What happens when you combine Alice in Wonderland with Iron Man? Square Enix’s latest action RPG, Forspoken, aims to answer this question with a plot in which the protagonist, Frey, finds herself immersed in a world of dragons and witchcraft. Built with the same Luminous Engine that powered the team’s last gameFinal Fantasy XV, has a similar open world design, with animation, art, creature design and much more that will look familiar to you.
resolution modes
The game has three resolution modes: Quality, Ray Tracing and Performance, each with a 120Hz mode. Quality targets 3840x2160p with Dynamic Resolution Scaling (DRS) enabled, which can scale 75% in total to as low as 1920×1080. Ray Tracing mode lowers the ceiling to 2880x1620p and scales down to a minimum of 1440×810. Both modes use FSR2 reconstruction to return to 4K output when it’s not at that level, which is always the case in Ray Tracing mode and often in Quality. Lastly, Performance targets 2560x1440p on both ceiling and FSR2 rebuild, and can drop 75% down to as low as 1280×720 as well. This mode increases performance to 60fps over the previous two, which are limited to 30fps.
The impact on image quality in Performance mode is noticeable, but quite small compared to the gains it offers. That said, there’s a perfect compromise in that 120Hz mode, at least in theory, if you have such a display. With 120Hz mode on, both Ray Tracing and Quality mode run at 40fps, meaning effects and adjustment are identical to non-120Hz modes, but DRS tends to drop in range in heavy footage due to to the 25% reduction in frametime. This is actually a minor impact on the image in exchange for an improvement in fluidity and control, which can be vital in such a fast-paced action game.
Engine has high input latency, and running at 30fps we get average times of 225ms with Quality mode and 221ms in Ray Traced mode, while Performance mode at 60fps offers a significantly faster average of 115ms. This is where the 120Hz display offers the biggest improvement, cutting Quality and Ray Tracing mode times by around 30%, down to 163ms and 154ms respectively. This is due to 25% less frame time, as well as the fact that it can now go to the next 8ms update when a frame is lost, reducing the mean input time by about 60ms. The 60fps Performance mode gains somewhat over the 120Hz mode, but only the expected 8ms spike in frame time, which is a small 7.2% improvement in fluidity.
Therefore, without reaching the framerates, I suggest using 120Hz mode for all modes if possible. If not, I recommend using Performance modeas camera, movement, and combat are severely impaired in 30fps modes, as demonstrated here.
Performance
In theory, these adjustments should cover all of our bases. Unfortunately, in practice not all objectives are achieved, and not only sometimes, but often enough not to be achieved. Starting with Performance mode, our “target” is 60fps, but in high-bandwidth sections and foliage, opaque or partially translucent alpha effects can cause a 25-30% drop in frame rate, causing long sections in the mid or low 40s. The game does support Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), but these rates are below the active range for VRR on PS5, and the dips can still be seen and felt.
Activating the 120 Hz option, Performance mode is still capped at 60fps, but when you experience crashes you can at least go to 8ms, meaning this is still the fastest and most responsive mode to play. Ray Tracing mode is next, being 8-14% faster than Quality mode when running on a 120Hz display, but even then it can drop back into the low 30s often enough to feel the same. . This doesn’t mean it’s all the time, as many quiet exploration sections or cutscenes top out at 40fps, but you have to assume that the intense combat will take place somewhere in between.
The game doesn’t feel like it’s using some of the key aspects of current-gen consoles, but feels much more like a cross-gen game.
you might wonder why not run an unlocked option for 60Hz displays, but this causes frame times to jump between 16ms and 33ms when forced into a 60Hz bin. On a 120Hz display, however, they line up at that 40fps rate at 25ms, so it feels smoother as frame times are closer together and even. Unfortunately, Quality mode is worse than Ray Tracing mode, and 40 fps is usually below that value, and can even reach 20 fps (again, the dense and opaque pixel fill-rate seems to be the main cause). So the 40fps mode is great in theory, but in practice the Quality mode suffers more to be worthless, and the Ray Tracing mode, while better, still doesn’t get close enough to that goal to be considered a true middle option.
Image quality and effects
Visually, the game is a mix of old and new: world geometry, lighting, shadows, global illumination, etc. They look good, with high poly counts on the characters, good materials, and overall facial and skeletal animation. Compared to Final Fantasy XV it is superior, especially in resolution and image stability, even compared to the PS4 Pro version of that game, but not to any generational degree, other than the improvement of resources and resolution. It does, however, offer some current-gen boosts, with Quality offering full 4K output and Ray Tracing adding hybrid shadows with a soft twilight, with precise contact hardening enhanced by more shadow-casting objects.
Quality mode increases DSC compared to Performance mode and Ray Tracing mode, with more shadow cascades and more debris in certain areas. Ray Tracing has the best quality, with cascades of shadows mixed with ray-traced shadows within the first cascade, as in the one closest to the camera. This provides softer shadows and better ambient occlusion, but outside of a side-by-side comparison they aren’t significant enough to stand out for most gamers. Quality mode is a bit sharper, thanks to the contrast-adapted sharpening step within the engine, but in reality both modes look close enough that you won’t really notice the difference after a few minutes of gameplay. The Ray Tracing mode improves, above all, the shading of the characters in the scenes, which is quite abundant throughout the game.
The character models are well built and realized, but often suffer in cinematic scenes due to lower bone rigs than many modern games, especially in the mouth, eyes and nose. The game is based on a mixture of motion capture and keyframed animation. This, along with jumping from one cinematic to another, means that there can be huge differences in the quality of models, lighting, materials, and animation between scenes and even from model to model. Textures are certainly one aspect, with mip-maps often running below assets in cutscenes, highlighting that the engine/game still needs some refinement as textures they can take quite a while to load, leaving you with some blurry, last-gen details on PS5.
charging times
The charge highlights the intergenerational roots of the game, despite being an exclusive game for PS5 and PC. Continuing a match takes less than 2 seconds, making excellent use of PS5’s SSD and I/O design. Loading a game is slower, with just over 5 seconds. Nevertheless, the main problem is the constants fade to black and the charges that you will see during the game. True, most are 2-3 seconds max, but the constant fade to black and game interruption when opening a door, exiting a fort, fighting an enemy, or even during a cutscene can throw you off the game. This is compounded by the fact that many sections lock you out until the interface, dialog, or instructions load. This is frustrating, as it’s unnecessary and restrictive, meaning the game doesn’t seem to take advantage of some of the key aspects of current-gen consoles, instead much more of a cross-gen game.
Sound production and mixing
The effects are fine, with decent mixing and production. The music, while far from bad, is repetitive and terribly mixed, with music that fades or stops awkwardly and new tunes that start at certain moments in the game or in cinematics. Added to this is poor mixing that can cause vocals to clash with the music, and dialogue is far from top-notch.
In summary
The Luminous engine was a revelation just seven years ago with Final Fantasy XV, offering character models, hair and cloth physics that rivaled the best in the industry. Forspoken improves on that game in almost every way, but the gaming industry has moved on since then, and the engine hasn’t kept up.. What it does offer is wide-open terrain, great graphics quality, and a wide range of modes. Unfortunately, none of them reach the expected level of quality or consistency, and I hope that the patches can resolve some of the performance and quality issues noted here.
