General Gaming Lords of the Fallen (PC/Xbox Series/PS5) - "Master of Fate" (Version 1.5 Update) trailer

[Pikachu]

 

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A vast world awaits in all-new, dark fantasy action-RPG, The Lords of the Fallen. As one of the fabled Dark Crusaders, embark on an epic quest to overthrow Adyr, the demon God.

 

[Mr.Vic20]

2? Remake?

[TheLeon]

28 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

2? Remake?

Sequel, which is totally obvious because the first game didn't have a "The" at the beginning. 

[stepee]

lol did they go to Microsoft’s school of branding or something?

[skillzdadirecta]

10 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

Sequel, which is totally obvious because the first game didn't have a "The" at the beginning. 

Right? I was confused at first too and I played and beat the first one. One of the first Souls-likes to come out.

[TheLeon]

55 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Right? I was confused at first too and I played and beat the first one. One of the first Souls-likes to come out.

According to Steam, I only played it for about 7 hours. Maybe I'll download that and give it another spin. I'm still riding on an Elden Ring high, and might enjoy it more now. 

[best3444]

Never heard of this but the cutscene was very LOTRish which I love. 

[Bloodporne]

I personally feel like Elden Ring put the bookends on the Souls formula in many ways. I can't even picture myself being interested in another one of these games for a long-ass time.

 

On that note though, I think The Surge is way underrated. Same dev I think?

[Remarkableriots]

The voiceover was Joseph Quinn who played Eddie from Stranger Things.

[Remarkableriots]

3 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I personally feel like Elden Ring put the bookends on the Souls formula in many ways. I can't even picture myself being interested in another one of these games for a long-ass time.

 

On that note though, I think The Surge is way underrated. Same dev I think?

The Lords of the Fallen developer HexWorks is a new developer founded in 2020 while The Surge was developed by Deck13 Interactive which developed Lords of the Fallen. Atlas Fallen will be the next Deck 13 game.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 hours ago, Remarkableriots said:

The Lords of the Fallen developer HexWorks is a new developer founded in 2020 while The Surge was developed by Deck13 Interactive which developed Lords of the Fallen. Atlas Fallen will be the next Deck 13 game.

 

Correct!

 

Deck 13 and CI Games had a very messy "breakup" - apparently the relationship soured during the development of the original Lords of the Fallen game.  Eventually, they reached a financial settlement:

 

02/16 Concluding a settlement agreement with Deck13 Interactive GmbH – CI Games

WWW.CIGAMES.COM

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

HOLY SHIT - THE TRAILER USES "MOTHER" FROM DANZIG 

[Brick]

7 hours ago, TheLeon said:

Sequel, which is totally obvious because the first game didn't have a "The" at the beginning. 

 

OK that's why this is an announcement trailer. I was so confused because I could have sword I heard of this game before, so how the hell could it be an announcement. What's with this stupid title though?

[DPCyric]

Why is it a warning that it uses Danzig? Granted they could have used a much better themed song for the trailer than the one fucking song that gets all the radio play  "How the Gods Kill" would have been great for the trailer.

[Bloodporne]

22 hours ago, Remarkableriots said:

The Lords of the Fallen developer HexWorks is a new developer founded in 2020 while The Surge was developed by Deck13 Interactive which developed Lords of the Fallen. Atlas Fallen will be the next Deck 13 game.

Oh damn lol. I didn't like Lords but The Surge is really great I think. Never played the sequel, didn't like the setting and aesthetics.

 

18 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

HOLY SHIT - THE TRAILER USES "MOTHER" FROM DANZIG 

I fucking love that album, no regrets. Danzig I and III rules

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

13 hours ago, DPCyric said:

Why is it a warning that it uses Danzig? 

 

Everyone should be aware of the presence of Danzig lest they stumble upon it unawares and are subsequently traumatized!

[Brick]

I don't even know who Danzig is.

[Pikachu]

1 hour ago, Brick said:

I don't even know who Danzig is.

 

Never played Guitar Hero?

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, Brick said:

I don't even know who Danzig is.

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

This is Glenn Danzig's greatest hit:

 

 

(I NEVER get tired of making that joke!)

[Brick]

26 minutes ago, Pikachu said:

 

Never played Guitar Hero?

 

The third and fourth. 

[Keyser_Soze]

2 hours ago, Brick said:

I don't even know who Danzig is.

 

Go back to Canada!

[Pikachu]

18 minutes ago, Brick said:

 

The third and fourth. 

Ah, you missed 2 then.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Information from the latest issue of Edge:

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- When they started developing the game, Hexworks set out to create 'Dark Souls 4.5'; while they "braced for impact" when Elden Ring came out, they didn't try to course-correct on the game they always wanted to make

- This is a dream project for many of the developers; said they "stopped their successful careers to work on it"

- The connections with the first game will be tenuous

- The game is much larger than its predecessor, and completely interconnected: "Every level branches out into other levels, like a T-shaped intersection, and every three levels loop back into each other. It's like a chain of pretzels"

 

 

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- The art direction is conceived as a mix of European gothic horror, medieval fantasy and cosmic horror

- The cosmic horror elements are related to the Umbral, the limbo between death and the afterlife that can be seen in the trailers. From an art perspective its inspirations are, among others, HR Giger, Zdzisław Beksiński and surrealist sculptor and performance artist Olivier de Sagazan

- The lantern the player character is equipped with allows to stare into the Umbral from the living world, as well as to escape from it should you enter it.

- You can accept death and reset the world like in a traditional Souls game, leaving the currency you lost at the point you fell and returning to the rest site visited most recently, or decide to descend into the Umbral as a sort of second chance, searching for unique treasure and then seeking out a 'totem' that slides you back to reality. In this world, however, healing items are less effective and an insanity meter fills if you stay in too long.

- The Umbral can also be accessed through a 'deathwish' ritual that induces a kind of penalty-free demise, since there are items and loot that can only be found there

- The architecture of the real world and the Umbral interact with each other; for example, a chasm in the real world may be bridged in the Umbral, and even when living you could raise the lantern, which shows the Umbral overlaid on the real world as a kind of portal, and as long as the lantern shows the way, you could cross that bridge

- TLotF is a game about "observation and detective work", in which gaps and dead ends should encourage further investigation. As in games such as Soul Reaver, changes in a world may open new paths in the other

- While smaller Umbral denizens cower from the lamp, larger ones may actually reach through the light and drag you to the other side

- There are 9 starting classes to choose from at the moment (the number may change in the final release), and this choice may have an effect on how deeply you need to become acquainted with the Umbral - a necromancer can hardly avoid it

 

 

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- The game's equivalent of the bonfires, called 'anchors', appear only sparsely at fixed locations, but their number can be increased by crafting them and placing them as you see fit. Their crafting materials can only be looted from Umbral enemies, however, and they wear out with use and can also be destroyed if found by enemies

- During the first playthrough, there will be fast travel between anchors and the hub area, but in New Game+ there will be no permanent anchors, and the warping functionality will be restricted

- Co-op play will be untethered and seamless, so partners will stay connected as long as they want: if you die, you switch to a spectator mode until a companion resurrects you

- There are three factions in the game, and depending on your alignment you will receive a specific currency that can be exchanged at shrines for items and equipment, but the most precious gear will remain out of reach until the combined playerbase donates enough currency to unlock the higher tiers - "We'relooking for players to organize themselves, and start all grinding together as a community"

- There will be crossplay between PC and consoles

 

 

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- There won't be any poison swamps

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

New "screenshots":

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[crispy4000]

 

Uses both Lumen and Nanite.

 

Looks good generally, but there’s some notable lighting errors around the character when they talk about Lumen.  It looks almost like a screen space effect error.

[TwinIon]

Will this be the first big (non-fortnite) game to show off Lumen and Nanite? It does look quite impressive. Really hoping that it doesn't bring my 4080 to its knees.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

OLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO

 

They've dropped the "The" from the game's title so once again it's "Lords of the Fallen" 

[Mr.Vic20]

I look forward to steam pulling a micorsoft and labeling this game: Lords of the Fallen (1)

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, TwinIon said:

Will this be the first big (non-fortnite) game to show off Lumen and Nanite? It does look quite impressive. Really hoping that it doesn't bring my 4080 to its knees.

First AAA release that does, yes.

[best3444]

Looks just ok honestly. Lol at the title change. 

[Keyser_Soze]

6 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

OLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO

 

They've dropped the "The" from the game's title so once again it's "Lords of the Fallen" 

 

They had to change it or Ohio State would sue.

@b_m_b_m_b_m

[Brick]

On 3/22/2023 at 4:48 PM, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

OLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO

 

They've dropped the "The" from the game's title so once again it's "Lords of the Fallen" 

 

You've got to be fucking kidding me...

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Lords of the Fallen's creative director showed me its 'horrible pains' and 'fingers of God' and I must see more | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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The upcoming soulslike is a carnival of dark fantasy horrors.

 

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The flagship technical feature in Lords of the Fallen is that there are actually two worlds layered on top of each other. There's the world of the living and then there's the Umbral realm, a purplish plane that shares the same physical space, but with subtle differences—for instance, lots of faces with holes in them, and fingers, and limbs, and things like that, everywhere you look.

 

As a puzzle device, the world-beneath-a-world thing isn't groundbreaking—an impassable gap in one world might be passable in another, for example—but I don't think I've seen it done with this kind of fidelity. The Umbral plane is absolutely everywhere, and can be inspected at any time with a magic lantern that not only lets you peer into the realm, but interact with it through a ghostly rift.

 

You can also dive completely into the Umbral realm, either on purpose or by dying. Once you're there, healing only gives you a block of temporary HP that evaporates with one hit, and if you die in the Umbral realm, you're dead for real and you lose a bunch of XP and return to your last checkpoint. If you find a special kind of altar, however, you can pull yourself back into the land of the living without sacrificing any progress.

 

 

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The checkpoints you'll return to when you die for real will be few and far between, Virtosu told me. He described a mountain area which has a checkpoint at its start and a checkpoint at its end, and none in between. You can craft and place your own checkpoint, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a manual save: crafting one requires special materials from Umbral monsters, and you can only place one at a time, and, oh, you have to put it somewhere safe or else monsters will destroy it.

 

 

 

The new Lords of the Fallen takes aim at Elden Ring's massive soulslike success

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

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Eurogamer's preview and interview with Lords of the Fallen developer HexWorks.

 

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Umbra, by the way, is Lords of the Fallen's big twist, a core feature that takes what is otherwise a game that looks like a straight shot at a next-gen Dark Souls and grants it some personality of its own. In brief, Umbra is a second world which exists in tandem with the main one, visible seemingly at all times when you raise your magic lantern, its blue glow peeling back one layer to reveal another, and allowing you to step between worlds.

 

It's a remarkable thing in motion, feeling like the type of mechanic that really could only work at this fidelity - Lords of the Fallen is lavishly detailed - with the extra oomph of current-gen hardware. In the blue haze of the Umbra dimension, new routes appear, like branching paths, secret platforms, mechanisms for opening locked doors, and exploration, Virtosu tells me, has become a central part of Lords of the Fallen's open-but-with-gates world.

 

 

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But above all, in Umbra world things are effectively just even Dark Soulsier than before. Enemies are more vicious, there's a winking eye in the corner of the UI that gradually opens the more cowardly you are - by running from enemies, for instance - presumably killing you outright if you constantly flee. And the environment, naturally, is plastered with gaping skulls and jumbo clumps of cartilage, those secret paths often made from vast, hellish spinal cords stretching out from newly revealed platforms.

 

It's also closely tied to Lords of the Fallen's unique take on death: there are save points this time, and you can place them wherever you like yourself. The catch, since that all sounds rather easy, is that enemies can destroy them, and that they're very expensive to place, and so their use becomes a question of terrain mastery and ingenuity. Dying, meanwhile, takes you into the Ubra realm where you'll have a chance to fight your way back out - or run away to a location that'll bring you back instead, assuming you can avoid opening that eye - while dying in Umbra takes you all the way back to your previous save.

 

 

 

Lords of the Fallen is the John Wick of Soulslikes | Digital Trends

WWW.DIGITALTRENDS.COM

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We got to see Lords of the Fallen in action at GDC, and it's more forgiving than your average Soulslike and still absolutely brutal.

 

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Structurally, Lords of the Fallen takes a “semi-open world” approach. I’d see a sizable swath of Axiom during my session, with the person in charge of the demo flying the camera through dark catacombs, over grim swamps, up the side of a mountain, and into a castle-like structure where no two rooms looked the same (Virtosu notes that there’s very little asset copy and pasting, with each room holding its own environmental story). Considering there’s a whole secret world beneath that, it all looks pretty enormous at first glance — not to mention gorgeous and meticulously detailed thanks to Unreal Engine 5.

 

After completing a sort of tutorial level, the game opens up into a wider world that’s broken into explorable chunks. There are five specific “dungeons” marked on the map with a red beacon, and players can technically chase them in any order. There’s a major boss at the end of each, though the world is dotted with tons of massive fights, both required and optional. Virtosu does say that there’s an optimal order, though, comparing its structure to Demon’s Souls.

 

In addition to that setup, Lords of the Fallen brings a few intriguing twists to standard Souls traversals. The first has to do with its version of bonfires, the safe points where players can level up and heal. Those sites are fewer and farther between in this game, but for good reason: players can craft their own. By collecting rare resources, players can build a bonfire anywhere they want on the map, though there’s a major risk/reward component that comes with that. Build it in the middle of an enemy patrol zone and you’ll risk it getting destroyed, wasting those resources. Find a safe spot for it, though, and you’ll have more control over when and where you can let your guard down.

 

 

 

Lords of the Fallen aims to be an ambitious, redemptive Souls-like reboot

WWW.SHACKNEWS.COM

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CI Games seeks to redo the original 2014 Lords of the Fallen by incorporating all that its learned over the last decade.

 

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Before delving into the gameplay, I was shown the character creator, which has a strong amount of customization options and a body shape slider that, with the power of Unreal Engine 5, will automatically change the shape of any armor to fit your character. You can choose from among nine preset classes to make it easy to get straight into the game, or you can take the time to build a custom class to better suit your playstyle. Either way, your character is put in the role of a dark crusader who is trying to prevent the resurrection of the demon God, Adyr. The developers also wanted to point out the work they put into the opening tutorial section, which they felt was lacking in the original game.

 

While I can’t say with certainty how well Lords of the Fallen compares to Dark Souls in terms of combat, as I didn’t get any hands-on time with the game, it looks like CI Games has taken a lot of time to make fights feel solid and flexible. Your character is proficient with pretty much any weapon, stringing together light and heavy attacks like a champ. You can even mix one-handed and two-handed attacks within the same combo.

 

The game also introduces a hotkey system to allow players to combine physical strikes with any assigned magical abilities more seamlessly, so long as you can nail down all the button presses. Instead of a dedicated button for parries, pressing the block button right before getting hit will initiate a parry. If it doesn’t go through, the maneuver will default to a block, so this should make defense less risky. Furthermore, if you want to make your experience even easier, you can play the game with a friend in seamless co-op that won’t require you to fiddle around with summoning circles and co-op items. 

 

 

 

Lords of the Fallen is unapologetically Dark Souls, but with a twist | The Loadout

WWW.THELOADOUT.COM

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Here are our first impressions of upcoming soulslike Lords of the Fallen after a hands-off preview and chat with the game's creative director at GDC 2023.

 

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However, there are instances where Lords of the Fallen breaks character to try something new, something bold, or something “controversial”, in the words of HexWorks’ charismatic creative director, Cezar Virtosu, who chatted with me during the preview.

 

One aspect of the game that probably falls into all three of the categories above is Lords of the Fallen’s Umbral realm – a mysterious, “parallel world” that sits behind the real world of Axiom. Despite being “eerily similar” to the overworld, Umbral has an aesthetically different appearance, and it may also provide different traversal routes like bridges or pathways that don’t appear in Axiom. It can also be viewed in real time at any point by raising your lantern, and you’ll also be able to navigate things like ladders or drained riverbeds that exist only in Umbral with your lantern out.

 

 

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However, Umbral is far more than a visual or traversal gimmick – it is also where you go once your health bar drops to zero. Umbral acts as a purgatory – it provides a second chance to get your way back to the real world, or it’ll be the place where you face a proper, progress-stealing death.

 

When in Umbral, which is populated with its own “apex predator” enemies, as well as those you’d fight in Axiom, your goal is to find an “anchor”, an object which when interacted with will resurrect you. Spending too much time in Umbral will also increase your “mental whither”, a kind of fatigue effect that will make trying to escape even more difficult. If you fail to find an anchor in time, or are clobbered down by the Umbral world’s enemies, then you’ll meet your true soulslike demise.

 

From the brief glimpse of this I saw, it’s certainly not straightforward and is not an easy free revive. For hardcore Souls enjoyers though, this second chance mechanic probably won’t sit well, something Virtosu seems to accept and is prepared to hear. This “taboo” bending of the rules, as he calls it, does come as a surprise given HexWorks’ high praise and clear admiration of FromSoftware.

 

 

 

Lords Of The Fallen Makes You A Ghost Detective In Its Horrific Souls-Like World - GameSpot

WWW.GAMESPOT.COM

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Being a ghost detective is certainly a fresh take on the souls-like genre.

 

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Like the original game, Lords of the Fallen seems to closely follow the Dark Souls formula in its minute-to-minute gameplay. You've got your standard and heavy attack, parry and staggering mechanics, spells, and magical items, all of which you use to overcome a challenging world filled to the brim with monsters and bosses that want to kill you. Your only respite is a series of checkpoints that refill both your health and healing items, but resting at these locations comes at the cost of respawning enemies you've defeated. Paths twist and turn, snaking through every distinct area--some even doubling back to create a more interconnected world.

 

In these terms, Lords of the Fallen doesn't seem all that different from the plethora of souls-like games that have come before it. The presentation showcased how the parry and blocking system works, where a mistimed parry results in a successful block, circumventing most of the risk in attempting a parry. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but until I actually play the game, it's difficult to tell precisely how a system like that works in practice. At the very least, the parry system delivers a satisfying noise on a success, which is always a bonus for me.

 

Where the game most diverges from its Dark Souls inspirations is in how its two game worlds exist simultaneously. While exploring, you can hold up a lantern at any time, allowing you to see a ghostly realm that exists alongside the material plane, as well as the monsters that call this other realm home. This vision into another world allows you to solve environmental puzzles--a destroyed bridge in the material plane might still be intact in the spiritual realm, for example, or a door that seemingly won't open in the real world might actually be held closed by a ghostly monster in the other realm.

 

Both worlds exist at once, which is impressive to see from a technical standpoint--it reminded me a lot of The Medium and how seamless the transition between the real and spirit world is in that game. Throughout the presentation, I saw how a view into the ghost realm was practically instantaneous with a simple button press. This actually led to a pretty good jump scare--there was a largely empty room where apparently a bunch of ghosts were attacking the main character, but I couldn't see that until the presenter raised the lantern. Upon doing so, a ghoul in mid-lunge suddenly appeared and its attack could connect--objects and enemies in the ghost realm only affect you once you see them. The blow caused the main character to drop the lantern, immediately pulling our view back into the material plane and preventing any more ghosts from physically interacting with us. The presenter warned that had such an event occurred while we were using the lantern to see and walk across platforms in the ghost realm, the main character would have then lost sight of said platforms and plunged into empty space below, likely dying.

 

Holding up the lantern only affords you a look into the realm of ghosts--it's not permanent and easy to lose if you're in the midst of combat. To better interact with and explore the ghostly space, you'll have to become a ghost yourself. There's the traditional way of dying to an enemy, but you can also willingly enter the realm whenever you want by opting to essentially end your life. Getting out is much harder than getting in, however. You need to find resurrection totems in the world and interact with them to bring yourself back to the world of the living. If you die in the ghost world, you die in the physical realm too, and you lose the resources you've collected, missing out on a chance to level up.