Square Enix’s new fantasy parkour game Forspoken has had a bit of a rocky launch in terms of public perception among gamers, who found its Joss Whedon-esque dialogue in advertisements cringe-inducing. However, Forspoken’s lead actress says she isn’t bothered by all the discourse the game’s dialogue has caused online, and honestly more power to her.
Forspoken, which was released on January 24, follows a down-and-out New Yorker named Frey who must save the denizens of the fantasy world she gets isekaied into with the help of a talking cuff named Cuff. In a recent interview with The Verge, Ella Balinska, who plays Forspoken lead Frey, said she’s proud of her performance in the game because she knows that she got to take on a role that her eight-year-old self would have been psyched to be a part of.
“I always reference my eight-year-old self whenever I talk about something I’m really proud of doing, I’m just speechless right now,” Balinska told The Verge. I just never would have thought me playing games downstairs with my mum’s hairdresser’s son while she was getting her hair done. Now, to think that he can pick up this game and play as me, it’s just unbelievable. And I hope it inspires other people to realise that if you commit to the bit hard enough, something really crazy can happen.”
When asked what she thought about the online memes folks were making about the game’s dialogue, Balinska simply said that, “there are things that we all do that might be eyebrow-raising to other people,” and that
“I think people always have a positive or negative response to something they’re not used to seeing, and that’s completely ok because that’s the way we incite change,” Ballinska told The Verge. “This is such an extraordinary game that has come out with this amazing protagonist who’s so bold, so unapologetic, so reluctant in the best way possible. I think audiences might not be so used to seeing that.”
Outside of Forspoken, Balinska, who owns an impressive gaming PC, starred as Jade Wesker in Netflix’s live-action Resident Evil series.
Read More: Forspoken: The Kotaku Review
In our Forspoken review, we said Square Enix’s parkour isekai deserved better than what shipped on its release date because the strength of its story and protagonist outpace its performance issues and oft-admonished dialogue.
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