Forspoken had a bumpy road ever since Square Enix has shown first glimpses of the experience.

Now the entire thing is on display and it doesn’t look good.

We’ve been on the internet long enough to know when something just doesn’t feel right, and Square Enix’s marketing campaign for Forspoken is a brilliant example of what not to do.

Forspoken’s launch/accolades trailer flaunts some amazing reactions and reviews if you take their word for it.

Literally.

The 24-second-long video is chock-full of one or two-word “reviews” taken completely out of context, superimposed over some in-game action sequences.

The entire trailer feels like it went to the Hollywood school of “we know the product is sub-par, so we’ll say it was produced by a guy who made that thing you liked some time ago” and graduated with honors.

Some of our favorites and their context

Impressive

Game Informer

I couldn’t find “impressive” anywhere in Game Informer’s preview or review of Forspoken because it wasn’t in either, but did pop up in the article from March 2022, commenting on a new gameplay trailer.

So they took a word of “review” from an almost one-year-old article about a gameplay trailer and put it in another trailer.

The closest Game Informer ever came to saying Forspoken was “Impressive” in their preview or review was the following sentence:

“Unfortunately, Forspoken makes a bad first impression.”

Fun

RPGFAN

“There is a lot of fun to be had exploring Athia and the main quest keeps things interesting even when you get bored with the open-world checklist.” reads the entire sentence, as written by Izzy Parsons of RPGFAN.

So much to do in the game

Tech Raptor

“There was really so much to do in the game, beyond the main quest and objectives, and I barely even scratched the surface.” writes Courtney Ehrenhofler, of Tech Raptor.