Can you play Forspoken on Steam Deck?

Forspoken might not have hit as intended, but the game’s demanding requirements for specs don’t seem to count for something like the Steam Deck.

After our gaming team’s rather middling review, we’re not entirely sure why people would want to explore the world of Forspoken. However, Square Enix did put out a demo on Steam and of course, we’ve tested it out to see how it runs on the Steam Deck.

The interesting thing about Forspoken on PC, is that it has a wild requirement list to get it running at just your basic resolutions. While we tried to calm the fires, it seems that it is indeed a tough cookie to run properly on both PS5 and PC. We’re also unsure how DirectStorage directly affects the gameplay, however, on Windows, it seems to ruin the experience a little.

Does Forspoken run on Steam Deck?

With this in mind, and considering the ceiling that the Steam Deck can hit, we’re surprised to find that the game runs just fine.

While you won’t be hitting 60FPS without the help of the supersampling options, your mileage may vary depending on what you’re willing to sacrifice.

Of course, the Steam Deck’s built-in FSR is the most hideous of the bunch. AMD’s supersampling is great for getting a solid framerate, but the low resolution combined with an underwhelming piece of software makes for a murky image.

FSR 2.0, however, did produce a much better image and we were able to get a comfortable 30FPS out of this on medium settings. Throwing it down to the lowest values though does end up making the game look grimy more than anything.

XeSS returns, which was our favorite in the PC port of Miles Morales. Intel’s supersampling software works great on the Steam Deck, offering a nice enough-looking image and smooth performance at the default. What it does lack is the minutiae and finer details looking a little choppy. However, for a game that demands a 3070 at the recommended specs, when sat at the Deck’s native resolution, this is just fine.

TSR also proved to be a decent option, with stable FPS and less of a hit on the system overall. However, we think if we continue playing outside of the demo, we’d stick with XeSS on the Steam Deck right now.

Forspoken on desktop Linux fix

Another issue that has arisen and we need to point out, is that Forspoken has a weird issue on Linux. While the SteamOS version of Linux is running just fine, some users might find their favorite desktop variation like Ubuntu, Pop_OS! and others aren’t actually running the game.

Square’s development team behind Forspoken has used weird file paths when installing the game. When the game loads up on your system, it can’t actually locate them and throws up an error.

Sega and Atlus did this with Persona 5 on PC, which works flawlessly on Steam Deck, but on Linux, you run into the same errors again.

To get around this, you’ll actually need to tell Steam to load the game up as if it were a Steam Deck. Right-click your game in the library, and in the properties. In the general tab, there should be a text box to set a command. Tap in -steamdeck and your Linux system should launch the game.

It’s a bizarre thing, but this seems to fix it for the most part.