#forspoken worldbuilding

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Since the familiars are magical constructs created by the Tantas, how come they never got Corrupted like everything else?

[lonepower]

Oh, I am so curious about Forspoken because I've only heard negative things about it. Would you mind talking about more of your thoughts about it? What's it like, and would you reccomend it?

Nonny, I am not surprised, and it is a continual source of raging frustration for me because this hate is absolutely unwarranted in every possible way!! I can't even track the tag here because, despite the small but absolutely wonderful fandom, it is so full of people hating on it that it clogs out nearly everything else.

First off: YES, I WOULD ABSOLUTELY RECOMMEND IT. PLAY THIS GAME. THAT IS A THREAT. 🔪🔪🔪🔪 

The tl;dr of my feelings about Forspoken are in line with that one excellent Jupiter Ascending review that I can't find for the life of me now, where the author is like, "is this what guys feel like all the time?" because the movie is just plucked straight from her 14-year-old self's wish fulfillment fantasies. Like, is it a deep, brooding, erudite Auteur Piece? Well, no, but... so what? It's self-indulgent to the max and so earnestly not-shy about it that it's just an absolute joy to play. It's fun. Like... it's just fun. Have we all just forgotten the sensation of joy??? 

(This got quite long, so full review under the cut:)

The game is a pretty straightforward changeling fantasy/isekai—heroine with a mysterious troubled past gets sucked into a magical world and just happens to be the exact thing needed to save it from impending doom—and it isn't shy about its own tropeyness. Like, it's not trying to be clever or subversive with its premise, and if you're used to the HBO theory that '"'"good"""(/heavy sarcasm) storytelling is completely unpredictable twists at every turn, then yeah, you're gonna find it predictable. (I called 2 of the 3 major reveals within seconds of their first being foreshadowed, but I love being right more than anything, so that was more of a bonus for me!) 

With that being said: It is absolutely excellent at doing what it sets out to do. It's not Complicated or Psychological or Edgy because that's not what it wants to be: It wants to be a fun, glittery, self-indulgent, richly detailed, joyfully tropey fantasy game, and by god it does that fantastically. It's got really deep, extensive lore and some subtler worldbuilding than I expected, it's a lot better written than people give it credit for, it's fun, it's rewarding to play. Frey is such a good protagonist, she's the epitome of "pathetic wet cat poor little meow meow blorbo from my shows" etc etc etc, and I feel like the only reason people aren't realizing this is because she's a Black woman with poor social graces who spends the majority of the game in extreme crisis mode. Water is wet 🙄

Is the dialogue cringy at times? Yeah, honestly there were a couple moments that made me go 😬, but from what I hear about other square enix games that's really nothing new. I will also die on the hill that yes, the banter is a little Whedony, BUT: 1) Whedon banter (esp. pre-2012 firefly/buffy/resurrection banter) is NOTHING like what "marvel dialogue" has become, and the Whedony bits of Forspoken are much more like Firefly than like the written-by-committee shit that marvel spits out now; 2) Joss Whedon is actually really fucking good at writing witty, funny banter, and it's just that he's so unpleasant in his ideals that we're all sick of hearing about him. I have LOTS of problems with the guy but his dialogue is Not one of them. And the banter in this game is one of the main draws for me. I fucking love banter because I am a brilliant bitch with excellent taste who will never change 💁‍♀️

Additionally—and crucially, because it indicates that 99% of the game's detractors haven't even gotten out of the first hub area—only two characters in the game talk like that, and they are explicitly seen as off-putting and not that funny (Frey) and extremely, maddeningly annoying (Cuff) by everyone else around. Frey is a homeless kid with no friends and Cuff has been trapped in a bracelet in an antique store for decades, so it's literally in-universe canon that they have no social skills. Everyone else in the game talks normally. They're both just huge dorks.

The gameplay itself is also really, really good too—this actually seems to be the One Thing that Gamers™ have decided is acceptable to not outright froth with rage over, so I'm putting it closer to the end, but yeah, it's awesome! It's one of three (3) games that I completed on Normal rather than story/casual/Idiot Weenie Baby difficulty (the others being Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon Zero Dawn), but it also has a lot of really excellent accessibility modifiers so you can customize your playstyle extensively. It's heavily focused on mobility and versatility, so you get better rewards and XP and stuff for combos, switching power sets, being fast & evasive, etc. The open world is also very well-designed: it's one of the only games where I actually really enjoy dicking around in the postgame doing sidequests and killing monsters (rather than just immediately starting the main story over), because parkouring around with your flashy cape and your awesome flaming spear is just that much fun. VISORIA MY BELOVED.

Also, you can pet every cat. They'll even follow you around and pick up items for you! GOTY for that alone tbh.

I have very few complaints about the game—the music not being quite up to par is one, and some of the lore/backstory could've been presented a little bit more clearly in my opinion, especially in the DLC, but that's not a problem that everyone had. I know there are also some valid criticisms from Black players on the way Frey is presented, but I'm not 100% sure what the specifics are, and obviously googling "what's wrong with Forspoken" or w/e is absolutely not going to be helpful. (I can guess, as an Extremely White person; for one, her having a criminal backstory is maybe not the best look, although I will say that in the very first minute of the game I saw "left on a doorstep" and "compulsive theft" and my immediate thought was "oh, she is some kind of changeling for sure." I wasn't...entirely wrong? (Spoilers!) So that seems more like two separate factors combining in an unfortunate way than any actual stereotypes the writers were playing into. (Again, I am Very White, so I defer any interpretation to those who actually know what they're saying and would like to weigh in!!! 😅))

In summary, I think a combination of misogynoir and Gamer Brain Rot have just created the perfect unfair storm against this game, because I genuinely do not understand how else it could be so poorly received. It's genuinely one of my favorite games. Please play Forspoken.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Oh yeah, @cruelfeline I found the cloak entry about the First Tanta fighting something with allies:

Nice and vague, could have been anything, but I'm still choosing to believe that was Susurrus. First Tanta fought him directly, her seven warriors kept the Rheddig or any minions he summoned at bay.

And just for kicks I checked the other equipment entries to see if I could find anything for sure about these "seven trusted warriors," and I found... less than seven lol

Or at least less than seven that explicitly state these people had a connection to the First Tanta. There's nine cloaks and four necklaces that were sealed in the Labyrinths, any of them could have belonged to those warriors.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Maybe it's my inner Tanta Cinta talking but Cipal has way too many fecking stairs. Where's the ramps? How are merchants supposed to wheel carts and wagons of goods throughout the city? Are they expected to just carry everything on their backs? Or construction materials! How did they haul around all that stone to build the place? And what about their elderly or disabled citizens? It's an accessibility nightmare.

Honestly. I'm going to go with my usual theory when it comes to game worlds: what we see is only a symbolic representation of what the actual world would be like if it was real. I mean otherwise there's no way Cipal can fit thousands of people, let alone the thousands of refugees on top of its usual population that it took in when the Corruption hit. And also if we stick with only exactly what's in the game, Athia is an island, not a continent. It's only about six or seven miles from end to end. My commute to work is roughly half that, which would mean that round trip I bus the length of Athia every day.

This is one of the reasons I wish we had a day/night cycle. If I knew how long 24 hours in-game took in real time, I could use average walking speed to get a rough estimation of how big Athia is supposed to be in-universe based on how long it takes to walk to any given location. I did this with Eos in FFXV using the time it takes to drive from the Insomnia Blockade to the Rock of Ravatogh at 60mph, I can do it again for walking speed!

...wait a minute

I know what day Frey came to Athia. And I can find out what day she fought the dragon. I can calculate from there based on average walking speed and an assumption that she didn't walk for 24 hours straight how far it is between Junoon Castle and Junoon Castle Town. The existence of Flow might throw off my math a little, though. Hmm...

Where there's a will there's a way. I'ma find out.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

"Erected to honor the Tantas

Special Shelters

Pilgrim's Refuge

While ballow trees were long seen as sacred by Athians, making it a crime to cut them down or otherwise harm them."

...

I managed to get a good screenshot of the refuge book to translate, so let's talk about the Pilgrim's Refuge! Because I think they're nifty :3

Long before the Break reduced Athia to the zombie-infested wasteland we know and love today, people traveled from all over Athia to worship the Tantas. These people were known as pilgrims, and they built refuges to house them in their travels—a fact I'm sure Frey and Cuff are very grateful for today!

But what's interesting about these buildings is, well, many things, really. First, they're made from ballow wood. The ballow tree is sacred to Athians, and as stated on that pamphlet above, it's illegal to "cut them down or harm them." They seem to be very fragile trees, considering that simply harvesting their sap will kill them. But ballow wood has special protective properties, specifically the ability to keep "evil" at bay. Doesn't seem to work on Cuff, but that's a different post for a different time.

So the refuges were built to house people who traveled across Athia to worship the Tantas, and keep them safe from not just the elements, but from the wildlife as well. That pamphlet also states that the refuges were built for the purpose of honoring the Tantas. These pilgrims were all about their Tantas! And you can see on the refuges themselves that the people who built them put a lot of love and effort into not only making a sound structure, but a beautiful one as well. There's not a single inch of the outside walls that is not painted with murals of four women and depictions of the ballow tree that gave the wood for the refuge.

Here's the thing though: those aren't our Tantas. And the mural in the center seems to depict a fifth Tanta, or at the very least conspicuously leaves room for a fifth person.

Who are these four women? They appear to be representative of the Tantas we're familiar with, but they're not the Tantas we know. Or they're not exactly the Tantas we know. None of them are wearing their signature, iconic regalia. At least Sila's counterpart (bottom right) has a sword and appears to be wearing armor. And I can figure out Prav's (top right) because she's blindfolded, and as the saying goes: justice is blind. Olas (top left) and Cinta (bottom left), though? Olas's wears green and has darker skin than the others, and Cinta's might be petting a cat? Maybe? And those are my only clues for who these murals are supposed to depict.

So, considering that the pilgrim's refuges were built centuries ago to honor the Tantas and house the pilgrims traveling across Athia to worship said Tantas, it's reasonable to assume that the four women depicted on the refuge murals are our Tantas: Olas, Prav, Cinta, and Sila. However, no one knows how long ago the refuges were built, nor how long ago the pilgrims began their pilgrimages. It's entirely possible that these four women are the predecessors to our modern-day Tantas. In addition, that conspicuous empty space in the center mural could have been left open for the First Tanta—who knows how long ago she'd passed her mantle of Tanta onto her successors? The space may have been left to honor the Tanta who started it all, who saved Athia and brought it into prosperity so, so long ago that no one even knows when it all happened.

But that empty space also serves as an interesting look forward. It leaves room for a fifth to join the ranks as well.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

It's 6am and I didn't have Forspoken dreams which, y'know, typical, I never dream about what I want to dream about, but!! I'm having Thoughts™. And the TL/DR of those thoughts is "I KNEW the DLC would wreck my self-insert bullshit!" XD

The absolutely fanatical devotion the Rheddig have to General What's-His-Butt (I'm bad with names; I'll memorize his later) and the invasion in general completely scraps all my OCs except Keen. All two of them. Which is fine, I fully expected that to happen, but the fact that the Rheddig are apparently a death cult has me reeling?

I can understand soldiers falling for propaganda. I'm an American, that's kind of our schtick. But the whole "honor by sacrificing to a tree" thing and especially "may their deaths cleanse them of sin" (or whatever the actual phrase was; again, I'll memorize it later) is... yeah, Frey was right to call that a cult. That's cult shit, baybee!

And then there's Cuff. Playing up and hyping up the Rheddig and their invasion as just and righteous, not even a little bit phased by the fanatical devotion, and even calling it "commitment." Honey, that's not commitment, that's brainwashing.

I can't tell yet if he's putting on an act to fuck with Frey, or if he hasn't fully grasped how completely un-goddamn-hinged his countrymen are yet. But the fact that in one breath he's all "ah yes, my righteous and noble brethren," and in the next he's encouraging her to go fight the tree and General What's-His-Nuts. Buddy, what is your angle? Do you even know? I can't wait to find out.

Especially ironic that he accuses Frey of being unable to understand what commitment looks like while she's just said "well if I need to die for Athia I'm down, and so is Thalia." I think she gets it just fine, bud. I think you're lying to yourself about what devotion and duty look like, because otherwise you're gonna have to examine some deeply uncomfortable things about yourself.

At least he has the decency to be "wait what?!" when Frey just... calmly accepts that dying for Athia is the right thing to do. She's right in this circumstance, it is the right thing to do, and I'm so goddamn proud of her, but also props to Cuff for having hang ups about that and acting on the instinct to keep Frey (and thereby himself, sure) safe.

Based on how he'd been acting up til that point, you'd think he, of all people, would understand why Frey and Thalia are sacrificing themselves for Athia. But he balks at this idea! And I love him for it 💜 The fucking hypocrite XD

...actually now that I've got these words worded out in my head I think I can finagle Knell and Flick into fitting with the Rheddig backstory and being what I need them to be for the self-insert bullshit to work. Just have them break from the cult. I'll have to scrap and/or overhaul everything I've written so far, but such is life. I'm keeping the zombie fight scene, though.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Huh, interesting.

In Praenost, Avoalet, and Visoria, the lands outside of the Depths of Corruption are relatively normal, save for the obvious Broken running around. But once you get into the Depths of Corruption and the lands beyond, the air is saturated with magic, and veins of Break have pushed up through the earth. Even shards of the Break float through the air in defiance of gravity. It's obvious that magic is all out of whack in these places.

[Praenost vs Praenost Depths]

[Avoalet vs Avoalet Depths]

[Visoria vs Visoria Depths]

In Junoon, however, it's almost the opposite. Break has shoved itself up in the lands outside of the Depths, and particles of it float through the air. But inside the depths? Those lands are almost untouched by the Break (except in Farcoast Terrace, which is almost nothing but Break, but we don't talk about that accursed place if we can help it). The air is saturated with magic in Junoon's depths, giving the atmosphere a soft violet haze, but the most prominent veins of Break and gravity-defying shards are outside of the Depths.

[Junoon vs Junoon Depths]

What a fascinating bit of environmental storytelling. I thought that those bright rocks and floating stones were just atmospheric effect in the Depths, but they're not! They seem to show where each Tanta finally lost herself to the Corruption. We know the exact location where Cinta fell. She told us. Also there's a fucking crater there.

Except I'm probably wrong? Because while the veins of Break are clearly prominent around the crater, the floating Breakshards aren't. They're very conspicuously absent around Junoon Castle as well, though the castle gardens have Break-infested plants.

Clearly more research must be done.

But there's one more thing I find fascinating. There's somewhere else you can find veins of Cinta's magic pushing through the earth. Do you know where it is?

It's Cipal, specifically all the lands around it.

You can baaaaaarely see some red Break in the distance, where the Blessed Plains boarder with Praenost, but all the rest of it is Junoon. (If you're having trouble finding the red Break, look at the bottom of the cliffs below the right side of the aurora. You may have to zoom in a little)

Anyway, I'm delighted at how much more there is to discover just by paying attention to the environment :3

[phoenixiancrystallist]

The fact that Thalia was able to use "yellow magic" implies the existence of orange and indigo magic to complete the rainbow.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

I have exactly zero basis for this theory but I think Olas might be the First Tanta. Or be her direct successor, like, she's the first person the First Tanta made a Tanta after her.

Pure headcanon, nothing more, but I can't shake the thought.

We don't know if Tantas die when they choose a successor. For all we know the First Tanta is alive and well. Svargana may hold the souls of departed Tantas, but we don't know how those Tantas died. Was it old age? Killed in battle? "Immortality sucks, actually, I'm out"? Choked on a peanut? Died in the process of transferring their powers to a new Tanta? I really don't think it's that last one because otherwise we wouldn't have four Tantas, but! Who knows! Not I!!!

...oh my god does Svargana also have the souls of Rheddig Tantas? Or is it only Athian Tantas?

Anyway the only thing that I can think of to disprove it is that she didn't immediately check on/warn her sisters about Susurrus after the Gloaming. And if she was the first Tanta, she should have been able to beat him again.

...unless Thalia and Cinta adding more life/death energy to the Gloaming made him more powerful than he was in Round 1. If she'd thought "I beat him alone last time and this time I have backup, we'll be fine," she may not have thought to warn them. But why would she continue to keep it a secret once he was back to razing Athia? Was it the same mistrust in others that made all of the Tantas keep the fact that they sealed him within themselves a secret from their citizens?

... I keep talking myself into and out of this headcanon so I'm just gonna leave it alone and go back to work. By which I mean continuing to think about Forspoken with 99% of my brain while the remaining 1% does arcane bullshit with numbers :P

[phoenixiancrystallist]

So it’s not just me wonder who the hell the face models are for the Tantas! I’ve searched high and low and all I can find are the voice actors but they don’t really resemble what their in game counterparts look like. For me especially Cintas face looks strangely generic kinda like Audens something a lil uncanny. Personally as a head canon I image Cinta to look like Rana McAnear (Samara from Mass Effect) with just brown hair lol

I think their mo-cap actresses are listed in the credits, but I could be wrong. It's also possible they used a single mo-cap actor for everyone except Frey (who I'm 99% sure was mo-capped by Ella?) and just used different face models on the rigs. I'm way less versed in motion capture animation than I am with hand-drawn animation or 3D modeled animation, so idk if it even works like that.

I wish Olas looked more like her VA, Claudia Black. I mean, look at her:

Image stolen off of Duck Duck Go lol

But yeah, like, the diversity of faces in this game is wonderful. Absolutely no same-face syndrome, and you can tell everyone was designed to look like an actual human person and not eye candy :D I think most of the uncanny valley comes from the (unfortunately) unpolished animation. I feel like the cutscene animation got a lot less love than the combat animation. Which is understandable, we're gonna be spending more time in combat than in cutscenes, but the cutscene animation is definitely my biggest gripe just because it's mildly heebie-jeebie inducing