My first impression of Forspoken upon watching its reveal trailer was genuine glee. Seeing a Japanese-developed role-playing game with a dark-skinned person of color as the main protagonist is rare. Seeing such a game starring a Black woman is exceptionally rare. Learning later that a vast majority of the principal cast are women is practically unheard of.

So I went into this latest hands-off press preview of Forspoken with hopeful expectations. And, at first, it seemed like developer Luminous Productions and publisher Square Enix knew their stuff. Going into this game, Forspoken creative producer Raio Mitsuno wanted this to be an experience that primarily featured a female cast and starred a protagonist that broke free of conventional fantasy hero tropes--everything else about the game was built around that concept "from the beginning of the project."

"That was really one of the core concepts that we had from the very beginning of the game--we wanted to create a world with a bunch of strong female characters, and we wanted a world of magic," Mitsuno told me. "And we wanted to use those as our pillars when we started the project. We were impressed with the increasing number of female leads in the industry, but we wanted to really take it a step further and go with a female-centric world. We also wanted--with our main character Frey--to portray a character who was really down-to-earth and a realistic portrayal of a modern-day young woman, who just so happens to then get thrown into this world with a bunch of powerful women, a sort of matriarchal society."