Video Gamers Podcast - [Holiday Rewind] Forspoken - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

We're on our end of year break, but we're re-releasing some of our favorite episodes for you while we're away. In this one 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. Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's so many things I want to do and see, like redoing the basement without having to do it all myself, or doing absolutely nothing, with a spectacular waterfall view, of course. So, I'm starting here, investing with RBC. When it comes to reaching your goals, personalized advice and performance matter. And now, you can get $300 when you invest with RBC.

Offer ends March 3rd, 2025. Terms and conditions apply. invest with RBC. Offer ends March 3rd, 2025. Terms and conditions apply. Invest with RBC today. Hey guys, it's Paul here. This is one of our Holiday Rewind episodes because every year at the end of December, we take a two-week break from releasing new content so that we have a little bit of extra time to spend with our families. We like to go back and pick some of our favorite episodes over the last year.

That way, if this one passed you by, you'll be able to check it out or maybe give it a second listen. For this one here, we wanted to grab Forspoken, which is a game that released very early in 2023 back in January. This is when Michael was still on the podcast, so you're going to hear him in this episode. Ryan had not yet joined us. And this was a really interesting one because we actually had a fair amount of anticipation for Forspoken. I know that Josh and I had followed the development very closely. We thought the graphics looked incredible. We loved the idea of having fast

traversal in an open world with parkour abilities. And I know I had even played the demo on PS5 ahead of release, and it actually played pretty well. This is one that we were looking forward to. Unfortunately, as many people know, it ended up being one of the worst games of the year. This is one of those games where I think they had a very cool core idea of a game. Let's have a girl that is sucked into a different dimension. She finds out that she has the ability to absorb these new magical powers and is going to have to fight and protect people in this new world. But this is a game where the development really just could not get out of their own way. And they just made so many baffling decisions that the game experience ended up just being completely tanked.

So in this episode, you're going to hear us talk about all of our thoughts about the game. Fun fact, this is actually the very first episode where we ever did our hot take segment. So you'll hear that here. And I think this is maybe Josh's most famous episode for just a lot of yelling. Josh is just so mad about this game. He's mad he had to play it. He is mad that Michael and I want to put it in the 70s on the leaderboard. Josh wants it all the way down at the bottom. So I think this is a really fun episode to listen to, especially in hindsight. We ended up rating this one number 90 on our consensus leaderboard out of 101 games. That's kind of where we ended up compromising there with Josh.

Unfortunately, this is one that just totally fell flat in pretty much every regard. So we hope that you guys enjoy us trashing this release here. And we'll be back with some new episodes at the beginning of the year. Thanks so much. Hope you all enjoy this episode.

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, 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 this incredible crimson nails like 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 uh his podcast is called jnr just those three letters jnr basketball podcast and uh 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 sarah mclaughlin 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. I 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 forespoken okay here is the description according to steam for spoken follows the journey of fray a young new yorker transported

to the beautiful and cruel land of athia in search of a way home fray 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 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?

They're about to hear them, Paul. I think both the good and the bad. Strap in, people. Strap in. We got a lot to say. Oh, we sure do. And we're going to keep 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's story forward michael i always toss it to you why don't you tell us a little bit about fray in the beginning of this story how does she end up going from new york 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 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 then she comes across this abandoned store. And there's this bracelet, bracer thing in there. And somehow this van brace gets fused to her arm. And she gets whooshed. I'll say it again. Whoosh. Yeah, she gets whooshed. I'll say it again. Whoosh. Yeah, she gets whooshed away to a faraway land.

Ultimately, Vanbrace 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 Frey 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 Frey to be interesting as a character, and did you like playing as her? Do you know how something, 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 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 Frey, guys. That's Frey. That's Frey.

Michael? I don't really... is fray that's right that's right michael can you really wait michael turn this into like a plane crash analogy and 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 gonna say automobiles nice um you know i 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. 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 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 i'm talking about the written character uh 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 she opens treasure chest and goes and then cuff is like oh let's not let's not uh 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? 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. You know, 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. How am I supposed to help you guys? The problem that is is that they never let up on it if you want to 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 like my life's finally turned around like fine we've seen transitions and characters in multiple games but the problem that this one is is that they just they 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. You have caused me to dislike literally the person that I am playing right now. And 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, like, you know, there's one part when she's being nice to a little girl and she hammers 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, you know, something that is completely polar opposite. These people are refugees from their homes who have been brought to this terrible place like 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 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 and you would be more sympathetic toward the character i don't know why they made this choice whatever we gotta 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 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 spoiler right here the combat is where this game shines um if anybody knows anything about

forespoken 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. Like 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. Um, she casts different like, uh, categories of magic, you know, schools. Thank

you. That's the word I was looking for. Um, she starts off with her purple magic, which is like innate to her. It's basically earth. So you are an earth caster. Um, you know, not green,

pink. Yeah. Keep 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 as 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 like 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 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 ult is on cooldown as well. Right. You do build up an ult. I'll be honest, I found the ults a little lackluster. These are not like ults in 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 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 minions that I'd summon, and I'd send them out, and they'd be fighting with me. I gotta be honest, on 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 you you you go through x square triangle on a playstation or whatever it is on the 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 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 using the parkour. Recently, I've been playing a lot of Horizon where you can't block and God of War where I chose not to block. And so 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 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 swap quickly without falling behind in battle. So it's very fast-paced and frenetic, which I really liked. And some of the bosses require that you keep swapping back and forth, which I really appreciated. 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 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 um 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 is so easy that you could just kind of brute force your way through that if you wanted to, 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 like 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 can be 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 they're like 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 to 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 cut scene in this game um 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 um but you'll hear two seconds of silence and then then 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 cutscenes and almost no combat at the beginning. But on top of that, you seem like you're clunking through this.

It's like they said, we get combat, let's make this game about combat. Okay, throw the story together in a month. 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 gonna i'm not gonna play it i don't want to play this game i was so frustrated i will say i will for me the 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 they're talking, you don't get to walk. You have to stand still. You can look around. And 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.

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 wouldn't 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 like 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 space bar now and then just let me keep playing right all right so let's talk a little bit about the open world um 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 love the open world. Yeah, I think that to your point, though, I'm 100% on Team Paul with this. I love the open world. 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 it'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 i 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 um 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 cat person but i have like four cats and they visit me at my home when I visit my home. 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. 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 do 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 is is good i like 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 done you know 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 did the, what were the fountains called where you get new spells? Like, you know, if you,

if you get into one of these fountains, you fall in and you kind of float around and you, 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, to these fountains and, 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, you know, 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 like yes you can get cloaks and you can get fingernails and you can get amulets and this kind of stuff but like none of it matters like it doesn't you don't

need it to get through combat you know so it's kind of like why what what am i doing all of this for other than just something to do at that point and i like an open world is great but if you 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 gonna 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, 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 like 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 could i i couldn't craft anything like you can 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 daisies or something like that. Yeah. 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 of this now. Just enchantments. Yeah.

You're not crafting gear. No, you're not crafting gear. This is honestly one of the lamest crafting systems I've ever seen in a game. Why even say live 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 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 are you crushing your bills defeating your monthly payments sounds like you're at the top of your financial game rise to it with the bmo eclipse rise visa card the credit card that rewards your good financial habits earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply.

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 um 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 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 refuse 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, I mean, maybe there was a hiccup or two or a frame rate drop or two. But I mean, 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 black, and you're just 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 literally like getting through a cutscene was like pulling my teeth. I'm like, why are they having no that's just the game in between right 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. I thought the graphics ran fine. I more have complaints about the graphics in the game. Like, the game looked great. Oh, really? 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 cut scene and fray 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 triple a games which i'm sorry this game is not a triple a 70 game oh hold on it is um they do spend money on things like motion capture and stuff and so it was just kind of weird for me

um i also noticed that sometimes if it was a background character like their mouth wouldn't move at all but words were coming from their closed mouth which might have just been it might have been just a console thing but there was some issues with that um but overall the graphics i thought looked great it looked fine um it's just weird for me to get past you know 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 fray's head so that never bothered me i don't have quite as beefy of a pc as josh but i i do have a 2080 ti so it's well above average you know 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 and or 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 Paul color test. Yeah. Yeah. This one's gorgeous. Lots of colors. The whole spectrum. We need to start a new... It doesn't have to be a segment, but literally just a rating. What paul color rating on this is it one paint can two paint cans or five paint cans oh there you go this one gets five paint cans from there you go for sure you heard you heard it first guys all right

so uh 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 like 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 the last third of the game or is is actually only two chapters and that's literally like four hours of of work in two chapters so buckle up i 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 then chow down man 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. Ready or not, that's hot. Yes. 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 kind of over exaggerating maybe we really believe this who knows this is our time to shine and we're gonna bring our hot takes who wants to go first oh oh

me me you do josh all right i don't want you guys to steal my hot take on this oh don't steal my hot take um everybody talks about how awesome the parkour in this game is and i did not enjoy the parkour in this game but yeah my hot take i i found it to be buggy i found it to be frustrating i found it to be like this is this is supposed to be the pepperoni on the pizza like 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 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 waterboard on rivers, like sail on rivers. Who cares? Yeah, let us do that in the air. Yeah, I did not care. 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 of the game. Well, there you go. It sucks and it's buggy and I got frustrated by it. There's your hot take. Just put that at the beginning. What about got frustrated by it there's your hot tick just put that what about you michael what's your hot tick 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 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 before 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 story not fighting the bad guys in the game so this game is significantly better if you play it after you get 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 gonna say if this game uh put a big solid strike out 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 like my ring light

that i'm staring at right now that's not a hot take that's like a a sun take right there that's 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 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 um some reviews from there so this first one is not recommended they have 11 hours on record so it's it's possible to beat the game in that time and 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. Paul will say like, hey, can you not move while people are talking? I'll 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 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 this 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. Fair enough.

I get it. All right. Okay. This next one, I had to pull this one because 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 and 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 love that i mean this was the first 70 game that we purchased yeah you know i 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 cutscene. Of the cutscenes, two of them were narratively important. The rest were that last cutscene. 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. Alright. 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 wasn't a recommended review.

That's my review. That's basically what I said. Yeah. 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 zero 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 refundss. 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, you know, and that kind of stuff out there.

So I guess 71. Gosh, darn it, Paul that kind of stuff out there. So I guess 71, gosh, darn it, Paul. Did I do it again? The overall score is 59%. Oh, I was close.

You were real close. 2% off. It's hard to peg these games that are very polarizing too. So that's pretty good, man. All right, Paul. I'll take it.

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 uh oh gosh what's it called i don't know oh the alliteration alliteration 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'm still gonna give it a murder but i'm not happy about it like it's 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 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, 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 you 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 a hundred comments that are like, I just a hundred percent 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 a hundred percent of 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 Forspoken. I can't believe you're bashing it this much. I'm super glad that you are crazy and that you enjoyed world needs crazy people in it. There's just better games. If you're going to 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 Forspoken. I'll tell you what. The only thing I'll ask is sign up on our Patreon. Give us $5 for one month. You know what I mean? We saved you $ dollars that way you know like don't like there's better games out there why would you do this to yourself all right i'm sorry i'm done michael michael michael's like i thought it was okay right so 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. 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 like

just wasting things but i thought that part was fun uh now let's talk about the negative uh the cut scenes holy cow the story phrase a character uh if developers want to crash course on how to Now let's talk about the negative. The cutscenes. Holy cow. The story. Phrase of character. If developers want to crash course on how to do loading screens wrong or just load a game wrong, just play Forspoken. You'll understand what not to do. 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, 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 games so easier combat is better for me but i i mean like i said i turned the difficulty up to make it harder um 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 was 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 uh 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, 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 uh red dead redemption 2 god of war overwatch, Disco Elysium. Down in the middle, we have the likes of 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 player unknowns battlegrounds uh which became a hacker's paradise so looking here guys what what are you thinking what kind of range for fourspoken i know where i'm at i'm looking at like number 59 tiny that's not where i'm putting it by the way but i'm looking at that tiny teen as wonderland and i'm like man that was a great game compared to 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 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

like 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 2042 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 forepoken, dude. Honestly, 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? 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 like in the 30s if you're saying where are we putting four 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 we're somewhere here in 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 two. As long as it's not higher than late 70s, early 70s, I won't fight too much. I was going to 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 alright with that, Michael? I'm fine with it. Alright, I don't think you care enough. I haven't played, like, literally

haven't played, like, the 12 games above that. Are 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 I'm like, 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 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 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.