Remember Lords of the Fallen 2, the sequel to CI Games’ take on the Soulslike genre? It’s had its share of development issues, losing original developer Deck13 and gaining a new one in August 2018 with Defiant Studios. Now it seems that CI Games has parted ways with Defiant Studios as well, and in a less than happy fashion.

In a polish press release translated by Eurogamer, CI Games stated, “The termination of the agreement was submitted due to inadequate execution by Defiant [of] a key work stage (milestone no. 11), a so-called vertical slice. The quality of the work was lower than expected by the company, as precisely described in the agreement, despite three calls to improve the quality of this stage of work.” As a result, development on the title will be finished in-house with some outsourcing.

Defiant Studios founder and managing director responded to this, telling Eurogamer, “We categorically disagree with the portrayal of Defiant Studios made by CI Games. The team that was working on CI Games’ project was comprised of exceedingly talented developers whose work we fully stand behind. Our team knows how to build quality games as is evident by their key roles in Just Cause 3, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Far Cry 5, Devil May Cry (DmC), and many other top tier projects. As we intend to abide by our contractual confidentiality obligations, at this time we cannot expand further on this matter.”

Regardless, Lords of the Fallen 2 isn’t releasing soon. That was obvious in August 2018 when it came to light that Defiant Studios was resetting development and looking to use a new engine. CI Games did note at one point that it was “very serious” about the sequel, so perhaps it will push to complete it. Stay tuned for more information on that front in the meantime.

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.