PS5’s ‘Forspoken’ Debuts A Trailer So Bad It Becomes An Instant Meme

Games PS5’s ‘Forspoken’ Debuts A Trailer So Bad It Becomes An Instant Meme Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Aug 10, 2022, 08:54am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Forspoken Square Enix PlayStation 5’s Forspoken was one of the games delayed out of 2022 into early next year, and its set to arrive on January 24, 2023, at the moment. The Square Enix/Luminous game has drawn a wide range of opinions about its concept, lead and gameplay, but now everyone seems to agree on one thing. Man, this new trailer is bad.

This is the spot that went viral yesterday, and was roasted so hard it instantly got Joss Whedon to trend, given that everyone was comparing it to his overly-quippy style of dialogue. It has already spawned dozens of parodies based on its script, which reads: “So let me get this straight. I’m somewhere that’s not what I would call earth.

I’m seeing freaking dragons. And…oh yeah, I’m talking to a cuff . Yeah okay, that is something I do now.

I do magic, kill jacked-up beasts. I’ll probably fly next. ” Yeugh, it’s even worse when you see it all written out.

My favorite parody of this is probably from ProZD, who did a Mario-ified version of it: MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry The problem is that this feels like almost a parody of what has become synonymous with goofy, blockbuster writing across some MCU movies and other projects. The infamous “They fly now? They fly now” from the latest Star Wars trilogy comes to mind. It’s frustrating to hear dialogue this bad from Forspoken, given that everything I’ve actually seen from gameplay continues to look absolutely stunning.

The superpowered magic-wielding combat actually seems pretty fantastic, and no amount of bad scripting will probably turn me away from playing, but it’s not great to have to deal with. There’s a common notion that most Square Enix games just do not have great writing in general, but this feels like a different kind of bad. Not just like, someone’s writing a clunky script that gets mistranslated in localization.

But rather like it’s a parody of the worst kind of action dialogue in media at the moment. This is not an ideal situation for actress Ella Balinska, who is being saddled with what appears like it’s not going to be the best of scripts as the lead of this game, shortly after her turn on a different sort of video game project, the critic-and-audience lambasted Resident Evil series on Netflix. Again, hopefully the rest of the game is not as bad as this voiced-over clip, but something about how the game has handled its lead and concept (a modern woman is suddenly thrust into a world of spells and monsters) does not seem to be landing, even if gameplay continues to look rather excellent.

We’ll see how it goes in January. Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , Facebook and Instagram . Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls .

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