Kotaku 'Liked' Forspoken. Square Enix dissolved the developer four months later.

Let me establish the timeline. Forspoken's launch trailer — released August 2022 — became an internet meme within 48 hours of publication, specifically due to dialogue so stilted it was difficult to distinguish from an AI prompt gone wrong. 'Is this thing alive?' 'I dunno, what is anything?' These were lines from the official PlayStation marketing package. Claire Jackson's Kotaku review ran January 30, 2023 — four days into launch — and somehow did not encounter any of this. The universe Kotaku published from had clearly diverged from ours sometime around E3.

The benchmark Jackson invokes for 'exhilarating movement mechanics' is inFamous Second Son, a PlayStation 4 launch title from March 2014. This is not a comparison — it is an archaeological reference. Nine years of movement design in open-world games, from The Witcher 3 through Ghost of Tsushima to Elden Ring, and the high-water mark cited in a 2023 review is a game that predates the PS4 Pro. That's not a compliment. That's a date stamp on how recently the reviewer engaged with the genre. Sponsored by the truth.

Here is what the data shows. Forspoken's Metacritic score settled at 69 on PS5 — the precise score where a publication cannot technically call it bad, so they call it 'Liked' and move on. Square Enix's April 2023 earnings report classified Forspoken as a 'disappointing' title — their word, not mine. Luminous Productions, the studio that made the game, was dissolved and folded back into Square Enix by May 2023. That's four months between 'Liked' and 'company ceased to exist.' The audience Metacritic score: 4.2. The reviewer's verdict: Liked. One of these parties had more money at stake in the outcome.

Kotaku does not use numerical scores, which functions as either a principled editorial stance or the most elegant accountability-elimination system in games journalism depending on your priors. When there is no number, there is nothing to graph against the studio dissolution announcement. Nothing for a reader to hold up and say 'you told me this was worth forty dollars.' 'Liked' is a thumbs-up with no fingerprints. Square Enix has the fingerprints now — they're on the closure documents. Sponsored by the truth.