st229

GAMING FEATURE

visit jbhifi.com.au/stack

LORDS OF THE FALLEN 101 Saul shared some hot tips for those heading out on a Lords of the Fallen journey… 1. Observe your environment When you’re moving around Mournstead, always make sure you’re looking around, as there are probably going to be all sorts of surprises. 2. Find a weapon that suits your playstyle When you do and you’re next in a safe place, try it out. We’ve lots of weapons for you to come across and claim as your own, whether that’s through melee and ranged weapons, or even magic. 3. Be tactical in your combat! When you’re in combat, it’s important to always be aware of where you set your foot, and make sure to use the tools you prefer. Depending on your playstyle, you can use a shield to block hits, or you can time your blocks and parry attacks. After several parries, enemies fall to the ground, enabling you to do a lot of damage. You can also dash around your enemy, and block and parry with any weapon, though the damage caused on you will be higher! 4. Make use of items! You have a wide toolset to play, especially ranged items: grenades, smoke grenades, fire grenades, javelins. There are also bows and crossbows with all types of ammo like poisonous arrows, explosive arrows, etc. And, of course, we have magic, three schools of magic in fact. All of the classes in the game have ranged options available to them, which opens up a lot of options for players. 5. Last but not least, Lords of the Fallen is an RPG. We have lot of RPG elements available to customise your character throughout the game to overcome the incredible obstacles along the way.

Since 2014’s Lords of the Fallen , the ‘Soulslike’ genre of games has blossomed greatly, and now it’s time for a whole new beginning.We found out more about the 2023 model from the game’s executive producer at Hexworks, Saul Gascon, who’s also the studio head. Words Amy Flower FALLEN FOR YOU!

with their own strengths and weaknesses. Lords of the Fallen has a really deep RPG system, so the great thing is players can take the base stats and abilities of a character class and really forge their own unique dark crusader as the adventure develops.

What prompted the decision to revisit the title in 2023? After the success of the original game, there was – as you’d expect – a desire to explore and expand it into a series. It took some time to develop what that would look like, but this ultimately led to the creation of Hexworks in 2019 as a new internal studio for CI Games and a new direction for what the IP could look like a decade on from the first game. How much of what was learned from the original has carried on to Lords of the Fallen 2023? We approached the original 2014 title with a great sense of reverence. The first game was very much a product of its time – the action RPG genre was quite different back then, so in our effort to modernise the IP we gathered and compiled a lot of community feedback. After looking through it, we knew there were several things that were needed to achieve the modernisation we were looking for: We’d have to increase the speed of melee combat, allow players to create their own avatar, add multiplayer, and greatly expand on the RPG gameplay (mainly magic). This, of course, came on top of our own ambitions and desires on how best to expand on the ideas the 2014 title established. Can you please tell us more about the various playable characters’ abilities? We have nine starting character classes, each

• Lords of the Fallen is out now!

What are the key combat features? Combat is one area of the game that we identified very early on in pre-production that needed to be modernised. In addition to fast melee combat, players can utilise an arsenal of ranged weapons, as well as master three schools of magic. There’s a real dynamism to combat in the game, which we hope will challenge players as they develop their skills throughout the campaign. How does the game’s two-world, living/dead system work? Action-RPGs are renowned for the challenge they give players - there are no second chances. We saw that as an opportunity to tweak the expectations of players of the genre and potentially open it up to a wider pool of gamers who are put off by that established trait. I’m not saying Lords of the Fallen is easy – it’s a significant challenge that will test action-RPG players. However, the introduction of a second chance, which sees defeated players rise again in Umbral and have an opportunity to take down their vanquisher, provides a fresh take that we

hope will mean more players will try out the game.

What do you most hope that players gain from their time with Lords of the Fallen ? What we really hope is that players get immersed in our game world so much that they forget how much time has passed!

58 NOVEMBER 2023

jbhifi.com.au