Forspoken's system requirements are no longer a mystery as Square Enix has just announced the latest PC specs. While a gaming PC with an old Nvidia GTX GPU can ostensibly take on a role-playing game, you might need one of the freshest graphics cards on the market to avoid the PS3-era visuals.
Luminous Productions divides Forspoken's PC specifications into three categories—Minimal, Recommended, and Ultra. This structure is becoming something of a norm when it comes to modern requirements, as it helps developers make paired recommendations with realistic performance expectations. However, the studio didn't provide example settings, and this could be a deal breaker for those trying to really balance visuals and framerate.
Forspoken system requirements:
| Minimum | Recommended | Incredibly | |
| OS | 10 64-bit Windows | 10 64-bit Windows | 10 64-bit Windows |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7 3770 AMD Ryzen 5 1600 | Intel Core i7 8700 AMD Ryzen 5 3600 | Intel Core i7 8700 AMD Ryzen 5 3600 |
| RAM | 16 GB | 24 GB | 32 GB |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 AMD Radeon RX 5500XT | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 AMD Radeon RX 5700XT | Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 AMD Radeon RX 6700XT |
| VRAM | 8 GB | 12 GB | 16 GB |
| Memory | 150 GB | 150 GB SSD | 150 GB NVMe SSD |
You don't need the very best gaming PC to run Forspoken, but using the above system will play at 720p 30fps. As a baseline, according to the developer, you'll need a GTX 1060-level GPU paired with an Intel i7-3770 or AMD 1600 processor. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, sort of, but 16GB of RAM isn't exactly a nice touch, as budget builds and older machines tend to come with less RAM.
If you want to keep Square Enix's shiny new adventure from turning into a 2007 demo, you'll want to stick to Forspoken's recommended specs, but from the looks of it, you'll still have to make do with sluggish graphics. Luminous advises using an RTX 3070 graphics card, an Intel Core i7-7800K processor and 24GB of RAM to achieve 1440p 30fps - not ideal considering we're talking PS4-level performance on a machine we'd call respectable.
As you'd expect, the "Ultra" system requirements are for 4K gaming, but you'll also be able to hit 60fps. Unfortunately, this requires one of the best graphics cards on the market, namely the recently released Nvidia RTX 4080 or something similar with 16GB VRAM.
The spending doesn't stop there, as the Ultra's spec sheet has a relatively fresh Intel i7-12700K processor and 32GB of RAM. Again, Luminous didn't include any Forspoken PC settings in their recommendations, so it's hard to say if some premium PCs will have to compromise fidelity in the name of performance.
In terms of storage, you'll have to free up a whopping 150GB of space to boot Forspoken, and you might even have to ditch your trusty old mechanical hard drive. The recommended and ultra requirements say you'll have to upgrade to SSDs, and the latter even mentions using an NVMe drive. Choosing the best SSD for gaming will save you from having to worry about any of the above, but it can cause a few headaches for those using a cheap and fun setup.
PC specifications should help prevent performance degradation, but we'll need to test the game ourselves.
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