Forspoken Writer Says the Game's World and Story Are "Nothing Like" the Original Pitch

Forspoken's original concept developer has recently shared that the game's initial idea was utterly different from the fantasy-oriented story players experienced in the final version of the game.

Speaking during the Video Game Writing 101 podcast, writer Gary Whitta, who has contributed to several games in The Walking Dead Telltale series, Star Wars: Rebels, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and was developing the original concept of Forspoken, said that the final product is "nothing like" the original pitch he together with his team of writers worked on.

It's worth mentioning that while Whitta is credited with developing the game’s narrative, he notes that what he worked on was only the foundational lore and that he didn't contribute to the dialogue we now see in the game.

"One thing that I know that I contributed to the [finished] game is the name of the world: Athia," Whitta explained. "That’s literally the only thing I know for sure of mine that’s in the game."

The writer shared that Square Enix approached him about five or six years ago to create the "germ of an idea" that should have eventually developed into Forspoken. 

Whitta and his team of writers built the basis of Forspoken, however, Square Enix reportedly decided to change the story turning it to the isekai direction (a genre of fiction where the character is transported from his home to a completely different world – the thing we can now see in the game).

"They came back to me and one of the other writers and said: 'We're going to start over and completely reboot the story. We want it to be this now.' And what they pitched us was something that's very close to what they actually have now which is about a girl from the real world that gets sucked into this fantasy world," Whitta said. "The version that we did was nothing like that."

Whitta added that he and the other writer were actually asked to write for the whole game, although neither he nor his fellow writer was available anymore as they had already committed to work on other projects.

Although Whitta didn't go into detail about the idea he and his team originally pitched but apparently, it was a completely different story from what we eventually got.

You can learn more by watching the full interview with Gary Whitta here. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform, our Reddit page, and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.