The Forspoken “Talking to a cuff!” trailer, Solid Snake edition

‘Forced Poking’ some fun at video game marketing

I have nothing but respect and empathy for the poor souls who were tasked with creating the now infamous Forspoken “Talking to a cuff!” trailer.

The whole thing stinks of producer tampering. I imagine the original script might have had lead character Frey say “And oh yeah, I’m talking TO MY SLEEVE!”, which would work fine in a cutesy, family Sci-Fi wort of way. But then the “Business Strategy and Branding Lead” came in and said “Oh no you can’t say ‘my’ because those magic talking sleeves are going to be sold as NFTs to players across the world in 2024. We want everyone to feel like they can own one, not just Frey. And you can’t call them ‘sleeves’ either because we’re going to call the NFTs ‘Tough Cuffs’. The SEO on that shit is pure dynamite.”

And that’s how Forspoken “Talking to a cuff!” trailer was (probably) born.

It was with that nightmare in mind that I’ve started posting new re-recordings of that god forsaken Forspoken dialogue every day until the game is released on January 24, 2023. That’s 165 days, folks! 11 days in and I haven’t missed an upload yet, though doing most of the acting on the videos on my own may make my brain melt soon enough.

You can find a thread of them in progress on Twitter, and for your convivence, my collaborators and I have compiled the best of them (so far) in the video below. They aren’t all keepers, but I’m semi-proud of my Solid Snake and Louie Armstrong impersonations. Just listing to them is sure to make your throat sore with empathetic laryngitis.