Small Details You Missed In The Forspoken Extended Cut Trailer

Forspoken, the new narrative-driven action-adventure game from Square Enix and Luminous Studios, almost seems too good to be true. While there's not much information to go on just yet, gamers do know that Forspoken is from the team that brought Final Fantasy 15 to the Stadia, and Forspoken will use the Luminous Engine, a proprietary game engine that introduces amazing possibilities for game editing and lighting.

Square Enix announced Forspoken in a teaser trailer in June 2020, where the game was then titled Project Athia. The trailer showed off lush landscapes, and hinted at a fish out of water protagonist stuck in a world "not her own." The trailer included early development footage and informed fans that Project Athia was created specifically for the PS5, but fans got little information about what the game would be like. Heck, gamers didn't even know its real name until much later.

Thankfully, Square Enix has given fans an extended cut trailer for Forspoken. That trailer features new footage and an interview with Ella Balinska, who plays the main character Frey in Forspoken. With top of the line motion capture technology and the PS5's graphical capabilities, Forspoken is shaping up to be a remarkable jewel in Square Enix's crown. As gamers wait for more information, the only thing to do is to pore over the trailer for answers.

If Luminous Studios wants Athia ] to be a realistic world, it must behave as one — and part of being realistic is having regular day and night cycles. The Forspoken trailer indicated that Athia will experience day and night, as Frey runs through both, and fights monsters during both times of day.

Not only does the lighting in Athia seem to change from day to night, but there seems to be varying levels of light throughout the day, This means that something like "golden hour," the perfect time of day to take photos, could be possible within Forspoken. Imagine the photo mode capabilities of a warm glowing sunset in-game. 

Day-to-night mechanics aren't a new feature of games, but they aren't always implemented in the same ways. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild used a day/night cycle to reset the monsters of Hyrule, so it's possible that Forspoken's day/night cycle will serve a strategic purpose as well. The trailer shows Frey taking on monsters both during the day and at night, but the monsters who appear in the dark seem to showcase glowing, fiery hearts. Perhaps the story will reveal what these hearts are and what they mean in the world of Athia.

The trailer doesn't reveal too many inner workings of Forspoken's combat system, but it does show Frey taking on a few monstrous enemies during her journey across Athia. In these sequences, Frey apparently uses some kind of magic, as the trailer features her shooting balls of energy at enemies and creating protective barriers to shield herself. Upon closer inspection, Frey's magic seems to be somehow organic, composed of small twigs and vines that glow with an ethereal light.

When Frey fights a pack of oncoming creatures late in the trailer, both the creatures and her magical attack have vines running throughout. Frey's powers seem to harness organic matter, like plants, to do her bidding. At the very least, her powers resemble organic matter. 

The last thing featured in the trailer, the game's logo, also seems to be composed of vines, and even features a whipping sound effect.

Frey's iconic white sneakers feature prominently in the Forspoken trailer, and seem to be part of her ensemble even after she ditches her t-shirt and jeans in favor of more fantastical Athian clothing. That being said, her sneakers also seem to play an important role in how she traverses the world.

As Frey zips around the landscape, her shoes glow with an apparently mystical energy, perhaps hinting that there's a magical aspect to the inconspicuous footwear. As Frey dashes across the open world, small lines also appear around her shoes. The light and lines that surround Frey's footwear resemble the magic she uses in combat.

Judging from the way Frey travels, her shoes may actually play a part in her extraordinary abilities. Whether this means that the shoes themselves are magical or that Frey is using them to conduct her abilities is unclear. Either way, Frey's movement appears fluid and graceful.

Forspoken won't appear on the PS5 until 2022, so there's plenty of time for fans to speculate.