After 9 years, HexWorks is creating Lords of the Fallen, a sequel/reboot to the 2014 title of the same name. The original was one of the earliest games that attempted to put its own spin on the action RPG genre. After nearly a decade of innovation and mainstream success, the latest genre entry is attempting to capitalize on these lessons and invite newcomers to yet another grand adventure.
I was able to speak with Cezar Virtosu, the Creative Director at HexWorks, and Saul Gascon, Head of Studio and Executive Producer for Lords of the Fallen, about how they create beautiful new environments, what they needed to change from the original game, and why the parrying feels so good.
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The following Lords of the Fallen interview is lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
BUT WHY THO: My first question is, what is it about the original Lords of the Fallen that made it worth revisiting?
SAUL GASCON: Basically, the original [Lords of the Fallen] left a set of solid foundations, right? In the universe, some of the NPCs. But it also had its issues in terms of the combat pacing. We started as a sequel, to be very honest with you, and then we said “Ok how do we do a sequel, what do we need to improve?” So we jumped down into all the feedback from press, players everywhere. All the reviews, everything. Then we sort of came up with a kill list: faster combat was one of them, and the possibility to create different characters, not just playing with one set.
We took all of those and said, “Ok, how can we build from the foundations of the first to fix all this — improvements that people were asking for.” At the end, we ended up changing so many things in the core that that’s why we called it a reboot. Because we changed the graphics, we changed the combat pacing. So now you can be a slow f*** as well, you can go with big armor, huge weapons. But it’s your choice now, you can choose to either be very fast, very quick, two knives, or super slow with a big hammer. Whatever you want.
BUT WHY THO: Are there any aspects of the original Lords of the Fallen that you knew had to be included in this game, and were there any that you wanted to avoid?
CEZAR VIRTOSU: Yeah, well, everything. We took the first game in its entirety, including certain armors and beliefs. Things that they mentioned on paper, we made them real. They mentioned the heroes of yore, the Judges who smote Adyr, and boom, we made them real. We took everything, but expanded tenfold, because once we made their mythos playable and real, we opened the Pandora’s box. We wanted to create the worlds of the Fallen. So we were incredibly faithful, and people who played the first game and enjoyed the story and the characters will eat well in Lords of the Fallen. It’s not an entirely different game.
SAUL GASCON: And there are a couple of surprises that we’re not going to spoil but there are some NPCs that are actually related, very closely, to the first game.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: Armor, weapons, factions.
SAUL GASCON: And in terms of factions, in this one we have three main factions. The Radiants, followers of Orius which is mentioned in some lore pieces of the first game. So we build on that, like Cezar said, made it real, expanded it, show it to you. And there’s the third faction, Umbral, which have their own god as well. More like Cthullu.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: That’s a dark secret that people, if they dig deep enough in [Lords of the Fallen], they will discover. What is the nature of Umbral? Surely it can’t just be a spooky place. There must be something.
SAUL GASCON: And you have cameos from the first game as well. Some are the same characters that just appear again. How they can survive one thousand years, well you’ll see when you play. And then as well, the clerics, for instance, the three Judges that defeated Adyr in the first place.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: On an armor in the first game it was said that the sons of Medusa, they turn to stone. Now we have a character from those lands, she has a name, you find her petrified. So that’s how we take the lore and went, “Okay let’s play this, let’s stop talking about it. Let’s play, let’s see how it looks.”
SAUL GASCON: We have a very good foundation, we took it, respect it, and expand it.
BUT WHY THO: Soulslikes are a genre that many players gravitate towards because a key part of these games is growing stronger and taking down enemies and bosses that initially seem impossible. As players grow stronger in their single-player journey in Lords of the Fallen, how do you balance that growth when they jump into multiplayer, both co-operative and PvP?
How do you go from an unstoppable godkiller to someone who dies because they got parried a few times in a row?
SAUL GASCON: For that, we developed several systems, so when you play in co-op we always leverage the level of players. So, for instance, if I were joining you and I’m like “endgame” like I’m level 90 and you’re level 20, my character’s going to be set at level 20 in terms of damage output, etc. This way I don’t ruin your game, I don’t come in and one hit. “Hey look how fun this is!” So that’s one thing, and for PvP we do the same. Usually the invaders always find the ways to f*** around with people. So we have that system where we come in, check that damage output and leverage it to yours. So that even if they try to find an exploit we leverage it down, so it’s always a fair fight and it’s just about skill.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: For the bosses themselves, they’re 100 percent skill soft gates, but we left weaknesses you can spot with the lamp — the reddish areas, where they take a lot of damage. And some of them have unique mechanics, a lot of them are very weak to parry. Some of them you can deplete the posture of a limb that opens them up for a critical hit that is devastating. So you can brute force. But if you’re struggling with a boss, it’s worth looking in Umbral. “Is there a parasite that gives this boss poison attacks?” Yes! You Luigi’s Mansion suck the parasite up, no more poison attacks! So we give the players tools to mitigate danger, but this plays into our desired gameplay paradigm, that we have this detective work.
SAUL GASCON: You always have the resort of going back to previous areas, grind your level up, right? And the RPG mechanics are very important to us, so every boss has weaknesses to specific, lets say, poison or radiant magic. So even if you’re not a magic user, or a poison user, you can always find or buy from vendors something that boosts your weapon with radiant damage. So you find an enemy, “Aha! He’s weak to radiance, but I’m not a magician.” I can still put radiant oil on my sword and now I see the health going down faster.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: But they’re tough. They’re not pushovers, or at least we hope they’re not.
SAUL GASCON: Our goal was to give people a lot of tools or ways to approach the challenges we put on. But there’s always going to be an optimal one like “To beat this boss use this oil and call this helper.”
BUT WHY THO: Another trademark of the genre is a parry system, and I like how you’ve implemented your own in Lords of the Fallen, especially how you can even parry with a spear. How did you build up that system? And how even after wearing down their posture you still need to break it with a special attack how did you come up with that?
CEZAR VIRTOSU: Well we’re all players, and we saw how in the first game the parry system was not overly used and people didn’t get engaged with it. Very early on we said, “How can we it make more fluid, more ebb and flow, not press a button and oh, high reward.” So we came up with this setup where it’s a last moment block, so even if you fail the timing, there’s a chance you can still block. This led to the whole posture system, and we liked it. It allows you to get these near-miss and near-parries and you feel like a god of the sword.
SAUL GASCON: That’s why we also added the withering on your health when you only block. So if you miss, you still get a bit penalized, like “Mmmm, bad boy, you should parry better.” But we don’t just do a black or white, parry or death.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: You can get your HP back, so you can [Cezar mimics blocking flames] okay half my HP is withered, but I can get it back.
SAUL GASCON: And the cool thing is, with this system, that if you are a parry type of player, playing fast games like Bloodborne, you can use two swords and just parry, parry, parry. But if you’re more of a tank player, big armor, a big shield, huge hammer, you can still do it. You’ll get hit, and your health withers, but deliver one massive blow, you recover it all at once. So this was probably one of the things from the beginning we knew we wanted, but we iterated a lot to tweak it so it supports all playstyles. You can play Lords of the Fallen with full-parry or you can play full turtling, and we support both.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: It’s worth mentioning, in our game, because of the wither mechanic and how easy it is, the 100 percent protection shields are not predominant like in other games. We want to engage you with blocking and getting [your] stuff back.
BUT WHY THO: There are nine classes you can start as, how do you keep them fun and viable?
SAUL GASCON: It’s how you build all the RPG systems and mechanics, and the combat mechanics. Whenever we have a new feature, like ranged combat or parrying and blocking, we’re always keeping in mind the different playstyles we want to support. So the nine classes are a rough representation of the different playstyles. Then after that, you can unlock new classes depending on the ending that you do, but those are more deep into one play style. Like one is a full Rhogar Warlord, so you have a big mace and fire everywhere. Another one is a Radiant one, so you have protection and ranged combat. Another is an Umbral Assassin, let’s say. So it’s not easy, but every time you add a class, you need to have all the systems supporting that class.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: And behind us is the thematics and the fantasies, the tropes. You’re the knight, I’m the assassin, I’m the killer, the hunter. So we have to cater to these fantasies as well, and basically the loadout writes itself.
BUT WHY THO: How do you balance the gameplay for newcomers to the genre without losing the difficulties that veterans are looking for?
CEZAR VIRTOSU: Well this is the big question. We had an incredibly challenging game when we started nearly 4 years ago. The market was not as broad, so we were still making a niche game, and we wanted to over deliver for a niche audience. We learned the sins of the past, but then again, Elden Ring came in and opened the audience. So now the question is, how do we bring these people in? Several ways, but one of the biggest for us was onboarding. Make a lengthy tutorial, have a playground to play in, explain the mechanics relentlessly, have the players express them, and then let them out into the world. Because the moment the players step outside the hub, the real game begins.
SAUL GASCON: In that regard, it’s never easy. We focused a lot on playtesting. Something that’s very important for us, the way that we work, is that internally we have a group of directors and we work in strike teams. We’ll have a team for player combat, another for bosses. They work in sprints, and deliver prototypes or more polished things, depending on the stage. Then we check with the directors, is this a good direction or not, but also, “who watches the watchers?” right, like Watchmen, so “Who watches the directors?”
It’s players. So every month we did — we still do it — playtests with players, or mock reviewers, etc. External people with no attachment to us so they don’t care about us, they’re not polluted by our day-to-day. They’re not biased. That helps us a lot, because we saw a lot of things where, “Oh s***, we thought this was easy,” but new players to the genre don’t understand. Okay so let’s explain it, is it enough in the tutorial, yes or no? We’ve worked a lot on some of the features we’ve modified for people to understand. Like if you want one key example, in Lords of the Fallen you can create your own bonfires, the vestiges. Our original intent was to only have one ancient vestige in the whole game, in the hub. That’s it.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: One for free.
SAUL GASCON: And then everything else you had to build up. To us, it was amazing! So we did that and we saw veteran players were, “Oh yeah!” Super happy. But then we saw newer players to the genre, they were like “What the f*** is this?” And we were like “Oh s***, we went too far.” So now in the new game we have a lot of vestiges, but still, it’s better if you use vestige seedlings, you can put it in front of a boss room or key locations. So your first playthrough is more catered for new players, but on New Game+ this is where the real Lords of the Fallen starts and there is only one vestige.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: So we’re back at the initial plan. The New Game+ is going to be biblical.
SAUL GASCON: So if you already know the levels, if you’re on New Game+ you’re going to have a better time knowing where to place the vestige. But every old or ancient vestige is gone, so it’s only one in the hub. So that’s kind of our original vision.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: So we made concessions because we’re hardcore like that.
BUT WHY THO: My last question is, soulslikes are known for their gorgeous visuals, whether it’s in environments, bosses and enemies, or even the weapons, armor and magic spells players can use. How do you tie that to gameplay design? What comes first, the concept art or the gameplay?
SAUL GASCON: They’re super intertwined.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: We are big fans of immersion and narrative. For us, everything needs to make sense. So once you have all these concepts in carbonite and these factions have this ‘visual language,’ as we call them, the designs write themselves. So when the art director comes in, he knows the nature of the umbral. Everything makes sense. So it’s the same with the factions, with the Rhogar, we knew them as beasts. We’re in very privileged positions, we just look at tremendous art, and for us it’s very easy to say, “This is the actual good design, and these are just variations.”
SAUL GASCON: The advantage of having a director team is that everything kind of makes sense together. We didn’t start from one place or another, we started everything at the same time. From gameplay to visuals we built them in parallel tracks, but they’re always intertwined. Like when a designer comes up with an enemy design, the art director will say “Oh wait a second, this type of attack is more for this faction.”
Immersion is the most important thing for us. That’s why in this world nobody cares about you, and this is a way to give you immersion. Nobody says to you, “Hey come sit here. You are the hero, we all love you.” You don’t have that here, nobody cares. You can save the world, or doom it, up to you. You can choose any of the endings that you want, and it’ll depend on which NPCs you align with. Like if you align with somebody [from the] Rhogar, you’ll get a Rhogar ending. If you’re aligning with the Umbral guys, you’ll get an Umbral ending. Or you can do the canon ending, which is following the guy in the intro.
CEZAR VIRTOSU: One big advantage of having all this lore, and all these stories of these characters written, or otherwise present before any visuals come in, is that we can incorporate in the visuals various background information. One random example, we have a gravedigger and he has pockmarks on his face. That’s because he was in an iron maiden, because he used to be a knight in the order, and he was tortured savagely, and he lost his mind.
He’ll never say, “I used to be this guy,” but it’s in his body, his posture. And a lot of the NPCs, the visual language and the clothing designs will tell you secrets that they themselves won’t admit. And suddenly, when you hear the dialogue, everything clicks into place. So during our work, early on, we’re agreeing, shaking hands, “This is what we want. This character is this archetype, and [so forth]. Then art comes in. They have so many tools, so many things to work with, because the story makes the character, not the other way around.
For the full interview with more in-depth answers around the world of Lords of the Fallen, hit play on the audio player below.
Lords of the Fallen releases October 13, 2023 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.
