Load the Game

Gary Whitta’s original pitch for Forspoken turned out to be “nothing like” it

• Jacob Chambers
• February 21st, 2023

Didn’t spoken just sort of come and go? After all the hype leading up to it, the magical action RPG quickly lost its appeal once it hit the market. The writing team behind the game, which included Amy Hennig of Uncharted fame and Rogue One author Garry Whitta, contributed to its hype. However, as is often the case, it appears that only a small portion of each contributor’s ideas were incorporated into the game’s final design.

Whitta discussed his involvement with the project in an interview with Alanah Pearce for her Video Game Writing 101 podcast (thanks, GamesRadar+). Whitta noted that “On Forspoken, I did some very early work on the world’s lore foundation, but I never actually wrote a line of dialogue.

He explains how everything came together: “What happened was that Square contacted me about five or six years ago and asked if I would be willing to help them develop their idea, which was only a seed of a concept.

Whitta agreed when asked to head a writer’s room, and he did so. It was in this writer’s room that a lot of the mythology and background of the world of Athia were developed. Whitta claims that the name “Athia” was one of the few of his suggestions that was actually incorporated into the finished game.

A few months later, according to Whitta, “we’re going to start over to completely reboot the story, we want it to be this now.” They then approached Whitta and one of the other writers. The new story that Forspoken would eventually ship with was about a young person who was drawn into a fantasy world from the real world.

In Forspoken, Whitta is given credit for the “original concept,” and Hennig is given credit for the “story concept.” Whitta admits that adding the names of such well-known authors to the project increased the game’s level of prestige.

Forspoken, in our opinion, had a disjointed main plot, boring side quests, and dull characters. You can read our full thoughts on the subject in our review.

What do you think of Whitta’s words? Are you surprised by the writer’s absence or do you understand it in light of the outcome?