Luminous Productions has had a rather strange life. The studio was formed in early 2018 out of employees who had just finished work onFinal Fantasy 15 Royal EditionandWindows Edition. Its job was tocontinue making games for Square Enix’s Luminous Engine, using the skills its developers had learned working onFinal Fantasy 15and the various tech demos released in the years leading up to it. Now, its latest project has finally been revealed:Forspoken, an action-adventure role-playing game featuring the magically empowered Frey Holland.
AfterFinal Fantasy 15’s rocky development, up to and including the abrupt cancellation of its second DLC season due to company restructuring, it’s good to see that the Luminous Engine and its dedicated developers are still seeing work. There’s a fairly clear through-line betweenFinal Fantasy 15andForspoken, the game formerly known asProject Athia, and that may be its greatest strength. A developer familiar with the issues and mistakes of its path can work to avoid repeating them, and that may be what is happening withForspoken.
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The Unifying Engine
Luminous Productions, formerly titled Luminous Studio, was initially conceptualized around 2011. This period was a difficult one for Square Enix; theFinal Fantasy 15project then known asFinal Fantasy Versus 13was hitting technical barriers as it transitioned to open-world environments its original Crystal Tools engine could not handle. Faced with these issues, Square Enix decided to bring in former developers from Sega to create new engines for its products,including the Luminous Engine. Square Enix decided to avoid sharing between companies or internally between games until the engine had been finalized with a released game. This resulted in Luminous Studio being restricted to what would becomeFinal Fantasy 15during development, while other major next-generation titles would use outsourced engines.
A preview of the gaming engine came in the form of E3 2012’sAgni’s Philosophytech demo, a famous cinematic that depicted a grim and modern take on aFinal Fantasyworld. This is the point where theFinal Fantasy 15tagline of“a fantasy based on reality”began to take a tangible form, as the trailer appeared to be set in the fantasy equivalent of a war-torn urban area. This protagonist, Agni, even wore contemporary clothing under her summoner’s garb. This element can still be seen with Frey inForspoken, which was a key component for fans assuming thatAgni’s PhilosophyandProject Athiawere related somehow. There’s even focus on different types of hellhounds in each of their trailers. If it weren’t for the explanation of Frey and her role in the story, fans would have been forced to assume that her and Agni were one and the same — and that still might be true.
About a year beforeFinal Fantasy 15came out, another tech demo featuring Agni was released. TitledWitch Chapter 0 [cry], this showed Agni grieving amidst some ruins. Though, what it was really supposed to show was the Luminous Engine rendering tens of millions of polygons at 8K resolution, as well as Agni’s realistic individually-rendered hair and tears. That technical work has not gone to waste, asForspokenis planned for the powerful modern hardware of the recent PlayStation 5 for a good reason. However, the most notable thing about this trailer isn’t its contents - it is its name.
When Sony uploaded the March 18th, 2021Forspokenname reveal trailer, it accidentally included the line, “introducingWITCH, the new narrative-driven adventure set in a beautiful yet cruel world.” The other information in the trailer’s YouTube description was accurate to the game, so it appears thatForspokennot only went byProject Athiaat one point, it was also internally known asWITCH. This identical name to the earlierAgnitrailer demonstrates that the developers likely considerForspokento be an evolution of what those tech demos were meant to portray.
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A Fantasy Based On Reality
And that portrayal is also present inFinal Fantasy 15. Looking atFF15andForspoken’s gameplay, it’s clear to see that Luminous Productions has a longstanding vision it still wants to fulfill in terms of how its games unfold. Going off of the traversal shots,both games are open world action-RPGswith a focus on fighting photorealistic monsters in a setting that oscillates wildly between realism and fantasy. Frey even uses abilities like a shield that wouldn’t be too out of place in theFinal Fantasy 15 BrotherhoodMMO expansion, showing a clear gameplay evolution between the two. Evidently,Final Fantasy 15coming out with much of its back portion excised did not sit well with some developers at Luminous, and they want to make up for that withForspoken.
Luminous Productions was initially founded to work on video games and other types of media, but a few months into its life it was refocused back to making games, reporting a 33 million dollar loss in the process. Frey Holland’s portrayal by the actress Ella Balinska, and Square Enix’s description ofForspokenas a “narrative-driven adventure,” may be holdovers from this early direction. Frey’s presence as anormal human being transported to a fantasy realmalso seems to be a direct response toFinal Fantasy 15’s odd mesh of fantasy elements, realistic modern elements, and the sci-fi technology that pops up throughout the game thanks to the Empire of Niflheim.
All in all,Forspokenseems to bethe synthesis of all of Luminous Productions’ projectsbefore it. Committed to carrying out the spirit of the “fantasy based on reality” mantra, picking up whereFinal Fantasy 15left off, and even fulfilling the dream of anAgni’s Philosophygame all seem to be in the cards for this new title. Luminous Productions has had a rocky history, and the current pandemic is no doubt putting another hamper on what was supposed to be the studio’s most well-defined and prepared-for project yet. Still, with a commitment to a 2022 release and multiple trailers already released, it seems likeForspokenis going to be the technical marvel game that Luminous Productions always intended to make.
Forspokenis set to release for PC and PS5 in 2022.
