Forspoken, the new game by Square Enix set to be released in January 2023, has recently uploaded a teaser trailer that has been met with widespread criticism. Forspoken's development has been overseen by former Uncharted director Amy Hennig, and features a unique fantasy setting.

Announced during the Playstation 5 stream in 2020, Forspoken was originally called Project Athria. It was met with much excitement as the team that Square Enix partnered with, Luminous Productions, was connected to Final Fantasy XV. Square Enix's Forspoken has been hit with delays, but the game itself looks promising. Forspoken will take advantage of the raw power of the PS5 to showcase next-gen capabilities such as ray-tracing and enhanced procedural generation for terrain. It will also be the first game since Final Fantasy 15 to be created in the Luminous Engine, which is seen as a direct competitor to Unreal Engine. The story itself takes place in a magical land full of dragons, beasts, and magic. The main character, Frey, is a woman from New York that was sent to this other realm, and she now looks for a way back home.

Despite all the hype for the game itself, the release of the new trailer by the Forspoken Twitter account was met with moans and groans from the general audience. The short video features Frey talking to the audience with excitement about her newfound abilities as well as the new world around her. The consensus is that the dialogue was too light-hearted, with Forspoken's rating having hinted at dark themes. Users have compared the recent trailer to Joss Whedon's quipy writing, as well as the torrent of Marvel movies that have led to a fatigue of the style among certain moviegoers. AngelKing47 on Twitter has gone so far as to say that "Marvel has irreversibly ruined media", placing the blame on Marvel for the harsh reactions to the teaser trailer.

Why Forspoken's New Trailer Got Ratioed on Twitter

Derek Liu, a game trailer editor, has done a deep dive into why he believes the Forspoken trailer is being regarded with such disdain. His main point is that there is an emotional disconnect between the narrator and the audience, where the tone of the narrator doesn't match the audience's tone because not much is even known about the game. The narrator, according to Derek Liu, is acting as a salesperson to the audience, but it doesn't work when the narrator isn't doing anything to sell the game and is instead spewing nonsensical jokes and cringeworthy reactions.

While Forspoken is one of 2022's biggest RPG releases, the trailers and media coming out have been less than helpful in keeping up the hype. The overall glut of Marvel content and the game having a similar tone could cause people to be turned off by Forspoken, if this new trailer is anything to go by. Hopefully, the game itself won't be so tonally insincere when it finally comes out, but if it is, Twitter will be here to tell everyone all about it.

Sources: Forspoken/Twitter, Derek Liu/Twitter, AngelKing47/Twitter