Important questions first: what’s the deal with Lords of the Fallen’s name? The first one, you’ll remember, came out the best part of a decade ago in 2014, but that was also called Lords of the Fallen – and this new one isn’t a remake. Or maybe it is.
Lords of the FallenDeveloper: HexWorksPublisher: CI GamesPlatform: Hands-off, viewed running on PCAvailability: Out 2023 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC (Steam, Epic)
Talking to Cezar Virtosu, HexWorks’ Creative Director, out at GDC, I realised there’s a bit more to this one. You’ll probably know Lords of the Fallen (2023) was, up until just last week’s big tech reveal at the Unreal showcase, originally called Lords of the Fallen, a confusingly close name to the original but at least one that’s marginally different. Now, developer HexWorks has dropped the “The” – but before that there was another name too. The first plan was, Virtosu tells me, to call it Lords of the Fallen: the Dark Crusade, “because this is about the Dark Crusade, you’ll see it in promotional materials – but that felt like we were possibly making DLC.”
So, he explained, then the studio dropped the subtitle and added the “The”, then realised the confusion and, also, that the studio really was “utterly rebooting it – this is Unreal [Engine] 5, none of the previous tech, none of the previous paradigms, it could be Lords of the Fallen. It sounds meandering, but it’s been a trip to arrive here!”
That’s reinforced by much of our conversation, in fact. Lords of the Fallen (2023) has been in full-time production for around three years – starting right as the pandemic hit, with predictably big challenges coming with that – and in that time it’s also undergone a series of revisions. That’s because this time, its development is taking place in tandem with regular bouts of community feedback – in part as a response to the lukewarm reception to the 2014 game, which still sits at the dreaded “Mixed” user reviews average on Steam today.