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5/11/2023 0 Comments platinum 50: forspoken
Trophies: 54 (2 gold 7 silver 44 bronze)
Time to platinum: 66 hours Platinum name: Forspoken (very imaginative) Achievement rate: 3.9% Okay, it took me longer than I would have liked to lock down that elusive 50th platinum, but it’s finally a done deal - whoop whoop! Originally I was leaning towards Stray, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to sit down and knock out the required two-hour speedrun. Then I shifted my focus to A Plague Tale: Requiem (which I still intend to get at some point), but I just found myself dragging my feet as I tried to mop up the remaining trophies on a second playthrough. In the end, I got the bit in my teeth in regards to Forspoken - in spite of it being a not insubstantial grind - and just knuckled down and started chipping away at it each day. It’s not a particularly complicated or challenging platinum… like most open world games, it’s simply a time-consuming one. Thankfully you don’t have to 100% *everything* on offer… but you do need to clear 100 points of interest (caves, villages, ruins, locked labyrinths, etc…), complete 50 monuments (out of 54, so you can skip a few of the tricker-to-reach ones), take all 50 photographs, find all 20 Tanta familiars, complete all 20 flashback challenges (no specific tier required), find all 12 founts of blessing, collect every piece of equipment (25 cloaks, 15 necklaces, and 30 nail designs), defeat all 4 abominations, unlock 80% of the archive (which equates to 464 entries), complete all 9 cat chase detours in order to collect the 9 required poppets, travel 100 km using magic parkour (which takes a while, but should come naturally by just playing the game)… and oh yeah, you have to unlock all 105 spells (by accruing mana) and then LEVEL UP all 105 spells by completing the designated challenge for each one (most of which are pretty straightforward, but the last dozen or so… cue the Tina groan from Bob’s Burgers). By the way, make sure to upgrade your assigned cloak and necklace with the available knockdown buffs in order to more easily complete those pesky “downed enemy” spell challenges (like Maelstrom and Firetrap and Seeker Dart Level 3). Naturally, certain frustrations cropped up along the way. The “Craftsperson” trophy requires you to craft “two of Frey’s original pieces of equipment”… which means you have to craft the “Unbroken” cloak and the “Home Sweet Hell” necklace by unlocking the sewing kit, which requires you to laboriously acquire 64 old coins by completing puzzle chests. Fine, whatever. But then I discovered you need 6 lucid garlands in order to actually craft both items… and I only had 3. And the only way to get more is to kill the glowing nightmares inside a break storm and pray they happen to drop one (as opposed to some other useless crafting material you already have six dozen of). Good grief. Anyway, here’s a pro tip I found online - go to the Farcoast Terrace storm, but rather than approach it head-on from Crosstide Coast, fast travel to the Nowhere refuge and then backtrack until the storm triggers. Then turn around and head back towards the refuge - you’ll encounter several glowing nightmares along the way, with a much higher rate of lucid garland drops (just make sure to use the Burrow spell to vacuum them up automatically). Everything else is fairly straightforward… a standard mix of automatic story checkpoints and random challenges (perform five shimmies in a row, perform ten precision counters, use all four types of Tanta magic in a single battle, kill at least three enemies with a single blast of surge magic, etc…). There is one bronze called “Moves,” in which you have to complete all of Pilo’s QTE dance minigames, which seems like a total kindergarten trophy… until you get to the final round and, well - let’s just say if I had to listen to Pilo clap his hands and say “Watch and learn!” in that dweeby voice of his one more time ("Like thees... and THEES"), I might have snapped the controller in half. Otherwise, however, I’d say 90% of the grind was time enjoyably and painlessly spent and, on the whole, this was definitely one of the more satisfying platinums I’ve earned.
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5/2/2023 0 Comments forspoken Frey: Did I just do that? Cuff: Well, definitely with my assistance. Frey: I did not just do that. Cuff: We did. Frey: I just moved shit with my mind. Cuff: Perhaps our connection has somehow awoken some abilities -- Frey: I just moved shit… with my mind. Cuff: I just keep hearing “I,” “I,” “I.” Frey: I just moved shit. With my freakin MIND! Ha ha! Yeah, okay - that is something I do now. I do magic, talk to sentient cuffs, kill jacked-up beasts. You know what? I’ll probably fly next. Cuff: Now you’re just being ridiculous. Frey: Oh, that’s too far? Good to know there’s a line. Cuff: If you could just master these new abilities - with my help, of course -- Frey: Um, did you not just see me take out that gnarly beast?! (notices more enemies incoming) Oh, bring it you mangled monsters! This (admittedly cheesy) exchange, inevitably caught in the endless conflagration of online console warring, went viral on social media and quickly came to dictate the entire obnoxious discourse surrounding Forspoken, the PS5’s new timed, third-party exclusive. The game was ridiculed as the poster child for obliviously mediocre writing (courtesy of cringey hipsters whose only point of reference is Joss Whedon and the MCU), while Frey (played by the talented English actress Ella Balinska) was viciously dismissed as a millennial brat rendered insufferable by her self-conscious urban edge. The criticism was largely performative, of course… perpetuated by a lot of people who like to dish out online snark but had no intention of even playing the game in the first place. Which is too bad, because Forspoken is far better than its tarnished reputation would suggest - carving out its own distinct place in the Playstation ecosystem, even if it falls short of Sony’s more lionized exclusives (its flaws are not insignificant, but they have very little to do with the writing or the performances of its cast - for the record).
When we first meet Frey, she’s a New York native whose orphaned upbringing explains her defiant air of self-sufficiency and the Bronx-sized chip on her shoulder (bonus points - she’s a cat lover whose faithful furball Homer is the one constant in her life). These opening scenes have a surprising degree of melancholy grit… and it’s when Frey is at her most despondent that she’s led, as if by fate, to a mysterious bracelet that immediately transports her to the strange and mystical kingdom of Athia. It’s at this point Frey quickly realizes that a) she can now wield full-blown magic (i.e. “I just moved shit… with my mind”) and b) the bracelet, its curling bands of gold metal now welded around her forearm like a permanent fashion accessory, is actually a sentient intelligence with a haughty British accent (voiced by Jonathan Cake) only she can hear, and who she elects to nickname “Cuff.” Athia, it turns out, has been overtaken by a corruptive phenomena known as the Break, which has contaminated the lands and mutated the local wildlife… forcing the surviving populace to shelter in the city of Cipal, which is the only remaining safe haven available to them. Frey learns that Athia was once protected by a quartet of benevolent sorceresses known as the Tantas, each of whom was driven systematically insane by the Break and now operates as a dangerously unstable tyrant. Given her newfound abilities - and the fact that she appears mysteriously immune to the Break’s infective influence - Frey must begrudgingly take down the Tantas one-by-one if she wants any chance of returning home.
In spite of its reported 100-million budget, Forspoken gives the impression of a AAA game that didn’t quite have the benefit of full, across-the-spectrum AAA resources (at least not on the customary level of a first-party Sony exclusive, such as Horizon Forbidden West or The Last of Us Part II, whose every nook and cranny is honed to technical perfection). It’s the reason why each and every strand of Frey’s hair is animated with rippling, windswept brilliance… as she’s left to navigate vast and gapingly empty landscapes populated with maddeningly repetitive enemies. Forspoken is yet another entry in the crowded open-world genre that defaults to a misguided “bigger is better” mindset - its massive map is at least twice - if not three times - larger than it has any realistic need to be. Thankfully, there’s plenty to do. The main story missions only take about 10-12 hours to complete, but you can easily extend your playtime to well over 60 hours with all the side content on offer - which predominately consists of clearing enemies out of various ruins, caves, and settlements… but also includes visiting monuments (most of which involve some sort of platforming challenge), taking photographs to show the kids back in Cipal, completing flashback challenges (essentially scored combat trials), accruing cloaks and necklaces and fingernail designs (!) to enhance your abilities, and tracking down the Tantas’ feline-like familiars (it can be a repetitive churn for completists - does the game really need over fifty monuments? - but these tasks do generate vast amounts of background lore to sift through, if you're so inclined). The narrative is built on the conventional foundation of a reluctant hero who also happens to be a stranger in a strange land… but the story deepens appreciably as it unfolds, evolving beyond these initial cliches and eventually leading to a pair of major plot twists (one of which you can probably guess within the first five minutes… the other managing to genuinely blindside). Many have complained about Frey’s misanthropic rapport with Cuff, but it’s really just a heightened version of the Buffy/Giles dynamic (headstrong, sarcastically sharp-tongued heroine and her uptight Brit mentor). If there’s any issue, it’s the fact that they didn’t record *nearly* enough dialogue between the two of them - within the first hour, the game is already recycling the same canned exchanges (how many times do you have to listen to Cuff comment on “missing the commotion” in an empty town and Frey quipping “Believe me, you’re plenty of commotion all by yourself”)… after fifty hours, you’re basically primed for a rubber room (though you do at least have the option of minimizing their banter in the settings).
Combat and traversal, meanwhile, are unquestionably Forspoken’s main draw. Frey utilizes a free-flowing form of magical parkour to accelerate across Athia’s sprawling landscapes - from the craggy, lava-scorched rocks of Praenost to the aquatic coastal regions of Avoalet - while also ascending vertical cliff walls and artfully flipping, dodging and pirouetting her way through a nonstop parade of battles. Initially you’re armed only with Frey’s trusty purple “earth-based” magic, but as you take down each Tanta, you absorb her powers and expand your elemental spellset - Tanta Sila gives you access to a flaming melee sword and a slew of fire-based projectiles, while Tanta Olas enables you to unleash wickedly satisfying electrical storms of green lightning. When all is said and done, a fully-powered Frey has over a hundred spells in her repertoire, which results in some insanely flexible and frenetic combat encounters (albeit, as is often the case in games like this, Frey doesn’t actually become fully-powered until the tail-end of the campaign, so as to maintain the basic progression curve). The mutated monsters, corrupted soldiers, and Break-generated “nightmares” the game throws at you aren’t particularly daunting (or visually striking, though the half-decayed bears you encounter are reminiscent of that one particular scene from Annihilation), though if you gather a large enough horde, unleashing level 3 surge magic and filling the screen with an eruption of damage and swirling particle effects is a consistent adrenaline high. Frey, for what it’s worth, is actually a pretty terrific protagonist… deserving of so much more than the sarcastic reductivism of the “I just moved shit with my mind” memes. Some have dismissed her as unlikeable, but that just reflects a blithe failure to grasp her character arc (she appears abrasive and self-centered initially, but that’s her defense mechanism… she’s never had a sense of belonging, or acceptance, and that’s what she comes to find in Athia). Ella Balinska, who was in Elizabeth Banks’s ill-fated Charlie’s Angels reboot and played the lead in Netflix’s equally ill-fated Resident Evil series, can’t seem to catch a break. She brings humor, charisma and yes - genuine pathos to the role in equally impressive measure (for all the grief, some of the self-aware dialogue is actually quite amusing - such as when Frey declares “Shit, alright - if you’re going to rhyme everything, then just kill me now” after being brought before the rigid, couplet-spouting Tanta Prav). Frey, like so many characters, is very much a mythic hero of destiny, but the game never loses sight of her very real, very raw and very relatable pain. The fact Luminous Productions was effectively scrapped by Square Enix in the wake of lukewarm sales pretty much scuppers any flickering hopes of a franchise… but in a more just world, Frey would be newly minted in the ranks of iconic Playstation heroines alongside the likes of Aloy and Ellie, as opposed to a frustrating target of misguided mockery.  |
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