As part of a recent Lords of the Fallen event organized by publisher CI Games, Wccftech was invited to go hands-on with the upcoming Soulslike title; you may check out the preview article here.

　　After the session was over, we had the chance to speak with Creative Director Cezar Virtosu and Executive Producer (as well as Head of Studio of developer Hexworks) Saul Gascon to discuss many aspects of Lords of the Fallen. As a reminder, the game will be released on October 13th for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.

　　There's been a couple of studios that have worked on a new Lords of the Fallen game before Hexworks. How much of the original framework from the prior studios carried forth into what Hexworks is building on?

　　Saul Gascon: I think we took the foundations from work done by Deck13 on the original Lords of the Fallen. We took that, and we went through all the feedback from players, right through Reddit and the Steam community, as well as from reviewers of printed magazines, online magazines, and also YouTube reviews and streamers. We kind of made a big kill list of what people liked and what people did not like, the dos and don'ts, right? And then, from there, we started from scratch, basically.

　　Cezar Virtosu: Was your question aimed at the other Lords of the Fallen 2 iterations that were announced previously?

　　Yeah.

　　Saul Galscon: We started from scratch. We were keen to jump on the Unreal Engine. Anyway, you need to know that Deck13 worked on the original project, right? But it was directed by CI Games, which is the mother company. So, we have all the information, but we started from a blank slate.

　　Is the Dark Crusade still part of the story here, or have you guys abandoned that to go create something completely different with this Lord of the Fallen?

　　Cezar Virtosu: The Dark Crusade concept came from our own desire and take on the story. As Saul said, in terms of characters and story events, we took everything that Deck13 did. We just tweaked a couple of things here and there, and then we made it work.

　　We put it in the game even, adding some lines that they wrote as a description of an item. We made them actual NPCs in the world, and we wrapped up the story that they had conceived and figured out what happens 1000 years later.

　　We expanded on those concepts, including the Orian Church and its war against Adyr, the god that ruled humanity. Now there's a new god that rules humanity; what happens and what is with these Umbral horror times? We have grown that story 1000 years later, adding much more to it to the point where it felt like its own creature. People coming in expecting to play more Lords of the Fallen instead of the high fantasy, somewhat medieval game would find this cosmic horror, dark fantasy, more realistic experience.

　　Saul Galscon: In terms of the mythos, you have the Hallowed Sentinels, which are the Orian followers. They come from the first game's mythos. What we did in our Lords of the Fallen is to establish that those guys failed their purpose.

　　They were supposed not to allow Adyr to come back. But they failed. Adyr is coming back, and that's where the Dark Crusaders come in. The Orian Church send their medieval James Bonds, which is the Dark Crusaders, who can even use heretical means that would be considered capital sins for everyone. They're the only ones who have the red glove that allows them to do whatever they need to accomplish Orian's will. In this case, it's stopping Adyr's return.

　　They can use the Umbral lamp, which is completely forsaken and forbidden even to talk about, but these guys can use it.

　　Cezar Virtosu: One of them decided to use the lamp. If their bosses, like the Orian Church's version of the Vatican, found out what he's doing, they wouldn't be too happy. Anyway, this is pretty much our setup.

　　Going back on the cosmic horror that you just mentioned. Looking back at From Software's Bloodborne, with that game, as you acquired insight and you accumulated that, you got to see a few more of the layers of the world peel back, revealing the full extent of the cosmic horror influence and a lot of those creatures and horrors. I was curious if the radiance stack does something similar, because I'm already noticing that as you increase that you see more of the tooltips on the items and get more insight into the world. Does increasing your radiance have an impact on what you see within the world and environments as well?

　　Cezar Virtosu: Unfortunately, no. This is a bit too far. We would have loved to take things as far as that. But unfortunately, increasing your stat only provides scholarly insight into the items and tools. But if you dig into Umbral enough, you will access the heart of it. You will understand its nature because when you raise your lamp, you see that world of shadow and corruption made manifest and all the eyes looking at you and the eye that looks into the UI. We want the players to wonder: 'What is this? This can't be limbo. It's too organic. What is this manifestation? Is this something real, or is it a parallel universe? What happens with the souls? Why are people dying and some of them get trapped here? Why am I doing that?'

　　So in the bowels of Lords of the Fallen, in the deepest recesses, if you follow a quest, you will get to the heart of it all, stare into the abyss, and realize that Umbral is not what you thought it would be.

　　Intriguing. You guys have the seamless online co-op in Lords of the Fallen. How does that play out? Say the main player dies and is locked into Umbral; how does that affect the other player they're cooperating with?

　　Saul Galscon: The host always drives which realm you are in. We've tried a lot of iterations and the clearest method for all players based on our playtest was to set it up this way. If you and I are playing together and you die, you being the host, then we will both be transported to Umbral.

　　When we're in Axiom, I can use my Umbral lamp and abilities, but I can never bring us both to Umbral. This applies to PvP and can actually lead to funny moments. There is a big platform in Umbral where if you see the PvP player coming to you and he's on the platform, you can touch one of the effigies and he'll fall into the abyss.

　　The host always directs the realm you are in. On the other hand, when the client dies, he goes into a spectator mode. You are not disconnected from the game or waiting in limbo but can actually see what's happening. The host can touch your body to get you back. It has a cost in time. The host cannot just tap and keep running, he needs to spend some time resuscitating the other player.

　　Cezar Virtosu: Let me add something. When you play Lords of the Fallen in co-op, the host interacts with the NPCs, and the guest listens. If the NPC is a vendor, both of the players can interact with vendors. But the guest cannot interact with an NPC to select quest answers during dialogues.

　　We moved away from that design because we didn't want the guest to advance the host's world of the host. When the guest comes back to his own world, it did not progress. Of course, he will keep any items obtained.

　　I was about to ask if the key items, say any of the Sanguinar's upgrades, can be carried into your own game after you've unlocked them as a guest.

　　Cezar Virtosu: Yes, but if they're unique items, like the Sanguinar's upgrades, you can't get them both from your world and a friend's world. You won't see those specific key items if you already got them, but everything you see, you can pick up.

　　With PvP, if you're both in the Axiom realm, does the invading player also have two lives?

　　Saul Galscon: No, they only have one. They're annoying enough that way! The host has two lives, so if you get invaded in Axiom, you have an advantage because the invader needs to kill you twice. We've seen some players lurking and waiting for the host to die, and you know how it is. The invaders will always have the upper hand by virtue of hiding.

　　As far as the freedom for the player goes, there was a conversation about the game being semi-linear. We're already seeing hooks that one of the goals that we're seeing so far is acquiring the five beacons. Do players have the freedom to go with whichever of the five they want to start with?

　　Cezar Virtosu: No, not entirely. But yes, they can rush. Lords of the Fallen is semi-linear, but certain areas are effectively behind a paywall, which means if you got enough resources, you could skip and go directly to the horror area. It's really up to you.

　　Saul Galscon: If you start a game, you get to this bridge where a vendor sells you one of the keys to access one of the endgame levels. You can buy it, though it's a bit expensive when you start, but you can grind for some time, buy it and yes, access that endgame level.

　　But we pave a path that is the canon one. But then you can play a bit with it and access different places. Also, when you play, you find areas that are a bit harder and can either avoid them or attempt to go on anyway. We expect most players to follow the canon path, but we also anticipate more expert users or even speedrunners to bend the rules and take those side paths.

　　Will there be different endings?

　　Cezar Virtosu: Yes, we have three endings. Two of them are behind very arcane quests, and they all come with the new classes unlocked and new abilities.

　　Will there be a new game plus mode where if you finish the game with one ending, you can start again retaining the power of character and be able to work towards the other two endings.

　　Saul Galscon: Yes. Every time you do an NG plus run, the world forgets about your previous choices, right? So you start fresh and you can make different decisions on your second or third playthrough. It is important to remark that on NG Plus, the Vestige system is different. In the original design, we only had one Vestige which is in the sky bridge, and everything else was your own crafted vestiges.

　　In the regular game, you have more Vestiges to help you out, but on NG Plus, you will not have them. It'll be just that one, so it's kind of the original vision. On top of this, there are other changes to the core gameplay that move the game more toward the original vision. It's more hardcore. Playing NG Plus allows you to make different choices, but the way you approach the game is also different.

　　Cezar Virtosu: Doing quests and interacting with the NPC and the evil entities that will ask you to do things will put you on a collision course with a lot of the content and quests. So if you wanna achieve different endings and see more of the NPCs' journeys, you will need several playthroughs, also to unlock the three unique classes that we have, which have their own loadout, gear, unique items, and spells.

　　When you unlock one of those classes, can you start a new game immediately as one of those new classes?

　　Cezar Virtosu: Yes.

　　Are there any items or upgrades that are unique to New Game Plus?

　　Cezar Virtosu: That's gear that is unique to that particular class, and it's very good gear. It's fine-looking equipment because those classes are powerful, even if you start from zero.

　　If you start just a regular new game, you still have that class unlocked by virtue of having done that quest or finished that ending. Those classes are more powerful, for sure, and that gear is unobtainable otherwise.

　　The other thing I want to touch on is your usage of Unreal Engine 5. You've also been featured on Epic's State of Unreal stream. Can you talk about the technical side of Lords of the Fallen?

　　Saul Galscon: We support FSR. We support basically everything that you could expect in that regard. Working with Unreal Engine 5 has been a pleasure. Epic is super supportive, they're great. I mean, they're the best in the world, from our point of view.

　　Cezar Virtosu: They've been very supportive because we were one of the first triple-A studios to adopt it right from the beginning.

　　Saul Galscon: When we started the project, Unreal Engine 5 was not available back then. But we always had a branch with whatever UE5 pre-launch builds were available. We always made sure that the game was compatible, right?

　　Whenever it was production ready, we just swapped the whole thing to UE5. The most powerful and, let's say, game-changing technology was Lumen because it allowed us to forego lightmaps, the old-school way to light environments. Whenever we came back to the designers or the artists and asked 'Hey, can you move that window just a bit to the right, so the light focuses on this corner? They would be like, 'Yes, sir!'  They would move it, then click render with the towers, and then maybe we went, 'Oh, sorry, I meant three meters, not two'.

　　With Lumen, all this process is now in real-time, so it was the most impactful UE5 feature for us. Nanite is also great because you get a bump of quality everywhere. On top of those two, there are other elements, like the Chaos physics, which really helps with all the clothes, and a lot of improvements on animation pipelines that allowed us to make movement more fluid for both enemies and player characters. UE5 is a huge leap in terms of tech, and it's gonna get even better.

　　Can you share the target resolution and frame rate set for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X versions?

　　Saul Galscon: On both consoles, we offer performance and quality modes. The performance mode goes at 60 frames per second and 1080p resolution upscaled, which is kind of the standard in the industry. The quality mode is 2K upscaled at 30 FPS. But even if you play at 60, Lords of the Fallen looks really good.

　　Thank you for your time.