot streak lately, so you're going first, buddy. All right. I'm sure it got somewhat review bombed. I bet it didn't work well for a lot of people. Lots of refunds.

I'm going to say 61%. All right. Michael? The number that stuck in my head was 74. I'm going with it. No reason why. It's just there. I guess 71.

I thought it was going to be lower on the scale, but there's probably some people that like the parkour and combat and that kind of stuff out there. So I guess 71. Gosh darn it, Paul. Did I do it again? Your overall score is 59 oh i was close you were real close two percent it's hard to peg these games that are very polarizing too so that's pretty good man all right i'll take it all right i get to introduce us to this next next yeah i get to introduce the segment all right let's do it, guys. Let's hit that music.

Hey there, Frey. I ought to complain to Spotify for you not being named this week's hottest single. All right, welcome to the segment, which we call Make Love, Marry, Runaway Bride, or Murder. This is where... We are not adding that as an official category, Paul. No, no Runaway Bride. It kills the... Oh, man. Oh, gosh.

What's it called? I don't know. Oh, the alliteration. Alliteration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. This is Make, Love, Marry, or Murder.

Each one of us give this game an individual rating. Is it marriage material? You are bought in long term. It's worth recommending to others. Or is it just a simple game where maybe it's worth picking up and playing for a bit and dropping it or is it murder material man this one's hard for me yeah to not murder um it's certainly not mary this story could not be worse the combat i really liked but i, but I'm still going to give it a murder. But I'm not happy about it.

Like, it's a high murder, but it's still murder. What about you, Josh? I feel like this is very easy for you to put down. This is so easy for me. The fact that both of you said this is hard, my eyes got really big and you kind of saw that. I hate this game. I hate it. I wish I could get 13 hours of my life back.

This is, I mean, honestly, one of the most agonizing games that I have played in a while. I am not saying that there's not enjoyable times to be had in the combat. I am not saying that there are not parts of this game where it's like, hey, they managed to make something that I didn't want to just jump out a window on. The problem is that I am rating this game on a whole. And on a whole, this game absolutely sucks, man. I have never been so frustrated in a game for taking away my ability to play the freaking video game, man. I mean, just let me play. That's all I want to do. And even then, it's like you just won't let me do it, man.

And I cannot tell you the amount of rage that this invoked in me. And there is no way after what they did to me and my psyche by torturing me like that, that I am going to say anything positive about this game. I hate it. Do not buy this game. It is an absolute take $70, crumple it up, wipe your butt with it, throw it in the garbage, because that is more entertaining than buying this game with $70. Where do they get off charging a premium price for this game? I don't understand. The guy that said that they robbed him, I feel that 100% because I don't know how you charge me $70 for this piece of crap. Do you feel like if someone, almost like a movie, right? You can have the same script

and if different people make it, they take it in totally different directions and you get different products. Do you think that this has anything redeemable that someone else could have made a good game? No. Or do you think it's absolute trash all the way? I think it's absolute trash all around.

And here's why. I have seen the Twitter posts where Forspoken posts their, hey, pick up Forspoken. And there's 100 comments that are like, I just 100% of this game. I'm absolutely loving it. And I'm like, you're a big fat liar. There's nobody on the planet that goes, I absolutely love this game.

Oh, I 100% it. Yeah. Yeah, sure you did. You know what I mean? So here's the thing. I'm sure there's some crazy person out there that's like i love for spoken i can't believe you're bashing it this this much i'm super glad that you are crazy and that you you enjoyed something that most people would not you know what i mean like honestly

yes because the world needs crazy people in it um there's just better games if you're gonna spend 70 on a game, if you want an action role-playing game, go to our leaderboard, come to our discord. I'll suggest 10 of them to you that are layers better than four spoken. And I'll tell you what, the only thing I'll ask is sign up on our picture and give us $5 for one

month. You know what I mean? We saved you $65 that way, you know, like don't like there's better games out there. Why would you do this to yourself? You know what I mean? We saved you $65 that way. You know? There's better games out there. Why would you do this to yourself? All right, I'm sorry.

I'm done. Michael? All right, Michael. Michael's like, I thought it was okay. Right? I thought it was all right. All right, guys, let's move on. Michael's like, I'm marrying this game.

No, I'm not marrying this game i'm not in fact it's funny because paul when you said it i literally made a face because it's in my notes verbatim it's hard for me not to murder this game is what i've got it if i as well so you said it and i'm like i'm like sitting here like i'm like i'm just typing through it and just putting my thoughts on paper uh first of all i didn't get to say this earlier but i have to say it now that's not paul bettany it's his name is jonathan cake so That's not Paul Bettany. His name is Jonathan Cake. So it's not Jarvis on Cuff, even though it sounds just like him. However, I did love the voice acting on Cuff.

And I love the voice acting on Frey. That was about it. Aside from, you know, I don't know. Let's look at the good things, right? I loved the parkour fighting. I really did. I really liked the open world. I really liked those things.

And yes, the fighting was a little bit difficult or a little bit easy. I did turn up the difficulty to make it a little bit more fun, especially towards the end when I had all the different schools of magic and I'm just wasting things. But I thought that part was fun.

Now let's talk about the negative. The cut scenes. Holy cow. The story. Fray as a character. If developers want to crash course on how to do loading screens wrong or just load a game wrong just play for spoken you'll understand not what what not to do um

it's hard for me not to murder this game and unlike you guys i am not murdering this game yeah i am making love to this game the reason why and i'm sure it'll get old fast for me i'm really having a good time out there just messing around in the open world. After the game is done, I've got all my schools of magic. I'm just having fun laying waste to all these different things with my difficulty setting turned way up. I just think it's kind of fun to go out and explore. That being said, Josh did kind of curve me a little bit earlier when he said it means nothing because I spent time getting the cats, like sneaking up on the cats, thinking they would do something. They don't do anything.

They just show up at your little house. And it's like, I thought they were going to bring me gifts and magic and stuff. They don't. They're just cats in my house. And only one of them shows up at a time. That being said, I think the combat was so refreshing to me. I really had fun with it. I know you guys did not feel the same way.

Maybe I'm just bad at video games, so easier combat is better for me. But I mean, like I said, I turned the difficulty up to make it harder. I kind of had enough fun with the combat to where I might just want to every once in a while hop in and just mess around in that open world fighting the little mini bosses. So it's make love, albeit a very low make love.

Very low. Like on the teetering murder side, because the frustrating stuff was unbearably frustrating michael i'm not upset i'm just disappointed i understand michael i feel you um i will say one last thing that we didn't mention side quests in this game are called detours which is very funny to me that they even seem to understand that there's no point in doing them the the stupid little kids in town are like we've never left the city can you go take pictures for us and i was

like sure and i thought certainly this is at least going to be like one redeeming moment in this game where they give me a good reward or the kids are really excited you just show them your phone and they're like oh neat and then the game says you've unlocked monochrome filter when you take pictures yeah and and that's it so like now i can just take pictures with a filter like this game just they went so wrong in not only that paul but you can take pic you can take pictures taking away one of the things that you liked about the game the most which is the color yeah that is true and And making it monochrome. All right, well, let's go ahead and head into our last segment. We are going to go to our leaderboard

and see where this game stacks up. Okay, if you're new to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, we have a leaderboard on our website, which is multiplayerpodcast.com. Every time we do a deep dive game, we basically have to come to a three-man consensus. Where does this game rank against every other game that we've played? So we are comparing drastically different games from different genres, different prices, different lengths. But this is always the best place to go when people say, I want a recommendation for a game. This is where you're going to want to do it. Our Deep Dive leaderboard now stands at 88 games. This is going to be number 89.

We've got some games at the top, which are nowhere near forespoken, like Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Overwatch, Cyberpunk, Disco Elysium. Down down in the middle we have the likes of uh you know call of duty black ops cold war broforce ibn ab lost ark among us some games like that and then down near the bottom which i'm guessing we're a little bit closer to we have games like human fall flat escape from tarkov which we just weren't fans of. Sea of Thieves, The Forest, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which became a hacker's paradise. So looking here, guys, what are you thinking? What kind of range for Forspoken? I know where I'm at.

I'm looking at like number 59, Tiny Tina. That's not where I'm putting it, by the way. But I'm looking at that Tiny Tina's Wonderland and I'm like, man, that was a great game compared to this one. Like a great game. Where this one like a great game um where did we put uh where do we put the quarry number 70 that sounds about right so maybe 70 ish is what you're thinking michael what about you josh i think the combat levels it up enough to take it off the bottom yeah i'm not i'm really not trying to be like over exaggerating things and and you know oh boy the grouchy old man just to be the grouchy old man on this there are 88 games on our leaderboard and i would rather play 88 games

over for spoken really dude i don't know how you screw up a video game so bad dude he would rather play elite dangerous you guys i would rather play elite dangerous yes battlefield 2040 dude halo reach dude i'm telling you right now because do you know how i feel about elite dangerous and that i will play elite dangerous for a dozen hours before i ever touch for spoken dude honestly you you had every resource in the world you know what i mean like how did you mess this game up how are you so blind to what gamers want you know what i mean what are you doing as a game development company if you don't know what gamers want to do like that's my problem with this man i think that's a little over the top, but I hear you.

It's dead last for me. Dead last for me. If you want to split out the combat only, if you say, Josh, we want to place just the combat on the leaderboard, I'm fine. I'm higher. I'm probably with Michael in the quarry range at that point. But if you're saying, where are we putting Forspoken spoken as a game it is dead last for me dude i was thinking exactly what michael was thinking i

would put it right below the quarry at 71 is what i was thinking so i think it's fair to say uh we're somewhere here in like maybe the late 70s early 80s i don't think i care enough i don't know that i care enough either i'll leave it to you too as long as it's not higher than like late 70s early 70s i won't fight too much i was gonna say i just don't want it to be below escape from tarkov that's fine tarkov is not my jam put it at 77 78 So right below the cycle and above Escape from Tarkov? Sure. That works. Are you all right with that, Michael?

I'm fine with it. All right. I don't think you care enough. I haven't played, like, literally. I literally haven't played, like, the 12 games above that. Aren't you lucky? Yeah, put it somewhere in there. That's fine.

I only play the good games, guys, until this one. You know that. Fair enough. All right. We will lock it in. Number 79 out of 89. That's pretty. I only played the good games, guys, until this one. You know that. Fair enough. All right. We will lock it in. Number 79 out of 89. That's pretty low, Josh. We have it in the bottom 10 right there.

That gives it credit for having at least one moderately fun thing in a video game. Fair enough. All right. Well, that wraps up our deep dive here on Forspoken. Please make sure to go check out our Patreon page over at MultiplayerSquad.com to get those bonus episodes. Also come follow us on socials everywhere at MultiplayerPod. We're definitely putting a lot of stuff up on there. Also YouTube Shorts. So make sure to subscribe on YouTube if you're not a big, you know, Twitter or Instagram user or TikTok. And then just so you all know, our next deep dive game is going to be Hogwarts Legacy.

So if you want to check that one out here over the next two weeks, we will deep dive that one two weeks from today. And in the meantime, we'll have all of our regular episodes like This Week in Gaming on Thursdays and another bonus round next Monday. So please make sure to come back and check those out. And until next time, happy gaming. Unless you're playing Forspoken. Yeah, then I just want to play

the game i've been bottling this rage up for like two weeks now guys because i can't say i couldn't i can't say what i think to you guys so this has just been bottled inside all right we'll see you guys next time bye everybody Bye, everybody. Bye.