Square Enix and Luminous Productions have announced a Forspoken delay. The action RPG was originally due to launch in May, but it's been pushed back to October in order to accommodate the need for more polish.
What's the reason for this Forspoken delay?
Speaking via Twitter, the Forspoken team explained the reason for the delay. They say that they'll be focusing "all of [their] efforts" on polishing the game for the next few months, suggesting that it wasn't quite going to be ready for release in May. According to the developers, the goal is to deliver a game world players will want to inhabit for "years to come", so it's important for them to get it right. Luminous says it'll have more info to share on the game soon.
Luckily, Luminous does provide a new Forspoken release date in its tweet; the game will now be launching on October 11th this year. That's a pushback of just over five months, so hopefully, Luminous will be able to polish the game to a good standard by then. Delays are nothing new in the gaming industry; recently, we've seen pushbacks on release dates for games like Stalker 2 and the recently-released Shadow Warrior 3, as well as a rumored delay to the release date of the upcoming Suicide Squad game. It's been said to death, but let's remember Shigeru Miyamoto's assertion that delayed games are eventually good, but rushed games are forever bad. It's an oversimplification (not all delayed games are good - see Duke Nukem Forever), but hopefully, it's the adage Luminous is following here.
What is Forspoken?
Forspoken is a new action RPG from Luminous Productions, the studio formed by Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata (who has since departed the company). It tells the story of Frey, a girl from New York who's suddenly sent to the fantasy-inflected world of Athia. Using her newly-awakened magical abilities and a talking bracelet called Cuff, Frey must venture through the land of Athia to discover why she's been sent to this world and what she can do about the blight currently afflicting it.
You'll be able to play Forspoken on PlayStation 5 and PC when it comes along this October. It's launching on both Steam and the Epic Games Store, although Square Enix's pricing of the game at $69.99 on PC (alongside Final Fantasy VII Remake) was a source of some controversy. Here's hoping that Luminous Productions is able to bring everything together in time for the new October release date. Now if you'll excuse us, we're off to stare at that person above and their mesmerizing face some more.
