THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

The developers of Lords Of The Fallen sit down with Dashiell Wood, who discovers two is better than one in this dimension-hopping successor 

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Having foolishly abandoned our trusty shield in order to dual-wield two giant pickaxes, a lucky shot from a pesky archer sends us tumbling down a hidden pitfall to our doom. We land on a pile of bloody corpses, face to toothy visage with a hulking boss who dispatches us to the realm of Umbral in a single bite. 

Merely beginning to figure out how to defeat this giant creature seems like an insurmountable challenge, but it’s the kind of enormous obstacle that formed the basis for this pseudo-sequel in the first place. The original game, developed by Deck13, was a breakout hit that helped bring the souls-like subgenre into the mainstream. Now, almost a decade later, its ambitious successor, which boasts the same name but is in the developing hands of Hexworks, seems set to redefine the genre all over again. Getting all the pieces into place has been a boss-level challenge of its own.

MIGHT OR MAGIC

Just like our preparation for another attempt at taking down our monstrous adversary, the first and most important step for Hexworks was to take everything back to the drawing board. “The original game was a well-designed product for its time,” says Saul Gascon, the executive producer of Lords Of The Fallen and studio head at Hexworks. “The gaming market has evolved since then, making it crucial for [us] to modernise the franchise.”