Ella Balinska Forspoken Frey Social Media Memes Interview
Image: Push Square

Forspoken isn’t the first game in video game history to have dodgy dialogue, and it certainly won’t be the last – but for some reason, it’s become the victim of a social media backlash, with no shortage of out-of-context clips shared online to ridicule lead character Frey. Actress Ella Balinska – who plays the character – has seen some of the discourse, but in an interview with The Verge she’s eager to rise above it all. For her, appearing in the game is a simply a dream come true.

“There are things that we all do that might be eyebrow-raising to other people,” she said of whether the character is as cringey as Twitter has portrayed. “I think people always have a positive or negative response to something they're not used to seeing, and that's completely okay because that’s the way we incite change.”

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For the record, we liked Balinska’s portrayal of Frey, and noted in our Forspoken PS5 review that the character adds a jolt of personality to a release that can otherwise be quite bland: “The game's riddled with badly paced and questionably directed cutscenes, as characters drone on and on about Athia's generic fantasy lore in an attempt to make Frey care about their plight – it's no wonder she's always telling them to f*ck off.”

Balinska, though, is too focused on the positives to care about the criticism: “I just never would have thought [I’d one day be the star when I was] playing games downstairs with my Mum’s hairdresser’s son while she was getting her hair done. Now, to think that he can pick up this game and play as me, it's just unbelievable. And I hope it inspires other people to realise that if you commit to the bit hard enough, something really crazy can happen.”

What a wonderfully positive head this young lady has on her shoulders!

[source gamespot.com]