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Reviewing a game at launch is in no way 'unfair' to the game. That is how the company released it to the public, and thus, that is how it was meant to be experienced, and reviewed.

Forspoken is a good example of why studios shouldn't underestimate the importance of the writer. You can fix gameplay, graphics, bugs, etc. but you can't fix story and dialogue as easily with patches.

-Gollum releases horribly, studio shuts down its entire production -Saints Row releases horribly, studio gets incorporated into a different one -SimCity releases horribly, studio shuts down for good -Forspoken releases horribly, entire studio downsized and reshuffled -Redfall releases horribly, most of the original team quit how long until the industry notices this alarming trend?

There is one line in the game from one of the bosses that stuck with me. *"I didn't initiate this battle you did, you come to these lands, ignore our laws and then play the victim".* And I couldn't help but think, I hope the bad guys win.

Forspoken seems like one of those game you play when it gets put on psplus or gamepass then you dont finish it

Post-game DLC for Forspoken? I'm sure the five people who actually beat the main game were very excited.

From Forspoken to forgotten to foreclosed.

Dude. The vocal orchestration was hilarious. Especially when you realize he’s actually trying the melody. Very grateful.

If you're wondering how to turn off the sound coming from the controller itself. If you're playing on console (and not pc with controller) open up the quick menu. Go to "controller" and turn down "controller audio", that is above normal audio

My favorite cope for this game is the video about how the combat isnt trash because it has things like combos and you can experiment with the powers. So it has the bare minimum for a combat sandbox and that makes it great.

Dialog and story is super important to me, more so than combat. This was a pain to listen to even for two sentences. Why did they have to make her so annoying. They even had her talking under water, wtf! You got a comment and a like for your money spent on reaffirming why most of us shouldn't spend our money if we like good writing and story build.

As a matter of fact, you can do cake batter with mayonnaise and maybe pickle juice the base for mayonnaise (eggs, vinegar/lemon, oil and salt) are very much ingredients perfectly useful for a cake, while the mayonnaise stabilizer can help with cake structure or moist retention, and pickle juice can be useful for the saltines of the brine (though this one is debatable) If you wanna go for gross or mismatch flavors, go for chilli flakes, toothpaste, baby powder and uncooked rice

I really like these "re-review" videos. It's interesting seeing how some games change and become worthy of trying them out or not

Luke: this game has a focus on fluid movement. The game: herky jerky fits and starts as the girl (can’t be bothered to remember her name) skips and twirls as she tries to maneuver around obstacles and walls in tight spaces. If you want a fluid movement system in an open world game, play prototype. It’s leagues better

I can’t believe there is a DLC for this

From the first trailer my initial thought was the world is going to be empty and bland. They kept showing her zoom around and you could see there was no point in stopping bc there wasn't anything to stop for. That's probably why that feature was put in to begin with. They knew it would be way too tedious to run around without a quick way to get everywhere.

Wait... This DLC isn't free?! Even after the disaster launch and the fact they barely fixed anything? Bold move... I must say.

This was my wife’s first single layer game and she liked it. But she finished the dlc in a few hours and was like, that was 12 bucks?

11:30 It's true. Just look at what "My face is tired" did to Mass Effect: Andromeda. It highlighted the embarrassing animation issues and opened the game to all kinds of scorn. It took years for player opinions to soften toward it to the point where it seems to generally be regarded as a game that's not great but not as bad as people were saying in 2017.

"Balls in a jar" 22:42 a banger, going to need an official release of all that

It's not the rewards themselves that are bad, a feather in another game could be a true prize. No the issue here is how the game treats this system and how badly it communicates the importance of something to the player. For example, in Tears of the Kingdom, you literally collect magical bubblegums to turn some mf into a bunny, and yet somehow I found that to be more interesting than going through an hour of Forspoken. Mostly this comes down to 3 things, the game builds an important expectation for the player: "you will get rewarded for exploration no matter what", which totk is very keen on doing and letting you know they're doing it, so you feel very motivated to do some laughably meaningless things. Second, totk knows how to hook the player in any questline and that comes in different forms, like the bubblegums, you only really collect them because the idea of a person turning into a bunny is so mystically ridiculous that you just HAVE to find out if the game will actually do it. And last, it's not a chore, babbul gems and any other collectible in the game are often set behind or around fun activities and are often there to lead you to even more fun, both systems rely on each other for the sake of the player, and holy hell they actually made me collect 'em all lol. (Also there's usually armor or some other benefit in it for you)

About the exploration, It's just like Ubisoft exploration, I don't know how this happens but devs misunderstand completely what is the fun in exploring... When you explore Elden Ring world, you actually find unique places and unique gear, and you stumble on those things because you decided to go for some interesting place you saw while walking around. In those Ubisoft like games, you just find the same weapons with slightly better specs on random chests or inside those samey enemy outposts.

The entire video is so informative.. I liked it.. That copyright music though... 10/10 🤣

6:12 An environment where everything is the same color blending into each other really hampers the explorative experience.

I want more Luke Stephens game soundtracks.

Playing FF16 showed me how much better Forspoken could of been

i think you should feel what you feel. it's part of the authenticity that makes your channel so great. you have to be you. feeling two things at once is only human

Can i just say... u voicing over the music was pure GOLD and the best part of the game 😅

If the game came out broken, it was given all the chance deserved. Anything else is putting in extra effort.

Luke you can turn off audio on controller in the settings menu you can disable and adjust sound levels

The music substitution is just A tier

19:00 The dissolution of the studio was probably a foregone conclusion. There's a reason they shuttered almost immediately after release. With so much sunk cost and apparently a development cycle riddled with issues they just weren't keeping around as a subdivision. Maybe there was an internal goal to keep them afloat but, if it existed, I'm sure it was wildly unattainable. The decision to close a studio -- especially when there's a larger corporation overseeing them -- doesn't generally happen overnight.

The biggest Square Enix game isn't anything they publish, it's the game of hot and cold they play with fans.

Always find your videos fun and intuitive.

Never feel bad for calling a spade a spade, Luke. As long as you're being honest to the best of your capability, you're good.

You gave it the chance it deserved: it's first chance. Whether or not someone decides to give a game a second chance is on them, but no game "deserves" it.

I feel like the game that got caught up in a negative storm is Star wars jedi survivor. I'm playing it on the ps5 and it's amazing.

I love the “so excited to get rewarded with a feather” because that is exactly how I felt about hogwarts legacy!! So freaking empty and unrewarding! Got boring so fast

I actually thought for a second that the vocalised music was coming from the cuff. I wouldn't have been surprised 🤣

18:10 Respect - for having integrity - for the sake of the audience and developers. Keep on brother.

Hey Luke! Big fan of the channel been watching for a while now, always make sure to take time out of my day when you post something new. I was wondering if you were interested in doing a Final Fantasy 16 review? Having a blast with the game and would love some of your skeptical critique on the game

I’m a mobile field mechanic and I listen to your videos with a headphone in and don’t watch the screen. I have such little faith in this game that when you played the “beautiful” music substitute I thought it was actual in game music and had to stop what I was doing to check if I was right.

Love the editing in this video. Especially the song choices lol

I don't understand how people didn't see the emptiness prior to launch. The trailer showed nothing but an open world, devs took the term too seriously lol.

3:57 “they’ve patched it and gotten it running a little bit better” -drops like 20 fps-

The problems with this game were never going to be fixable, it's just bad at it's very core.

Hey Luke. Youve come a long way since the Eve Stealth Bomber days

22:42 You must be very proud of that song since You let that play so long xD

You definitely CAN turn off the controller speaker in the PS Menu settings

I'm giving you a like and comment for having to play this game again and pay for the DLC. Also that One Winged Angel cover was hilarious.

Yes Luke please do a video on Dave the Diver! I've been considering buying it myself and it seems really fun, so hearing your thoughts on it would be very much appreciated

Random dude vocalizing to One Winged Angel had me moved to tears... of laughter 🤣

Yeah. I get what you mean about when a game becomes a target it never shakes it. I'm STILL hearing about FF XIII even after all this time. While it has problems, I can still enjoy it.

did they make a dlc focused after the main game where you still play with Cuff, AFTER the fact he was revealed as the villain in the ending? H'wat? also I like how it said it took place after the main game but also leads into a history flashback.

I appreciate the music replacement lmao Editing was great 👍

I remember when you just jumped over holes and on the enemies head and games got a 10/10. I can't be too critical. The game looks fun.

I came here for the review stayed for the vocal orchestration

I have a rule that I loosely stick to, where the amount of money I spend on a game, that will be the amount of hours I hope to play it. Games like BOTW/TOTK exceed that rule by a large margin, but I seriously do not believe Forspoken would ever get its money’s worth, even at 50% off.

You can turn off the controller talking in settings. I think it’s under audio. I did that almost immediately and I made it where cuff didn’t talk that much. Still enjoyed the game

18:20 - what a nice tought man, i think you are kinda correct on the subject

Forespoken is actually very underrated. Hating it is cool but especially grabbing it on sale it's fun. Some of the stuff people dislike in this game are okay with in other games. That's odd and everyone has their preferences but I urge anyone who is interested to try it on a sale, it's a decent game with cool combat and fluid movement

Ya know,I would normally feel bad for the devs. But I think even the developers of this game, knew it would flop and didn't bother to put passion in it

The fact that there is a prologue to the DLC made me laugh the hardest. Isn't the main narrative to the epilogue considered enough of a prologue?

This is the best OST of the game lmao 15:48 I got goosebumps over this, this Forgotten game

the protagonist being so cringy instantly made me not even want to bother with this game lmao

When hajime tabata left luminous productions after talking for years about how they were going to make a game with the ffxv engine, I knew that without him, any possibility of it being decent disappeared. He was the one that fixed the shitshow that was the ffXV development into an actual releasable game, I suppose he burned out and saw what this project was going to be.

Great analysis men good job

The substitute music was pure gold 😂😂😂😂

I would really like to have a game like Forspoken.. But good.

this poor man sacrificing himself to confirm that the game that was bad a few months ago is in fact still bad. I salute your sacrifice and thank you for your service o7

Mayonnaise can actually be a really good ingredient in cake. It has oil and egg for the bread, and the flavor cooks out so it's mostly just a moistening agent.

PS5 controller settings can turn off the sound from it. Forspoken settings can reduce MC and magic bangle chatter entirely.

Firstly, there’s nothing wrong with Dates in a cake. 👌 Forsaken looks like it’d be worth playing once it’s cheap enough. I rarely listen to the moaners as that just is what they do, same with the super praisers. I listen more to the guys in the middle, the ones that find the good and bad, the balanced reviewers. So, I’ll wait. Love the improvised music in this video 😂👍

It's a shame that all the patches in the world, can't fix terrible writing.

This new arrangement of one-winged angel is straight 🔥 lol

That subbed in music was so much better than the game I missed everything while it was playing.

no amount of patching and hotfixes can fix a hollow & boring game, Pyrocynical I believe had asked on his stream who this game was for and what was the actual vision they had when developing it and I just don't think they had resulting in a game for people who don't go looking at a games content beyond surface level, exploring the game world in Origins and Odyssey is massively satisfying/interesting, "exploring" the game world in forspoken looks like you're just ticking off boxes to reach the end game. I'd like to say in a few years once this games price is reduced I'll check it out but the gaming industry no longer does that & at a full AAA price tag I just don't see how you get enough value out of this title for it to actually be worth it.

Luke has helped me avoid several games I may have bought - so easily worth the like.

0:40 there is a option in the setting to lower the ammount they speak

I remember I made a mod for myself to turn the protagonist into the tech demo lady from Angi's Philosophy. It kinda made the game feel better to be honest. I was going to post the mod to Nexus but at that point, nobody played the game so I didn't even bother with it.

How It Should Have Ended... Luke Stephens edition: Luke: We'll see if they fixed the things that were broken before! **Luke's controller spouts F-bomb laden dialogue from protagonist** Welp, I guess that answers it. Bye folks!

I'm giving you a like not only because you paid for that sad game, but also for your reinterpretation of what seemed like Sephirot's theme xDD. And about the responsability that you have towards the outcome of the studio... What can I say? I repect the fact that you are careful with what you say. That's something that a ton of "reporters" and just people with influence should try to do, which in today's day and age, sadly isn't the norm. But if you were being honest, and had reason to critique (which you had, believe me), and factually the game had it's issues, that's their responsability for making the product. It's not yours for pointing it out. If some food is poisonous due to a bad ingredient the cook used, is it your fault if the cook is fired due to you pointing out that it may be poisoned and so it shouldn't be served nor consumed? Or is it the cook's fault for not checking and making sure everything is as it should be? I'd say it his own fault for serving something without being sure that it is good for consumtion. So I respect that you take your words and influence with responsability, that isn't something bad. But if the product that they sold wasn't up to the standarts for its price, that's what it is, and as they were the ones that made said product, it's their responsability to take the consequences. If a product, be it game, movie, food, whatever, is being critiqued without fundament, later on, when it goes on sale, the public will see if that critique is valid or not. Right now the only example that comes to mind is Henry Cavill "in The Witcher". When it was announced that he was going to interpret Gerald, a lot, believe me, a lot of fans of the franchise were not happy about it and a lot of critique and worry generated around it. But once the show began, and people saw his acting and how he interpreted the character, all that critique disappeared. Or at least 90% of it vanished. Why? Because he proved it. If the cringe dialogue from Forspoken had only been that one dialogue from the trailer, but the rest of the game it was well written, I'm sure people would have just memed about it and that would be all. But that same level maintained throughout the game, so it was a valid critique, which was proven correct once the game released. So don't feel too bad about it, because you didn't trasnform a good game into a mediocre one. It is one, and you just pointed it out with valid criticizm and valid points.

I had this video off my monitor and thought you singing the music for copyright was genuinely apart of a flashback at 15:53

You can change how much you hear Frey & Cuff talk in the game settings 😂

My experience is that while this game isnt great, especially considering its from SquareEnix who can do better, it does pretty much give me what i was looking for. A cool magic system with lots of spells and crazy visual effects. And btw he only has 2/4 of the magic types in this video. So while there were a lot of other mistakes, the thing i expected i got. Overall i think it got bashed a bit harder than necessary

No amount of patches can fix unlikeable characters

Should make a video like this when Cyperpunk DLC launches

There is indeed a setting to lower/turn off cuff dialogue I'm pretty sure

Best part of Forspoken was that music! Amazing! Great job composers! Oh wait...

I almost wanna play this game just to experience the horrible dialogue for myself

Those mana pickups are exactly like Saints Row IV data clusters but even more casually strewn about

Looking forward to your Dave The Diver video! Please make one :)

The problem with modern gaming is that people can't form their own opinions they'll just parrot whatever their favourite streamer/content creator says. Most of the people that hate this game didn't play it and when you watch someone who's shitting on a game or overly praising it, that will automatically make your brain think that its bad or good because you're being told so by someone that you want every word from to be gospel. This game failed because it feels like it was written by edgy twelve year olds but Honkai Star Rail was massively successful and also feels like it was written by edgy 12 year year olds right down to the your mom jokes. What's the difference between those two games? What streamers told people to think of them.

The movement in the game looks cool and so does some of the combat. It looks cool...doesn't mean its fun

30:24 thanks for the recommendation dude

The dirt in the eyes is easily explainable: she's a student of Dale Gribble

It's interesting I've read that the combat is bad, not in your characters abilities ( the opposite) but it's so easy to avoid getting hit as your character is overpowered.

I just finished the game and put in over 40 plus hours and i really enjoyed. Just starting DLC and i really don’t get all the negativity around this game. I didn’t mind the chatting of the characters and besides you could turn that right down so hardly a big deal. I thought gameplay was fun, story good. Lots of extra stuff to do which was ok too. i really enjoyed.

Yeah that town/city environment is full of big flat surfaces with tiling textures. It's like they didn't get the chance to flesh it out, or they did but it bogged down performance too much because the engine wasn't capable of presenting the high fidelity experience that other games do while being such a large environment. It's like they needed Nanite but didn't have it, but tried to make a game that should've used it anyway, with their own hobbled amateur LOD streaming implementation (is there even any LOD on there for scene geometry?) The lighting also leaves something to be desired, there's a lot of shadowing that looks like shadowmapping on the environment, when they should've baked the lighting so it could include some bounce lighting and whatnot, that would've gone a long way toward making their environments look more interesting, even with the tiling textures and flat polygonal surfaces. Rendering surfaces with lightmapping like that would be more performant than just blanket cascade shadowmapping the whole scene. Note to all future game developers: DON'T USE SHADOWMAPPING ON STATIC WORLDS, USE BAKED LIGHTING, (AKA LIGHTMAPPING) WITH LIGHT BOUNCE SIMULATION, AND COMBINE SHADOWMAPPING FOR DYNAMIC ENTITIES EXCLUSIVELY WITH YOUR LIGHTMAPPING ON SCENE GEOMETRY. IT WILL LOOK WAYYYYYYYYYYY BETTER THAN THIS!