There are times in video game development when a developer needs to come to terms that things aren’t going the way they wanted, and thus they need a new direction, or to completely start over. Lords Of The Fallen 2 was meant to be the sequel to the popular title that many likened to Dark Souls, but had its own twists. It had its own style, and thus a sequel was approved. Years since that decision, and the teams behind the game are now fully starting over with it.
Mainly, developer CI Games is saying that Defiant Games is going to take the game in new directions, and a restart is paramount to that:
“We finally decided to move forward with Defiant because we were impressed with their game concept, production expertise, and the pedigree of their developers,” said Marek Tymiński, the head of CI Games, in a prepared statement. “Defiant is made up of some the industry’s most talented creators, and we are thrilled to have them create the sequel to LotF. We look forward to bringing their next big game to the global market on consoles and PC.”
The Managing Director of Defiant expressed why it truly is a “fresh start”:
“It’s a new engine—Unreal 4—and a new team. A team which does not have a long and illustrious background in action RPG development, but we actually see it as a strength.”
They also noted why this is a good challenge for them:
“It’s like, ‘From Software rules the roost in this particular area of the badlands so abandon all hope ye who enter here.’ And those are exactly the sorts of projects we love. We have a very senior team and what senior people want is to be challenged. The higher the challenge technically and creatively, the more interested we get. When you’ve built a 400-square-mile game like Just Cause 3 with a lot of new tech, and taking a lot of tech risks, every mountain after that doesn’t seem so insurmountable. For us, having reached that peak, and looking out over the landscape, it’s like, ‘Alright what’s the next big challenge for us?’
It’ll be interesting to see how well Lords Of The Fallen 2 prospers from this do over.
