Skip to main content

Why Lords of the Fallen could be the ‘John Wick of Soulslikes’

After watching an impressive 30-minute demo of Lords of the Fallen, I had no shortage of questions to ask the game’s creative director, Cezar Virtosu. Over the next half-hour, we’d discuss a wide range of the action-RPG’s new features, from its faster combat to its unique bonfire-crafting twist. The key moment of the interview, however, would come when we discussed its most distinct feature: the Umbral world. In between normal Soulslike battles and exploration, players can press the left trigger to shine a lantern and reveal secret paths all around the grimdark world. There’s essentially a whole second world underneath the main one, filled with horror visuals and traversal puzzles.

Virtosu goes into detail describing that idea, laying out a scenario where a player might uncover a tendril with their lantern and follow that into a complex series of navigational decisions. “You feel like the John Wick of Soulslikes,” Virtosu excitedly says. “Once you get into this, you’re going to feel fearless, like an apex predator.”

Recommended Videos

Though he was describing that specific Umbral concept, the phrase “John Wick of Soulslikes” stuck with me the more I thought about what developer Hexworks is creating here. The demo I saw at this year’s Game Developers Conference highlights a faster-paced Soulslike that gives players a ton of tools to work with. It still looks like the incredibly challenging game that genre purists crave, but those patient enough to master its various systems can turn themselves into a tornado of violence. That makes Lords of the Fallen a strong Soulslike to watch in a post-Elden Ring world.

Rebooting the series

If you’ve been following the game since its announcement, you may have noticed a subtle change already. The title is no longer The Lords of the Fallen; it’s just Lords of the Fallen, like its 2014 predecessor. That’s a very intentional change, as Virtosu stresses how much this version is a full reboot of the original rather than a continuation of it (he jokes about how goofy a title like Lords of the Fallen: Origins would have been). That approach is bringing some major changes, both in terms of gameplay and how the team is approaching its narrative.

“We all dream of the anime Netflix adaptation at some point,” Virtosu tells Digital Trends. “We wanted to make the world very compelling. We wanted new characters that carried gravitas. And we wanted to move away from high fantasy to dark, Berzerk-like grit. And you see there are ambassadors of evil, but you must ask yourself: who are these people? Why am I fighting them? Am I becoming them?”

A warrior stands in an Umbral hallway in Lords of the Fallen.
Ci Games

That tonal shift is pretty apparent from the get-go. I’d see a much darker world compared to the original game during my demo session, filled with eerier environments and grotesque bosses that dip more into supernatural body horror. One boss battle has me fighting what seems like a normal human in phase one, but phase two has it retching around on four twisted limbs that I can hack away at. That change can especially be seen in the aforementioned Umbral world, where the imagery is at its most unsettling. There, I’d see a hidden layer of snake-like tendrils and menacing stone bodies hiding in plain sight.

Virtosu is confident with that change in direction, especially considering that the game is launching in Elden Ring’s enormous shadow. In addition to its unique genre twists, he feels that the laser-focused art direction makes the game stand out in a crowded genre.

“The texture of the game puts us in a very cozy place,” Virtosu says. “We’re a game that’s more about detective work, very hard combat, a lot of horror, and seamless multiplayer. And our grimdark fantasy is tangible; you can lean against it. Usually, these games bring too many elements. At a point, you’re like, ‘I don’t know what this is about.’ We stripped all those elements and wanted that dark, gothic feel like Bloodborne.”

Semi-open world

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.

A player looks out at Lords of the Fallen's open-world.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

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.

The game is incredibly challenging — it’s much more challenging than the first game.

The other aspect that piques my interest is the game’s almost Sekiro-like second life system. When players die, they don’t simply lose everything they’re holding, forcing them to do a standard corpse run. Instead, they get sent to the more dangerous Umbral world. If they can escape from it successfully, they’ll keep all their resources and continue on — otherwise, they’ll drop it all. That changes up the normal risk/reward flow of the Souls genre, as Virtosu says that the team didn’t want players to feel like they were simply restarting every time they died.

The more I see and the more Virtosu talks about the ideas guiding the project, the more it’s clear how Lords of the Fallen is carving its own path forward in a genre that’s been done to death. It’s when we drill into the small nuances of combat, though, where I finally come back to that offhand John Wick comparison.

A fluid Soulslike

With any Soulslike, finding the right difficulty level is always a challenge in itself. For the new version of Lords of the Fallen, the team wanted to keep the experience tough, but it would need to learn from its predecessor’s flaws to get the balance just right.

“The first game drew criticism for being very tough at the beginning, but then the RPG aspect made the encounters trivial,” Virtosu says. “This is one thing we took to heart. The difficulty was in a place that didn’t work long term. For this, we added a massively long tutorial. We added faster movement. We made it quicker to get out of animations. We added a second life. The game is incredibly challenging — it’s much more challenging than the first game … We throw a lot at the player, but we also give them the tools to mitigate difficulty. But we’re not telling them what to do; you have to discover it.”

A boss with a giant mouth grabs a player in Lords of the Fallen.
Hexworks

It’s some of those specific changes to the combat that make Lords of the Fallen feel more fluid than the genre typically is (at one point, I joke that it’s practically a Batman Arkham game next to its peers). Many of those changes are incredibly subtle tweaks that only serious Souls fans might notice. Healing is faster. Weapons can be quickly switched mid-combo. Players can cancel out of some animations. Melee attacking is still slow and considered, but details like that make battles feel quicker and less punishing if you overcommit.

There’s a sizable layer of customization on top of that, which further deepens what players can pull off. For one, there are several character classes to choose from this time. Rather than telling a narrative about a specific main character, the team wanted to lean into more emergent storytelling guided by the player. There’s also a huge range of spells, and three can be equipped at once.

One specific moment of the demo stands out the most. At one point, the demo runner reached a cave entrance that was surrounded by something like six enemies. As you might imagine, they made mincemeat of him as he tried to slash them one at a time. After successfully escaping from Umbral and returning to that patch of enemies, he decided to break out some spells instead. A breath of flame would melt down one in front of him, while a hail of fiery meteors would destroy three in the back. In seconds, he’d completely decimated the guards without taking a scratch — a regular John Wick hero moment.

A cleric fights a boss in Lords of the Fallen.
HEXWORKS

That’s what ultimately has me excited about Lords of the Fallen, even as someone who’s not easily won over by the genre. It’s a Soulslike that’ll reward players who make a plan and follow through with it, both in combat and exploration. The action is flexible enough that I imagine a skilled player will be able to fluidly chain together all its various nuances and leave behind a trail of ashes. Getting there will still be a major challenge, but it doesn’t seem hopeless. The right tools are all there, waiting for someone who knows how to use them.

Lords of the Fallen is set to launch this year on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

Topics
Giovanni Colantonio
As Digital Trends' Senior Gaming Editor, Giovanni Colantonio oversees all things video games at Digital Trends. As a veteran…
Atlas Fallen unexpectedly gives Forspoken some real competition
Two Atlas Fallen characters stand together in key art.

Atlas Fallen has the potential to surprise a lot of people. Although it's launching in just two months, we haven't seen much about this new game from The Surge developer Deck13 and publisher Focus Entertainment since its reveal at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2022. That's a shame because after going hands-on with an early build of it, I've found that Atlas Fallen has the potential to appeal to people who didn't like one of the year's most divisive titles: Forspoken. 
Atlas Fallen - World Premiere Reveal Trailer | Gamescom Opening Night Live 2022
Square Enix's open-world action RPG featured some neat ideas with its fast-paced magical combat and freeing traversal abilities, but many people couldn't get into it. While more focused on melee combat than magic, Atlas Fallen is a similarly ambitious open-world game that delivers satisfying movement and action that's different from the norm. That makes it a game that might scratch some itches that Forspoken didn't fully reach due to its heavily criticized writing. If it's not on your radar yet, you might want to know what Atlas Fallen has to offer.
Encouraged exploration
Based on my demo, I'm not fully sure what to expect from Atlas Fallen's mysterious story yet. The basic premise is that player was a person from the lowest caste in this world's society who was bonded with an ancient gauntlet. That gauntlet has an amnesic spirit named Nyaal living inside it and is now trying to save the world from gods that have left it in desert-filled ruins. The narrative wasn't a big focus in my preview build, though, and the script is full of jargon that probably will only make sense once I play more of the game.
A talking companion bonded to the player's arm and hand is already an unexpected narrative coincidence between Forspoken and Atlas Fallen. But neither game's story is the appeal of either to me: It's their fun traversal and combat that interest me. The few seconds of Atlas Fallen's sand-surfing and fighting in its Gamescom trailer caught my eye last year, and both lived up to the hype.
 
As I worked my way out of a cave at the start of the demo, I learned how to raise large structures out of the ground, surf across large patches of sand, and dash through the air with the help of my gauntlet. After I entered the game's open world, I could play around with all my movement options and found them to be a treat. Open-ended games with large worlds like Atlas Fallen can live or die on how satisfying they are to explore, and making movement fun is a crucial way developers can make traversal enjoyable.
Forspoken was able to capture some of that magic despite its problems, and it looks like Atlas Fallen has too. Of course, that's only one part of the game, as players will run into many enemy Wraiths and need to fight them. That's where Atlas Fallen's engaging combat system comes into play.
Satisfying combat
Deck13 and Focus Entertainment had yet to go into much detail about Atlas Fallen's combat before now, so I was shocked by how unique it was. The core combat revolves around attacking, dodging, and parrying, with weapons shapeshifting as you use them in different ways. It's faster-paced than I expected from a developer who previously made Souslikes, but it's the Ascension system that really caught my attention.
In between fights, players can equip their character with Essence Stones that buff or add abilities, assigning them to one of three tiers in the process. Once they are in a fight, attacking and defeating enemies causes players to gain momentum, which fills a bar at the bottom left of the screen. As this bar fills, or "ascends," players gradually gain those Essence Stone abilities, getting more powerful the more aggressive they are.
Ascending does come with a catch: The more momentum you build, the more damage you take. Players can counteract this by equipping defensive or health-related Essence Stones or using "Shatter" once an Ascension tier is filled to deal lots of damage and crystalize enemies for a short while. To succeed in Atlas Fallen, I needed to fight aggressively, but fights would quickly turn in the enemy's favor if I missed a crucial parry or dodge when I had lots of momentum.

This system gives each fight a push-and-pull feeling not common in action games. Most of the time, games like to make players feel significantly more powerful or weaker than everything around them; Atlas Fallen does both. This unique system hasn't gotten more attention and promotion, but it ultimately is what makes Atlas Fallen stand out the most at the moment.
There's something exciting about how mysterious this game still is to me, as that means there could be lots of surprises when players finally get to try the whole thing in a couple of months. It's shaping up to be an unexpected, almost accidental alternative to Forspoken. If you're still looking for an action-heavy RPG with innovative movement and combat gameplay ideas, Atlas Fallen should be on your radar.
Atlas Fallen will launch for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on May 16.

Read more
Why Cameron Monaghan wanted a ‘darker’ Cal Kestis in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Cal stands beneath the clouds in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor key art.

When we first met Cal Kestis in 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, he was just a young Padawan. A redheaded kid draped in an unflattering poncho, Cal would grow into a full-blown Jedi by the end of the game. It was a classic Star Wars arc in video game form, but one that left players wanting more. It’s great that we got to see that growth, but who could resist the idea of a sequel where his newly awakened powers would be fully unleashed?
Cameron Monaghan, who reprises his role as Cal in next year’s Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, had that same itch. The Gotham and Shameless star was already thinking about where Cal could go next before Fallen Order was even out. Monaghan’s ambitions weren’t focused so much on what kinds of cool lightsaber tricks Cal could pick up between games, but rather how to bring more complexity to one of Star Wars’ newest Jedis.

“In the first game, he had a naivete and a wide-eyed nature that I love about Cal,” Monaghan tells Digital Trends. “But I think tha,t situationally, if you’re in such a desperate place for so many years and fighting and being a soldier and a tool for resistance, at some point, it’s going to start to change the way you see the world around you.”
I sat down with Cameron Monaghan ahead of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s grand reveal at this year’s Game Awards. The actor explained how Cal has changed in the five-year time skip between games and shared fresh details on the sequel’s new companion character, Bode Akuna. Monaghan explained the balancing act that comes with trying to stay focused on a character’s personal journey when working within a much larger, expanded universe -- and he offered some praise for Andor too.
Back before a sequel was greenlit, when you were waiting to see if Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order would get one, what did you want to do with Cal Kestis if you got a second run with him?
When we were making the first game, we had inklings that we would maybe want to do more with it if it was successful. I’ll never forget when we had the wrap party for the first game and Stig Asmussen, the head of Respawn, was like, “What do you want to do?” I had this crazy moment where I was like, “Wow, I really wish I was more prepared for this!’”
But I was able to give a broad strokes answer: I wanted to see Cal a number of years on from the first game and see him mature and have a different outlook. A more complex, darker, more challenged character. In the first game, he had a naivete and a wide-eyed nature that I love about Cal. But I think that, situationally, if you’re in such a desperate place for so many years and fighting and being a soldier and a tool for resistance, at some point, it’s going to start to change the way you see the world around you. I wanted to explore what that looked like for Cal.
He’s been through some stuff, and I think over the last two years, we’ve all been through some stuff, man!

Read more
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has a new demo. Here’s where and when you can play it
A shadowy soldier on a horse.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty received a demo on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, allowing you to try out Team Ninja's challenging new Soulslike title for a limited time between September 16 and September 25.

Announced by publisher Koei Tecmo during Tokyo Game Show, the trial version of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is an in-development look at what Team Ninja has been working on over the past few years. Of course, the team is known for sharing limited-time demos for its games, as titles like Nioh and Nioh 2 both received multiple beta tests leading up to their respective releases. And as with those previous trials, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's demo requires an online connection to access, though it's worth noting that it doesn't require a paid membership to PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold.

Read more