Forspoken studio promises PC performance improvements are on the way

Forspoken developer Luminous Productions says it is working on a patch that will make meaningful improvements to the game's performance and stability on PC and PlayStation 5. The message comes just one day after the release of the 1.03 patch that was criticized by many players for its lack of significant changes.

Complaints about the state of the game on Steam began last week with the release of the 1.02 patch, which promised fixes and optimization for the Steam Deck specifically, but left overall performance problems untouched. The 1.03 patch that dropped on February 7 also addressed a few specific bugs while leaving more widespread problems unfixed.

Not all players are experiencing issues with the game, but the dissatisfaction over performance was clear in a multi-page Steam thread:

• "Didn't optimize the game at all."
• "Please tell me some optimizations are still cooking. The game deserves to run better."
• "Please, we want a fix for better Raytracing Performance or Framegeneration."
• "Feels like a hotfix more than a substantial post launch patch."

Some users noted, accurately, that it takes longer to address endemic performance problems in a game than it does to bang out some minor (but still necessary) tweaks and fixes. But Luminous Productions and Square Enix have apparently decided that the optics of the situation aren't great, and so they're taking steps to quell the impatience, at least for now.

"We've been listening to all your feedback and are hard at work on an upcoming patch that will include improvements to overall performance, graphics, playability, and general updates and fixes to the game content across PS5 and various PC hardware configurations," studio head Takeshi Aramaki said.

"We are committed to making Forspoken the most enjoyable experience possible and will provide an update about the timing of the next patch as soon as possible. We appreciate your continued support and patience."

There's no indication of when this big patch might arrive, but the initial response to the confirmation that it's happening at all is largely positive. As one Steam user put it, "[It] is not normal that people need a RTX4080 to run this game properly. The game is really good, it just needs more polishing."