Forspoken Review thread - Yeah, okay, this is something I do now

[LinguisticGoblin]

SoP got shit on when it was first revealed, very widely, but by the time the second trailer dropped it had mostly looped around to an ironic enjoyment of how cheesy/crappy/camp/whatever people found it to be - to the point there was disappointment Jack was not saying CHAOS as much in it. By the time of release you had people calling it an 00s throwback and gushing about enjoying how much fun it was for it, with all the memes having shifted to Jack being a Gigachad slayer of chaos who told people to shut up and then blasted Limp Bizkit as he walked away.

Forspoken got stuck with the "ew, cringe MCU-tier/Whedonesque/Rick and Morty/Etc. dialogue" label and never shook it off. I do not think they're direct 1:1 comparisons, tonally they are very different, but I think it's fair to point out the game with a black woman lead has the internet eager to shit on every single element of the writing after it was declared cringe and the one with a white guy lead had defenders rush to rehabilitate the image of it as funny and sincere.

 

[Noog]

What about leaving space for 'the dialogue is actually bad'?

Or is it just a) racism, or b) collective internet decides?

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Oh yeah lots of the dialog is bad. A and B are why the game is getting especially shit on compared to other games with bad dialog.

 

[Dust]

People, you have REVIEWS shitting on the writing. It's not just some randoms on Twitter, it is definitely a hit or miss depending on person. This is a game with 68 MC, you don't have to look for some massive conspiracy or ill meaning here, a lot of people found it whatever.

From IGN:

...Frey is surprisingly vocal about her disdain for most of the tasks Forspoken asks you to complete, and Cuff constantly belittles her for no good reason in a manner that I think is supposed to come off as friendly ribbing but instead feels like awkwardly watching a couple argue at a dinner party. This dynamic never really changes...

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From Polygon:

Unfortunately, like everything in Forspoken, the death is quickly relegated to quip-fodder, as Frey jokingly calls the child's murderer "the kiddie-killer herself," which brings us back to square one: a two-dimensional foster kid with a rap sheet who swears so often you'd think she was paid by the "motherfucker."

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From Gamespot:

Frey is one of the weakest parts of Forspoken. [...] She's inherently unlikable for most of Forspoken's story, with the game forcing her through her transformation from selfish sorcerer to defiant hero over the course of a single chapter of lengthy exposition. I didn't buy into her heroic shift in the final moments of the game--it felt like the storyline was going through the motions without taking the necessary steps to ensure Frey's emotional and mental development made sense.

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[illmatic22]

The scores I was expecting. Not complaining though, off the demo it does have it's issues. I still look forward to playing it sometime.

 

[Papercuts]

Writing was on the wall with this one for awhile unfortunately.

 

[Soj]

Another Square Enix banger.

 

[spam musubi]

Same dialogue in The Last of Us with Joel and Ellie and people would be "ahahaha GOTY they're so cute".

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can't even tell if people are serious anymore

 

[Morrigan]

lmao okay. I don't think I'm going to change your perspective if you've genuinely convinced yourself that anything but the tiniest minority of people thought that shit was cool and awesome, even with the multitude of people correcting you.

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Good lord I can just feel the condescension dripping to the max from this utter shitpost.

I know what I experienced, which is to be annoyed at so many people defending Jack and FF Chaos as something cool and awesome (in an "ironic way", but still cool and awesome and "fun"). I'm not misremembering or "convincing myself" or imagining shit, it literally fucking happened.

Man, what universe was this in? Maybe if you hang out with 12 year olds you'd get people thinking anything about Strangers of Paradise was legitimately "cool"

Trying to frame the response to the chaos memes as positive is wild

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You have seriously never heard of people liking things ironically, to the point where it becomes pretty much non-ironic after a bit?

In essence, Jack Chaos schtick became "endearing" quickly after the initial negative meme wave.

It went through the whole "Ironic" phase too.

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SoP got shit on when it was first revealed, very widely, but by the time the second trailer dropped it had mostly looped around to an ironic enjoyment of how cheesy/crappy/camp/whatever people found it to be - to the point there was disappointment Jack was not saying CHAOS as much in it. By the time of release you had people calling it an 00s throwback and gushing about enjoying how much fun it was for it, with all the memes having shifted to Jack being a Gigachad slayer of chaos who told people to shut up and then blasted Limp Bizkit as he walked away.

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EXACTLY

Thank you. That's 100% a thing that happened and it's getting legitimately obnoxious to hear folks acting like you're crazy for even suggesting it. Like ok you didn't experience this, doesn't mean it's the same for everyone lol

From Polygon:

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Lord, this seems really terrible. Like, "welcome to the ouch, motherfuckers!" level of cringe.

 

[senj]

Look, I'm just saying that the kneejerk reaction in this thread and all the *several* others we had before release has little to do with the actual flaws of the game. No one is talking about the repetitive fetch quests or barren open world or maybe that the gameplay doesn't click.

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IDK, I see people are talking about all of that stuff? They're just also talking about the bad writing. Particularly to you since you were claiming the writing was given a pass in games like High on Life and SoP despite that not being remotely true.

So yeah. The writing we've seen from this game has mostly stank as badly as other badly reviewing games that had their writing criticized and that are sitting in the high 60s/low 70s on metacritic, which is exactly where High on Life and SoP are. It's certainly nowhere near the tier of writing of a She Hulk (actually one of the better written MCU properties of the last few years) or a Seeing Red. Jessica Gao is a great writer, and the fact her show was criticized by chuds sucked, but it's really silly to walk away from that assuming that all things that make chuds mad and which get criticized for their writing are actually well written and being treated unfairly. Sometimes shitty writing is just shitty writing.

 

[amara]

I'm still interested in this game though I was never going to buy it at full price

 

[GulfCoastZilla]

I'm still interested in this game though I was never going to buy it at full price

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I'm still interested as well simply because the traversal looks fun and

Spoiler

motherfucking dragons

but yeah not at that price. Demo showed some potential

 

[hydrophilic attack]

This is just blatantly incorrect lol. It was 100% mocking and ridiculing and no one thought that shit was awesome. If they did, they would probably enjoy this game as well.

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hi, i think that shit is awesome

(and i do think i'll enjoy forspoken as well, to be fair)

 

[Deleted member 8852]

Feels like most of the dialogue in this game was created by the Rick and Morty writers.

 

[Renteka-Bond]

SoP got shit on when it was first revealed, very widely, but by the time the second trailer dropped it had mostly looped around to an ironic enjoyment of how cheesy/crappy/camp/whatever people found it to be - to the point there was disappointment Jack was not saying CHAOS as much in it. By the time of release you had people calling it an 00s throwback and gushing about enjoying how much fun it was for it, with all the memes having shifted to Jack being a Gigachad slayer of chaos who told people to shut up and then blasted Limp Bizkit as he walked away.

Forspoken got stuck with the "ew, cringe MCU-tier/Whedonesque/Rick and Morty/Etc. dialogue" label and never shook it off. I do not think they're direct 1:1 comparisons, tonally they are very different, but I think it's fair to point out the game with a black woman lead has the internet eager to shit on every single element of the writing after it was declared cringe and the one with a white guy lead had defenders rush to rehabilitate the image of it as funny and sincere.

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As someone who was into the game from jump outside of Jack being a boring white dude design (I love Dissidia and A Dark Souls style FF game was a match made in heaven, especially by the Nioh team), this is 100% what happened with Strangers of Paradise. It may not have translated into sales, but conversational perspective absolutely swung around to 'ironic' enjoyment, to the point that the official Square Page used the jokes on their twitter page.

 

[Suede]

People, you have REVIEWS shitting on the writing. It's not just some randoms on Twitter, it is definitely a hit or miss depending on person. This is a game with 68 MC, you don't have to look for some massive conspiracy or ill meaning here, a lot of people found it whatever.

From IGN:

...Frey is surprisingly vocal about her disdain for most of the tasks Forspoken asks you to complete, and Cuff constantly belittles her for no good reason in a manner that I think is supposed to come off as friendly ribbing but instead feels like awkwardly watching a couple argue at a dinner party. This dynamic never really changes...

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This was one of the things I really disliked about the demo, the cuff constantly shitting on you, and they say this doesn't change throughout the whole game? I can't believe that, how annoying.

 

[lorddarkflare]

Decent scores. Nothing that would stop me from getting a game that I want to play. And I want to play this game.

 

[Deleted member 36578]

Damn
I'm pretty disappointed with everything I've been reading this morning. I had the game pre-ordered but I'm gonna cancel it now. Maybe I'll pick it up in the bargain bin someday.

 

[IDreamOfHime]

This is gonna be a cult hit in like 2-3 years.

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Has Dragon Dogma vibes written all over it. I can't wait...but I kinda can, because the launch price is too high lol.

 

[MilkBeard]

This was one of the things I really disliked about the demo, the cuff constantly shitting on you, and they say this doesn't change throughout the whole game? I can't believe that, how annoying.

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I like Cuff shitting on you, tbh. It's kinda like my inner voice but funnier. To be honest IGN's description actually sounds good to me. We need more arguing couples at dinner, as it's a little better than "the power of LOVE" that we usually get in JRPGs

 

[fulltimepanda]

bit of a shame really, was expecting mid -high 70's

Might have picked this up if dead space wasn't so close but will wait for a decent sale

 

[dude]

As someone who was into the game from jump outside of Jack being a boring white dude design (I love Dissidia and A Dark Souls style FF game was a match made in heaven, especially by the Nioh team), this is 100% what happened with Strangers of Paradise. It may not have translated into sales, but conversational perspective absolutely swung around to 'ironic' enjoyment, to the point that the official Square Page used the jokes on their twitter page.

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I mean, from my perspective as an outsider who had to interest in SoP, I just thought it was Morbius'd. I wasn't under the impression people legitimately thought the writing or the characters were good.

 

[Viale]

This was one of the things I really disliked about the demo, the cuff constantly shitting on you, and they say this doesn't change throughout the whole game? I can't believe that, how annoying.

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A lot of the conversation about the writing/characters gravitates towards Frey, but at least in the demo, the cuff was, by FAR, the biggest problem.

I mean, from my perspective as an outsider who had to interest in SoP, I just thought it was Morbius'd. I wasn't under the impression people legitimately thought the writing or the characters were good.

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It depends on the person, a lot of it is memes, but there's some solid character and story stuff in SoP, and some of the character interactions are legit very endearing.

It's still not like amazing writing, but it's enjoyable imo.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

i'm getting dragon's dogma vibes too

 

[hydruxo]

It's a shame this didn't really pan out because the magic is really cool and there was potential there with the combat. Just not willing to slog through a subpar story with horrible dialogue.

 

[MH MD]

Forget about Jack, the fucking guns from High on Life have 2 uninterrupted minutes of name-dropping famous anime and asking of you've seen them, but no probably not because it was "Space Evangelion" and that's funny and clever and memeable.

But Frey is suddenly too much.

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What? This scene you mention is one that actually got criticized a lot , no one found it funny, a lot of tweets making fun of it and how bad it was


In fact just today i saw a tweet that make fun of both of those games equally


View: https://twitter.com/realyoutubekids/status/1617235514079252480?s=46&t=9lchAHVt36u6b6L_5a384w

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

expected these scores haha
i'm still interested in playing it. kind of enjoyed the demo


really need to try with the remapped controls/dual sense feedback because that was my main issue i guess

 

[Surakian]

I want to say that people keep bringing up that people are shitting on Frey's dialogue because she is a black woman, but I still find it infinitely worse that it is a black woman written by primarily white writers.

Fuck any racist pos talking this game down because Frey is a woman of color but also 😬 non-POC writing very hammy dialogue for a woman of color is also not great and is something we need to address as a community as well.

 

[Jerm]

EXACTLY

Thank you. That's 100% a thing that happened and it's getting legitimately obnoxious to hear folks acting like you're crazy for even suggesting it. Like ok you didn't experience this, doesn't mean it's the same for everyone lol

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Finally! You found two people that didn't necessarily share the same sentiment but were in the ballpark so you were correct!! The driving consensus of this incredibly unpopular game was that Jack and the game itself were awesome and cool, but ironically, which turned into people really thinking it was awesome and cool because they had surpassed ironically thinking it was awesome and cool, so everyone thought the game was awesome and cool non-ironically. But they also (ironically?) didn't buy the game.

 

[Dust]

i'm getting dragon's dogma vibes too

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Reviews mentioned that too, that the world is giving off Dragon's Dogma vibe, both in good and bad ways.

 

[Kaswa101]

Damn, I guess my 72 prediction was too high lol :(

 

[DNAbro]

I mean, from my perspective as an outsider who had to interest in SoP, I just thought it was Morbius'd. I wasn't under the impression people legitimately thought the writing or the characters were good.

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I don't think people think SoP has a good story, it's just incredibly funny that the main character also doesn't give a shit about it and blasts Linkin Park-esque music after hearing it.

 

[Morrigan]

Finally! You found two people that didn't necessarily share the same sentiment but were in the ballpark so you were correct!! The driving consensus of this incredibly unpopular game was that Jack and the game itself were awesome and cool, but ironically, which turned into people really thinking it was awesome and cool because they had surpassed ironically thinking it was awesome and cool, so everyone thought the game was awesome and cool non-ironically. But they also (ironically?) didn't buy the game.

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I said nothing about the game being incredibly popular or selling well, you're just making shit up in order to keep your condescending trolling train going at this point. Bye

 

[Deleted member 81119]

Finally! You found two people that didn't necessarily share the same sentiment but were in the ballpark so you were correct!! The driving consensus of this incredibly unpopular game was that Jack and the game itself were awesome and cool, but ironically, which turned into people really thinking it was awesome and cool because they had surpassed ironically thinking it was awesome and cool, so everyone thought the game was awesome and cool non-ironically. But they also (ironically?) didn't buy the game.

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Since when did Stranger of Paradise underperform when it comes to sales?

 

[Mentalist]

I want to be a huge SE fan, but I have no interest in a constant stream of lower budget 6/10 type games. I'd rather have less games but them be 8/10 or better. Just don't have a lot of gaming time these days. Still expecting great things from FF16 at least

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People would be a lot more forgiving of their 7/10 games, if they didn't charge AAAA 9/10 prices for them.

 

[Deleted member 24052]

Same dialogue in The Last of Us with Joel and Ellie and people would be "ahahaha GOTY they're so cute".

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Absolutely not.

 

[Renteka-Bond]

I mean, from my perspective as an outsider who had to interest in SoP, I just thought it was Morbius'd. I wasn't under the impression people legitimately thought the writing or the characters were good.

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I don't think it has an amazing story by any means, but I do think it's an interesting one (again, particularly as a fan of Dissidia) and while Jack being aggressively against JRPG writing conventions is funny in its own right, the game has some surprisingly endearing writing in regards to Jack and his party. It also has a solid combat system so even if you really can't stand the cutscenes/writing, there's still something there.

It still gets memed from time to time, but largely, I feel like people that still bring it up do so out of some level of appreciation for the game.

Additionally, the defense force for the game came out REALLY fast for Jack and stranger 'ironically' really fast. Especially around the time the demo came out (which was also kind of divisive, but ALSO, when that demo came out and people didn't like it, they just moved on instead of what we got with Forspoken where the narrative became 'this is the worst shit ever' pretty much immediately.

 

[senj]

Same dialogue in The Last of Us with Joel and Ellie and people would be "ahahaha GOTY they're so cute".

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i genuinely feel like this post comes from an alternate reality

 

[Jawbreaker]

Same dialogue in The Last of Us with Joel and Ellie and people would be "ahahaha GOTY they're so cute".

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Nah.

 

[Lobster Roll]

Same dialogue in The Last of Us with Joel and Ellie and people would be "ahahaha GOTY they're so cute".

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If there's one thing that everybody always says about The Last of Us, it's that the characters' personalities, dialogues, and interpersonal relationships are wholly replaceable.

 

[NotLiquid]

Look, SoP earning a delayed appreciation for its purely outrageous accidental camp (since someone mentioned on another page that the game was never intended to read as ironic) doesn't provide any illuminating or worthwhile knowledge regarding the reception to Forspoken's writing. Setting aside that Forspoken was written by western writers -- one of whom is most known for a franchise about a wisecracking Whedonistic white guy protag and the other of whom co-wrote After Earth of all things -- this "style" of writing has not gotten anywhere close to a point in the mainstream where it might be viewed as comparatively idiosyncratic or even anachronistic. This is the kind of writing you'll largely find in Hollywood and has seen its fair share of cynicism already. Most of the dialogue snippets from the game is cookie cutter Marvel dialogue. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, I like me some Marvel from time to time, but it's just really hard to see that kind of content have anything remotely lasting or impressionable to the point that someone would want it to be seen as "memetic" or whatever in the same vein that Strangers of Paradise was. If it does end up becoming that, it would probably be so for the wrong reasons.

 

[MechaX]

Since when did Stranger of Paradise underperform when it comes to sales?

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Japanese sales alone put it in like the bottom 5 of FF titles/spin offs in history, plus their last fiscal summary explicitly stated that console game sales all fell below targets and the game wasn't even mentioned at all (not a good sign in such a report)

 

[monketron]

Sad that the script seems to be a huge weak point of the game when they had a lot of good writing talent involved, in fact that was the main point pushed when the game was first announced.

 

[RochHoch]

With SoP, we weren't SUPPOSED to be laughing at Chaos and Frank Sinatra, that's what made it hilarious

This game just seems like it's trying to be endearing and failing

 

[Nkcell]

Forspoken world has magic and magical beasts that speak. It is not similar to Earth, hence why a character can poke at it. Thor (and his friends) doesn't poke fun of stuff from Earth, Thor pokes fun of shit that exists in his own world he should have full knowledge of given that he's 1,000 years old. How does Valkyrie not know who Zeus is or that he's a dick? How does Korg not know the life cycle of his own species? Why does Spider-Man laugh at a silly name,? SPIDER-MAN. Why does Scott laugh at the name Ant-Man? Why does Rocket laugh at the name Tazer-Face when he hangs around Star Lord, Drax The Destroyer, and calls himself Rocket Racoon?

Again, the latter is all characters making fun of their own world as if they do not exist within it. It's like laughing at a guy named Steve, check out Steve here! LOL. STEVE?! Hilarious. And the name thing is just one example. On the other hand, a fish out of water character makes far more sense in questioning these things. Woah, a talking cat?! A evil fire lady just like in the movies?! You know, because these things do not exist on Earth. I actually didn't mind, for example, in Dr. Strange: MOM when America Chavez laughed at Spider-Man because she's not from Earth or that universe at all, it's all strange to her.

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Your criteria seems to be "if it's foreign to you, you can poke fun at it". Why must you be from another world to practice self-referential or meta humor? People do this on Earth outside of the marvel movies. It's actually quite a popular form of humor in the modern day, which is likely why it was inserted into the original MCU scripts. They of course have beaten it into the ground since then. Humans are not omnipotent. Despite living in the same universe, on the same planet, or hell even the same city their entire life, they can encounter brand new phenomena they were not aware of. Encountering a new experience you have have no prior knowledge is not different if it happens on Earth, in Dr. Seuss world, or wherever Forspoken takes place.

Also far be it from me to defend MCU writing, which I do not think is good, but I don't think you understood the Spider-Man joke. You seem to think this is a bad joke because the name Spiderman or other MCU hero names are just as stupid as Doc Ock. That's not the joke they are making. Spiderman is not making fun of the superhero moniker "Doc Ock". He is making fun the fact that his real name is "Otto Octavius". He is pointing out that it's an absurd coincidence the man's real name he was born with ended up correlating with villain name he eventually took on due to his mechanical arms. The absurdity is what makes it funny to the character and his friends. The humor in this joke makes sense on a logical level. You may not find it funny (I don't), but there's no reason to ask why.

 

[RPGam3r]

I think the reason why a sassy/back-talking character/narrator works in something like Portal or Stanley Parable is bc in part it's one sided, and you're the one being talked down to.

Here it comes across more like a couple going at it. I don't think that lands nearly as easily.

 

[KillstealWolf]

My comparison to SoP and Forspokan was more along the lines of both games being messy games that are probably going to get a cult following for how weird they are. Didn't mean to run a dialogue comparison between the two.

Interesting how the dialogue between both games has become the main thing associated with them though.

 

[Jakenbakin]

I want to say that people keep bringing up that people are shitting on Frey's dialogue because she is a black woman, but I still find it infinitely worse that it is a black woman written by primarily white writers.

Fuck any racist pos talking this game down because Frey is a woman of color but also 😬 non-POC writing very hammy dialogue for a woman of color is also not great and is something we need to address as a community as well.

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Square Enix really dropped the ball fucking hard on this game with the writing, for sure, by which I mean this. The fact that they had no black writers is a bewilderingly wild action in a game where it seems like 90% (100?) of the dialogue will be involving a PoC, and often halfway "to themselves". They do give a special credit to Black Girl Gamers but a special thanks or consultation is no excuse in lieux of a writers credit. I'll definitely be wary of the portrayal of Frey going into it. But I don't think the hammy tone in general is problematic, just the entire writers room failing a pretty basic litmus test for representation...

 

[mdzapeer]

I find the lead character to be a refreshing protagonist, I am probably not going to buy it full ( I rarely do, nowadays). But I am sure to try it out. Wish there was PC demo.

 

[clockstrikes]

I mean, from my perspective as an outsider who had to interest in SoP, I just thought it was Morbius'd. I wasn't under the impression people legitimately thought the writing or the characters were good.

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Once people actually got their hands on the game and played through it, many found the story to be genuinely earnest and the characters sincere. The meme-ing and dunking hasn't stopped, but people are able to just have a good time enjoying the game for what it is, warts and all.

SE's writing may be clunky and don't always hit, but there's heart there that really resonates with people. But with Forspoken, they tried to chase success by hiring Hollywood writers and trying to ride on Amy Hennig and Gary Whitta's coattails despite them having minimal involvement, and ultimately they fumbled the ball and didn't do their characters justice.

 

[AstralSphere]

My comparison to SoP and Forspokan was more along the lines of both games being messy games that are probably going to get a cult following for how weird they are. Didn't mean to run a dialogue comparison between the two.

Interesting how the dialogue between both games has become the main thing associated with them though.

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SoP isn't a messy game though. It's a really well-made game where all of the gameplay systems are extremely well-refined and resulted in one of the best playing games of last year.

Weird sure, and low budget feeling at times maybe. But messy is the last word I'd use to describe it as it knows exactly what it wanted to be and executed it perfectly.