Open-world hopeful Forspoken becomes meme-slinger over new trailer – what happened?

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A new teaser trailer for the open world adventure Forspoken backfires for Square Enix. It”s hailing mockery, criticism and a frightening number of memes.

Forspoken has the potential to be a really exciting open world adventure with a completely fresh premise: In the new game from Square Enix, which is scheduled for release in early 2023, an ordinary young woman from the US metropolis of New York is transported to a fantasy world full of magic and dragons.

A dewy-eyed teaser trailer that breaks down Forspoken”s most interesting selling points into a scant 30 seconds, however, is not going down too well right now: On Twitter, the commercial is causing massive criticism and ridicule. In addition, there is a flurry of memes that make fun of the trailer. But what exactly went wrong?

Forspoken trailer becomes meme machine

This is what the trailer shows: The commercial shows about 30 seconds of Forspoken gameplay, which is not even criticised per se. Instead, it is mainly the voice-over that is criticised, in the course of which the protagonist Frey comments on what is shown in a very snide, almost sarcastic manner and vehemently questions the supernatural events.

Just have a look at the trailer yourself to get an idea of what it”s like:

  • This is how Twitter users react: The trailer is not well received by many users of the social media platform. Many users criticise the video for telling them how they should feel about Forspoken and for artificially playing up the gameplay shown.

    Numerous Twitter users take aim at the trailer by simply applying the text spoken by Frey to other video games. From (God of War) and (Bloodborne) to (Dark Souls) and (Doom) to (Silent Hill) and (Max Payne) or even (Tony Hawk) and (Phoenix Wright) countless parodies of the Forspoken- Trailers can be found.

    We have only included a handful of examples here so as not to go beyond the scope of this article:

Where exactly is the problem? Amidst all the ridicule, however, there is also well-founded criticism. In the course of the meme wave, Derek Lieu, an advertising copywriter who works professionally with the design of trailers, has spoken out. In the course of a thread, he explains what exactly went wrong with Forspoken – and why it caused so much criticism.

We have summarised the most important points for you:

  • The trailer is meant to appeal directly to the viewer, which Lieu says is always risky because there”s an extremely fine line between exciting and scaring off the consumer.
  • The narrator himself acts like a salesman who wants to convince the viewer of the product shown. This can be problematic if the viewer is told how cool what is being shown is supposed to be.
  • If the consumer has not yet made friends with the product, an over-motivated and over-enthusiastic salesperson can have an extremely deterrent effect and lead to the rejection of the actual product – in other words, achieve exactly the opposite of what a trailer aims to do.
  • The forspoken trailer is made even more difficult by the fact that the text superimposed on the video also emphasises the spoken dialogue. According to Lieu, this puts additional focus on the weakest part of the commercial.
  • In addition, according to Lieu, there is a big difference between what is shown and what is spoken. This creates an additional discrepancy because only one aspect sticks with the viewer. In this case, probably the much criticised voice-over.

How could Forspoken do it better? Last but not least, Lieu brings up two examples of this type of trailer that he thinks work much better: Broforce and Battleblock. That it can go much worse than Forspoken, however, is also possible. For example, do you still remember this trailer for Mighty No. 9?

    What else you should know about Forspoken

    Forspoken will be released on 23 January 2023 for PC and Playstation 5. The action adventure revolves around the young woman Frey Holland, who one day is suddenly catapulted from New York into the fantasy world of Athia. There she seems to have superhuman powers herself and is drawn into a battle against monsters and other creatures.

    What do you think of the controversial Forspoken trailer: Do you find the commercial comparably bad or do you think the excitement is overdone? Are you looking forward to the game itself or does what has been shown so far leave you cold? Let us know in the comments!