In an exclusive interview with Lead Cinematic Artist Roosa Jokiaho, she states the Forspoken devs “had to show how much Frey had grown into her role as the protector of Athia.”
For a developer to come back to a game for a second time, and so soon after release, means a chance to for another opportunity for a first impression and apply feedback from the base game. Roosa Jokiaho, the Lead Cinematic Artist of In Tanta We Trust, the DLC of Forspoken knows this well and seized the moment when working on the new expansion.
“The most important thing was to give it our all, and show that the team really loved the new IP that we created. There’s a lot more stuff to tell if given the chance one day. We can do better and push the things we didn’t get to push with Forspoken.”
Originally released on May 26, 2023, quite close to the late January launch of the first game, it is not common for new content to come out this soon and in such a full-fledged manner, usually having a timeframe of six months to a year, but the team set out to deliver an even more polished experience. “We wanted to achieve a more seamless and high-quality experience as compared to the main game. We got a lot of fair criticism about outdated fade to blacks in Forspoken, so we wanted to hone in on the DLC and fix it.”
Roosa also commented on a few shortcomings of the base game that were addressed in the cinematic DLC, “For example, we decided to bypass the fade to black by instead of being fully seamless we use action cuts to continue the action the player was doing. We definitely managed to up the quality with the DLC visually, and I’m very happy with that result.”
To learn more about a game’s inner workings is to get to appreciate it even more. Case in point, the Lead Cinematic Artist mentions the subtle but important details that make In Tanta We Trust stand out beyond the exhilarating gameplay. “One of the most important beats was to introduce a younger Cinta than the one we met in Forspoken. And the relationship with Frey. You can feel the conviction and emotional struggle Cinta feels because her duty as a Tanta and her personal feelings are at odds regarding what she needs to do.”
Having a more emotional response was a pillar concern of the team, as seen in Frey’s facial and physical expressions. “For the facial animations, we updated our check-flow to make sure it hit the quality bar of everything else. A hard one to get was when Frey gets the tattoo in her arm and is in pain and you want that to look good as well.”
In her compact but memorable time-traveling journey, Frey has to confront inevitable changes and steel her resolve in the process. To fulfill Forspoken fans’ dreams of having Tanta Cinta spend more time with her daughter, albeit in this limited manner as Thalia, was one of the goals of the team.
The new big bad, Aldacor, had to be portrayed ruthlessly in this expansion as his nefarious quest to awaken the world-ending catastrophe known as Susurrus took shape as the story reached its climax. Several cinematic tricks to make players feel uneasy were at work behind the scenes, “Going a bit deeper into his transformation scene, we broke some basic cinematic rules to add to the uncomfortableness of the whole thing. Even if you don’t know what the rules are, typically it will still make you uncomfortable when they’re broken.”
Ultimately, Roosa directly thanked fans for giving Forspoken a chance and welcoming Frey’s journey into their lives. “I just want to say thank you to everyone for giving Forspoken and Frey a chance. It’s been really humbling to see all the love that everyone has for it. Seeing all the passion and the love for the title is wonderful.”
As the expansion wraps up with hopes of a sequel, one can only wish for this dream to come true at some point down the line.
You can watch the full interview here.
