A new Forspoken video and PlayStation Blog post detail the magical combat capabilities of Frey in the world of Athia. Frey's magical abilities are classified into four colors that offer a wide range of offensive and defensive options to defeat enemies.
Square Enix is showing off more of what the world of Athia has to offer and what players can expect of the game's combat system in a new video and PlayStation Blog post. Previous videos showed off Forspoken's open world and parkour and now, it's time to focus on its combat.
Frey Holland's magic-based combat abilities are divided into four colors: Purple magic relies on ground elements, Red magic releases waves of powerful fire attacks, and Green and Blue deal with air and water elemental magic respectively, but these were not thoroughly explained in the deep dive video. Each magic color has a wide range of unique attack, support, and parkour dodge spells that give the players a multitude of combat options for any situation. There will also be levels to each color's combat abilities for the players to unlock even more powerful spells.
Forspoken's Purple magic's ground-based basic "Shot" offensive moves have three different forms. Burst Shot forms into a small fusion of rocks and soil and fires like a cannonball into enemies, potentially doing splash damage to others around the target. Shield Shot can be used in defense, then fired at nearby enemies. Scatter Shot is a rapid-fire offensive move that can charge a more powerful single shot with successive hits.
For defensive moves, Purple magic has Prime, which sets mine traps; Screen, which creates a force-field but offers no offensive capabilities like Shield Shot; and Tendril, which is a wide, slashing attack that can heal Frey with a percentage of damage it inflicts on enemies. For added protection, Frey's Cuff is also designed to mitigate some incoming damage and set her up for some counter-attacking spells. The Cuff will also give Frey information for point-of-interests and enemy weaknesses.
The other magic colors will follow this same convention with their own unique abilities and upgrades. As Forspoken's story progresses and Frey discovers new areas, she will find Mana in the world that will go towards upgrading the other magic spell levels and eventually unlock the remaining magic colors.
The PlayStation Blog post written by Forspoken's Lead Visual Effects Artist Ryota Nozoe explains why they made certain design decisions. As seen in many other Forspoken gameplay trailers, Frey's magic turns into physical matter, then returns to magic form at the end of the attack. Magic abilities are cast in geometric patterns; organized layers of squares and circles to help the look of this game's magic stand out from other iterations.
Forspoken releases on PC and PS5 on January 24, 2023.
Source: PlayStation Blog