A recent announcement from Japanese game studio Luminous Productions revealed that the company would be merging with another Japanese studio, Square Enix, starting May 1. Luminous Productions had recently released Forspoken, an open-world RPG, less than a couple of months prior.

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The announcement was made via the studio’s official Twitter account.

An Update from Luminous Productions pic.twitter.com/fbDENflRhj

— Luminous Productions (@LumiPro_EN) February 28, 2023

It’s worth noting that Luminous Productions was previously a subsidiary of Square Enix before the studio became an independent entity. The company also worked on Final Fantasy 15. Both FF15 and Forspoken make use of the studio’s proprietary Luminous Engine, and it’s unclear as of this time whether or not the engine will see continued use in future titles.

Despite merging with Square Enix, Luminous Productions is still currently working on the announced DLC for Forspoken, titled “In Tanta We Trust.” A recently announced patch that is set to address Forspoken’s performance issues is also still in the works.

Forspoken launched to a lukewarm reception, its interesting combat system and flashy particle effects muddled by its less-than-stellar story and somewhat bland open world. You can check out our review of Forspoken here, where we gave it a 6.5/10 score. Here’s a quote: “Without a compelling story or likable protagonist, or a compelling world to explore, Forspoken only has its combat to rely on and while I always found that fun and engaging, it’s not enough to justify an open world for a decidedly linear game. It tries a lot of things and comes up short in most of them. There’s a really good game in Forspoken. It just needed to be refined, polished and edited.”