Forspoken, the open-world game released earlier this year on PC and PlayStation 5 by Square Enix and Luminous Productions, may have had a sizeable budget behind it, which makes the game’s many shortcomings even more baffling.
As spotted on Twitter by Timur22, the game’s lead writer Allison Rumer revealed on LinkedIn that Forspoken had a budget of over $100,000,000. As the game is far from being one of the best ever put out by the Japanese publisher, one has to wonder where the budget went.
If Forspoken indeed has such a sizeable budget, it’s no surprise that Square Enix defined the game’s sales as lackluster. Still, the game’s release wasn’t completely bad for the publisher, as the feedback on some of its features will eventually lead to the improvement of Square Enix’s development capabilities for future games. A costly lesson, that’s for sure, no matter how high the budget behind the game really was.
It’s a shame that Forspoken is such a middling game, as some of its features, such as combat and magical parkour, are objectively nice. These, however, were not enough to salvage the experience, as Alessio highlighted in his review.
Forspoken is now available on PC and PlayStation 5 worldwide. Despite Luminous Productions not being a thing anymore, updates and additional content are still being produced and will release on yet-to-be-confirmed dates.
