She Deserved Better – A ‘Forspoken’ Introspective

*Mild Spoilers for Forspoken* When Forspoken was first announced and the main character of Frey was shown, I was super excited. Here we had a Black woman led fantasy AAA game that looked great. I’m hard press to think of any other game that would fit this description. This was a chance to inject something new into the familiar but fun genre of games. Then… those trailers came out. Yet, I was still positive. Ok yes, the dialogue is… interesting. But was it worth so much hate right off the back? These were out of context snippets, and we’ve heard plenty of characters that are loved with this kind of dialogue. It felt like there’s more behind the hate than just the dialogue. Yet, I continued to remain hopeful, hoping this game would succeed. Especially with that asinine statement from Square Enix about Final Fantasy 16, saying diversity in our made-up world with dragons, monsters, and people literally changing into fire demons is just too unrealistic. And no, one token character does not excuse what came out of their mouths. I didn’t want it to be an excuse to not use more PoC in these types of games. And then the game came out.

Refusing the Call Shouldn’t Last This Long If you’re unfamiliar, a refusal of the call is a well-used story structure where the hero refuses the call to adventure. And narratively, it makes sense for Frey. She was thrown into a strange new world and wants to go home. But it feels so stretched out in Forspoken and literally goes against the game m…