The Forspoken demo announcement is the latest leak to happen from official sources after the PlayStation Store leaked the release date of Street Fighter 6 and the Microsoft Store leaked the release date of Diablo IV.
Earlier today, the Japanese PlayStation Twitter account reposted the teaser for the Forspoken gameplay showcase set to air tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific Time, but it did so with a thumbnail that stated 'Forspoken demo announcement trailer'. The tweet has now been deleted, but, of course, that didn't stop someone from taking a snapshot.
海外では発表済なんですが、何で日本のこのツイートは削除されたんでしょう？https://t.co/e95xHrHjLi pic.twitter.com/adx4JwWWrr
— れんか (@Renka_schedule) December 8, 2022
It sounds like there will be a Forspoken demo going live soon, which makes sense given that the open world action RPG made by Luminous Productions raised some eyebrows in previous showcases, although the more recent ones were more promising.
It's the first game made by the developer of Final Fantasy XV since that game launched in late 2016. Forspoken was originally scheduled for May 24th, 2022 before suffering two delays, the first to October 11th, 2022, and the second to the current date of January 24th, 2023.
The story sees protagonist Frey Holland (played by actress Ella Balinska), a regular young woman, mysteriously transported from her New York home to a fantasy world called Athia. Here Frey discovers to have access to a multitude of magic abilities, which make her the only hope this land has against the corrupting power of the Break. This blight turned the once benevolent sorceress rulers called Tantas into deranged tyrants, who Frey will have to fight.
As evidenced by the gameplay footage released so far, the protagonist uses magic to both enhance her movement through parkour and to summon spells from a list of over 100 to buff herself, defend herself, or attack enemies in many different ways.
Forspoken, due to be released on PC and PlayStation 5, will also take advantage of cutting-edge technologies like ray tracing and it will be the first PC game to use the DirectStorage API. Loading times are said to be extremely short on both platforms (here's an example of the PS5 version).
On PC, AMD has partnered with Square Enix to implement its own technologies (including FSR 2.0) into the game and to offer Forspoken in a previous Raise the Game bundle.
