Lords of the Fallen 2 is “A Fresh Start” – Defiant Studios

Though Lords of the Fallen wasn’t the best received Souls-like title out there, CI Games and Deck 13 Interactive managed to carve out a decent clone that got some attention. However, with Lords of the Fallen 2, a new studio has been brought in to offer “a fresh start” to the series. That means any work previously done by Deck 13 will be scrapped.

Eurogamer spoke to Defiant Studios managing director David Grijns, who noted, “It’s really a reset, it’s 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.”

Lords of the Fallen 2 is still very much a Souls-like game that looks to From Software’s Dark Souls for immediate inspiration. As a former general manager/executive producer for the Just Cause franchise, Grijns says the development team doesn’t “have a long and illustrious background in action RPG development, but we actually see it as a strength.”

Defiant also wants to make its own identity in the genre, standing out from From Software’s efforts. “It’s an area of the games industry which is now considered untouchable in some degree,” Grijns said. “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. From taking inspiration from a lot of these games, we were able to come up with a new concept that tried to push a few of those categories a little further along.”

While Defiant’s approach to the sequel is admirable, Lords of the Fallen wasn’t the first attempt by Deck 13 to create a Souls-like title. It also developed The Surge, which offers a sci-fi twist on Souls action, and which will also see a sequel sometime next year. As for Lords of the Fallen 2, there’s no word on when exactly it will be coming.