Since its introduction, Forspoken has become one of the most anticipated games of the moment, which is quite understandable from the first videos impressive technical sectionand it has also been confirmed that it will be the first PC game to be able to take advantage of this technology DirectStorage.

that technology uses the GPU to perform SSD decompression tasks. This frees the CPU from these tasks and allows for minimal load times. The difference it can make is so big compared to the traditional CPU decompression process that loading time can be reduced a little more than a second.

The thing is, eventually much of the promises that were made with the Forspoken were not fulfilled. I had the opportunity to test the demo on my PC, a high-end device, and I can confirm that it is not only technically up to par, but also has upgradeable story, boring protagonist and repetitive gameplay you’ll tire of it in no time if you’re not a fan of the genre.

No, it’s not worth paying 80 euros for Forspoken, and I honestly doubt if I would buy it when it’s on sale for less than 30 euros. I’ll explain why in this article, but first let’s take a look at the specs of the computer I tested this title on:

• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit operating system.
• Ryzen 7 5800X (Zen 3) processor with eight cores and sixteen threads at a frequency of 3.8 GHz-4.7 GHz.
• GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Ultra motherboard.
• 32 GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro SL 3200 MHz CL16 RAM (four modules).
• Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix White cooling system with three Corsair ML RGB 120 mm fans.
• GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition graphics card with 24GB GDDR6X.
• Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus sound card.
• 4TB PCIE NVMe Corsair MP400 SSD (where we installed the game).
• Corsair MP600 Core 2TB PCIE NVMe SSD.
• 2TB Seagate SHDD with 8GB SSD as cache.
• Corsair AX1000 80 Plus Titanium power source with 80 Plus Titanium certification.

We’ll also take a look at Forspoken’s requirements to see what we need to move it in optimal conditions. I already foresee that they are too high for what this game has to offer on a technical level and do not make sense.

Minimal requirements

• Windows 10 64-bit as the operating system.
• Intel Core i7-3770 processor (4 cores and 8 threads) or Ryzen 5 1600 (6 cores and 12 threads). There is an equivalence error, Ryzen 5 1400 (4 cores and 8 threads) would be correct.
• 16 GB of RAM.
• 6 GB GeForce GTX 1060 or 8 GB Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card.
• 150 GB of free hard disk space, although an SSD is recommended.

recommended requirements

• Windows 10 or Windows 11 64-bit as the operating system.
• Intel Core i7-8700K processor (6 cores and 12 threads) or Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores and 12 threads).
• 24GB of RAM.
• GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card.
• 150 GB of free space on the SSD.

ideal requirements

• Windows 10 or Windows 11 64-bit as the operating system.
• Intel Core i7-12700 processor (12 cores and 20 threads) or Ryzen 7 5800X (8 cores and 16 threads).
• 32 GB of RAM.
• GeForce RTX 4080 or Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card. There was a serious equivalence error, the correct thing would be a GeForce RTX 3080.
• 150 GB of free space on an NVMe SSD for using DirectStorage.

Forspoken is not up to par in graphics quality

And they are quite obvious even on a high-end PC that more than ticks all the boxes. The game offers a relatively simple graphical configuration menu, is compatible with NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSRtwo technologies that will allow us to significantly improve performance, and it has Ray tracing applied to shadows.

In my tests, I set the game to 1440p with maximum quality, ray tracing and DLSS in quality mode. As soon as I started the game I noticed little twitchers twitchand I experienced my first disappointment very bland environment with improved texturesvegetation at the height of PS4 titles, excessive lighting and very poorly executed and geometry that in some cases even reaches the level of a PS3 title. Look at the wooden spikes in the attached image and the quality of the textures, the result is very poor and not even close to what we expected.

We continue to review the technical execution and now we will talk about the modeling of the main character. I think the attached picture speaks for itself. we have pretty crappy modeling that doesn’t even come close to what we’ve seen in cross-gen games as Resident Evil 2 Remake, and this confirms what has been an open secret that Forspoken has received a huge graphical downgrade that is noticeable in every way.

The modeling is terrible and so is the quality of a good part of the geometry, the lighting and the level of detail of the settings, but it’s important to stop for a moment and talk about the latter. Stages They are not only very empty, but almost lifeless, representing a much lower density of vegetation to the one the game showed in its first videos and the texturing and tessellation of the ground leaves a lot to be desired. There really is nowhere to take.

You can see it in more detail in the image just above these lines. Look at the vegetation and texture of the ground, It seems unbelievable that this is a PS5 and PC exclusive game, because we’ve seen generational crossover titles that look way better than Forspoken, and what we’re seeing has nothing to do with what was shown in the game’s presentation videos.

The image above again shows the issues I mentioned above and we have another one we haven’t named yet, rendering distance which is very bad and has a very low quality level, so much so that objects further away tend to lose parts or magically disappear and reappear. Even DLSS in quality mode, which is known for improving the quality of more distant objects and removing jaggedness, does not have a positive effect on this title.

Poor performance, serious bugs and general development

Even with the test equipment used, Forspoken’s performance was not good. The frame rate fluctuated between 70 and 100, a very low range due to its poor graphical cut and the simplicity of its development. When there are intense fights and many effects appear on the screen, the performance drops significantly and the optimization problems turn out to be bigger than we imagined.

Stuttering and microstrokes are a constant while playing and they do we will never have a truly seamless experience, even if we always stay above 60 frames per second. As I told you at the beginning of this article, once you start playing Forspoken we are welcomed by microstrokes, and these are repeated when we quickly move the camera to look at areas of the stage that were not visible (for example to look back).

In addition to erratic performance, stuttering and micro-pulling Forspoken features cracking problemssomething incomprehensible given that it is designed to take full advantage of NVMe SSDs, and I also found out antialiasing glitches which make many objects appear jagged and even “blink” when we move in any direction.

My conclusion is simple and clear, on a technical level Forspoken is not only not what we promised, it is a disaster and is such a big downgrade compared to the original that it seems like it was developed for a completely different generation, and much higher. I know what you’re thinking, this title I would still be saved if the story was goodand if it had a protagonist with charisma and innovative gameplay, but unfortunately it doesn’t either.

The main character has no charm, the story is nothing from the second Thursday and the gameplay is pretty generic and feels a bit forced at timesSo much so that by the time I finished my first half hour of play I was already feeling rather bored. Even if you are a fan of the genre I do not recommend buying Forspoken, as one of the biggest promises of the year turned into one of the biggest disappointments. It’s not worth the 80 euros it costs, and 51% of Steam users think the same.