The world of Forspoken looks beautiful, but is a case of all style and no substance? Forspoken’s Director, Takefumi Terada, spoke with Australian outlet, Press-Start, to discuss the ways with which Forspoken attempts to keep players engaged as they are navigating the game’s open world, from side-quests to other, more dynamic events.
When asked about the ways which the world is going to be filled with things to do, Terada said,
Obviously we’ve looked into many different kinds of open-world games on our side as well, researching titles like GTA, Ghosts of Tsushima, and Spider-Man, but really what we think of as the defining characteristic of the open world of Forspoken is the magic parkour.
So we really used the element of that as the basis for creating Athia, whether that’s the speed of the fast pace of movement, or the height of which Frey can jump. That was really the concept we wanted to hone in on – the world being a playground to experience magic parkour.
And those capabilities were what informed us on sort of the density of content and the placement, and generally a whole scale of the world.
Side quests, more than ever are an enormous part of how developers choose to fill their worlds with things to do. From icons scattered all over a map, to other, more emergent activities that present themselves to you whilst you’re exploring. Terada responded to the benefits of engaging with the game’s side-quests, saying,
So what we’re really focusing on for the side quests is the experience of interacting with the NPCs and the other characters living within Cipal, and learning more about their story.
The main story is Frey’s adventure of course, and this was something you know that we’ve relied on the scenario written by the team outside of Japan for.
On the other side of things, for the side quests we really wanted to focus on the world around her; a world that’s on the brink of destruction. And the NPCs living in the world – what they’re struggling with, the friendship that evolves there and developing the world.
And there aren’t any spells that I would say you can’t get unless you compete side quests. There’ll be enough points out there for you to unlock that by exploring the world.
But in the same way, you can grow through side quests. So depending on the player, some people may want to put more focus on exploration. Some people may want to put more focus on becoming stronger through interactions with NPCs.
Forspoken is scheduled to release on PS5 and PC on January 24, 2023.
