Forspoken review – missed opportunity for a great gaming heroine

PC, Playstation 5; Luminous Productions
This could have been a great fish-out-of-water experience, but it's let down by patronising explanations and clunky gameplay

If the recent Jumanji film reboots have taught us nothing else - and they haven't - they have demonstrated how much fun there is to be had with dropping characters from our familiar world into outlandish fantasy settings. Forspoken has the same potential: its protagonist Frey is accustomed to the harsh realities of surviving in the scruffier corners of Hell's Kitchen, New York, and her problems gravitate around harbouring debts to petty criminals and remembering to feed her cat. She's not your typical crystal-bothering Final Fantasy type.

So when Frey puts on a bracelet in an abandoned tenement for reasons best not examined too closely and she's transported into the quasi-medieval world of Athia, you think to yourself: here we go. It's a great fish-out-of-water setup that allows for witty observations about video game fantasy worlds and the bizarre tropes within them that we generally don't bat an eyelash at. And with a writing team including Uncharted's Amy Hennig and Rogue One co-writer Gary Whitta, expectations are pitched high.