It’s no secret thatForspokensuffers from cringey dialogue, stuffed to bursting with cursing and quippy banter between the main characters, Frey and Cuff. It works at times, but too often does it feel forced, unfunny, or tonally out of place (I know our Elijah would disagree). Many of the issues stem from our expectations clashing with what the game delivers, and most would be solved with a shift toward an anime-style medium.
The root of this issue is one of genre conventions and expectations. Some level of anachronism is expected in a story about a character from our world being transported into a fantasy realm. But the tone of the world is so severely at odds with Frey’s personality that they simply don’t mesh. Everything around Frey is bleak and dire. It’s a world on the brink of annihilation, with an apocalyptic corruption threatening to wipe out all of civilization in Athia. The people of Cipal, the last bastion of humanity, are frightened, knowing that at any moment the corruption will consume the last city of humanity in this doomed world.
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Frey, on the other hand, is irreverent. She’s argumentative, resents authority, and is sometimes downright cruel to those around her. In the opening moments of the game, she’s standing before a judge regarding a recent grand larceny charge (during which she both declares her innocence and then a few lines later tries to explain why she needed the money). Rather than showing any kind of remorse or reservation, all of her responses are angry or sarcastic, which feels all the more out of place when the judge is urging leniency in her favor. A sarcastic character trait isn’t out of place; but when she’s always sarcastic or disdainful, it ceases to be an aspect of her character and simply becomes the whole character — less a nuanced human and more a caricature.
Despite the world’s fantastical and calamitous setup, Frey and Cuff are so deeply (and frequently) flippant and casual, rarely taking anything seriously, that they come across almost cartoonish.
All of these issues would be lessened and more suitable in an anime-style format. Plenty of anime straddle the line between frivolous moments and serious storylines. Due to the animated medium, its genre expectations, and its tropes, the audience is generally more accepting of that kind of tonal swing. An insolent or flippant protagonist who bucks authority, oozing sarcasm in many interactions, can also shift into a serious tone to support a dramatic narrative when the story demands it. This kind of unique tonal flexibility is a hallmark of many successful anime like Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood,Dragon Ball Z,Bleach,Naruto, the list goes on.
In Dragon Ball Z, Goku can shift from lighthearted moments of devouring a mountain of food and jocular misunderstandings, to contending with world-ending threats and battles. In the anime show Bleach, you’ll have Ichigo invading the Souls Society to rescue his friend, who is slated to be executed, but within that same arc, he takes a break in a hot spring and become cartoonishly flustered when Yoruichi disrobes. These moments would be weird overreactions in a photorealistic medium, but due to anime’s tonal flexibility and genre expectations, they come across as silly or charming even, offering a welcome reprieve from their more serious and action-oriented storylines.
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Forspoken already shares some heavy anime DNA in its storytelling. In Japan,Isekaiis a genre that explores otherworld storylines — it deals specifically with portal fantasy, and it’s incredibly popular, appearing as novels, movies, manga, anime, and video games. This type of story isn’t entirely uncommon in the west — The Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia, even Alice In Wonderland (which the game mentions several times throughout) all present this kind of story. Western portal fantasy stories share similar traits with the Isekai genre in that they deal with a fish-out-of-water protagonist trying to navigate a strange new world, but they generally remain tonally consistent throughout, or if they include more humorous elements, there’s an expected balance.
Forspoken does establish its irreverent tone early on, but at no point does it feel like it quite fits the story being told. Despite all of the pre-release trailers and clips hammering home the tone of the game by showcasing the dialogue and personality of its protagonists, Frey and Cuff, it’s still hard to accept because it is constantly pushing against genre expectations. The photo-realistic art style does a disservice to the story Forspoken is trying to tell because it grounds the audience too much, setting the wrong expectations. An open-world fantasy adventure following a hero from another world here to save the day clashes too forcefully with the bickering and irreverent nature of Frey and Cuff’s constant interactions.
The animated medium would have set audience expectations more appropriately and could have even made audiences more accepting of the dynamic between Frey and Cuff. The game does actually have some fantastic moments that would shine brightly if it weren’t for the inconsistent tone - an inconsistency that wouldn’t have been so jarring were it an anime.
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