You might need a new PC to play Forspoken properly

From the beginning, Forspoken was pitched as a technological showcase for PS5 and PC, offering the latest in SSD game load times and AI upscaling technology. But until today, it hadn’t quite sunk in just how much power the “magical parkour” game will demand. Square Enix has now revealed the PC system requirements, and I’m honestly not sure my midrange gaming rig can handle it.

The minimum spec requires a 3.7GHz Core i7 CPU or better, 16GB of RAM, and 150GB of hard drive space to — I kid you not — play this game at a measly 720p resolution at just 30 frames per second.

The recommended spec is 24GB of RAM, an RTX 3070 or better, and an SSD — but you’re still playing at just 30 frames per second.

If you want 4K resolution and / or 60fps, Square Enix and Luminous Productions are suggesting you go all the way up to an RX 6800 XT or RTX 4080 with 32GB of RAM, an NVMe SSD, and a fairly recent enthusiast-class CPU.

Me, I’ve got an RTX 3060 Ti in my computer, and I don’t like the direction the latest GPUs are headed, so I guess I’m playing this one on PS5 — though, as of the recent free PS5 demo, it seems like I can expect between 30 and 40fps from that platform as well. It’s not clear whether the game is poorly optimized for PC — but it’s worth noting that it runs on the developer’s own Luminous Engine, not Unreal Engine, even if it’s easy to confuse it with that old UE5 tech demo.

Even if you’re not planning to overhaul your gaming rig for Forspoken, you might want to consider upgrading to 32GB of RAM. Games are beginning to ask for 32GB, and DDR4 prices are currently at all-time lows. I just did spot-checks on a few popular 32GB kits, and it looks like you can easily get 2x16GB for $110 or less.

In case you couldn’t quite make out all the system requirements in the image, here they are in bullet point form:

Recommended (1440p 30fps)

You’ll also need Windows 10 or Windows 11.