Lords of the Fallen Previews
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The Penny Arcade Report was impressed, though the previews is a bit light on the concrete details:
(Germans still like all the epic material where a guy has a club in his hand and runs through forests,) said Creative Director Jan Klose of Deck 13. (Maybe Polish people as well. I think for the region, stories are really big and storytelling is really big in this part of the world. And Dark fantasy is a cool way of telling stories, because they get more to the heart than some lighthearted, shiny-mailed knight running around without a care.) You can hear the disdain in his voice when he talks about traditional fantasy fare.
Every region of the world is different, and has different tastes and inclinations. He gave adventure games as an example. They're still a viable business in Germany, but less so in North America. (It's a cultural thing that people want to have these stories, and in Lords of the Fallen we don't want to tell the player a story, we want them to explore it.)
That's another very European style of game making. More than once this week at E3 I've heard from a developer that when you make a game for Americans, you generally need to tell them what to do every step of the way, or they get frustrated and annoyed. Tomasz Gop said that Eastern European players want you to leave the game obscure and explorable.
(They appreciate when you do that,) he said. (There's a strong demand from people to find out things on their own. So that's why we want to do this type of game, and we hope that we can be successful with it.)
Digital Trends:
Old school and new. Combat is typically slow and methodical, with the big Rhogar (boss baddie Lords) capable of downing the hero in one swipe. Gop openly compared his game to Dark Souls, which engages in the same environmental and combat play, but also cites old one-on-one fighting game Tekken as an inspiration. Every death, he says, and every conflict should feel fun and like something the player earned by learning how to play steadily.
Choices+. The characters you create are broken into three classes: the hammer-wielding cleric, the speedy rogue, and the tank warrior. You're not locked into these roles once you start playing, since you can change up provided you find a full set of each class' armor and weaponry. There are also three skill trees for leveling up your character as they fight and earn experience: intelligence, vitality, and endurance. It's basic stuff, but it also accommodates different styles of play. If you like to be agile or a bruiser, it's easy to change that up on the fly.
GameRevolution:
This might be an action RPG, but don't think you can just charge into battle and spam abilities. You'll quickly be punished for your foolish actions. The game has vicious foes who would like nothing less than to chop you in half. You'd be wise to learn enemy habits and dodge their attempts to murder you.
Most combat sequences will be between yourself and fewer than four foes. It's intimate and challenging with blows received putting a large dent in your health pool. It's difficult not to draw a correlation with Dark Souls, a game that follows some of the same core principles. However, Lords of the Fallen isn't a game that emphasizes constant trial and error. Instead, it fills up time with a story.
GamrReview:
The game's primary focus is evidently combat, with a heavy dose of strategy used to determine the when and how of battles. For example, with the cleric and his massive war hammer you have to time your attacks perfectly to even hope of landing a hit, while with the rogue you will have quicker strikes at your disposal. The game will also let you switch classes on the fly without much interruption to the flow of the game.
Armor will also play an important role in the game's progress as you will find pieces of equipment in chests and through specific actions. The catch is these armor pieces are not only specific to your class but all the classes, so if you find a cool dagger you'd like to use you may consider switching over to rogue for a bit to try it out. Each class also has their own special move based on action points. Once you have enough you can unleash your special move to turn the tide of combat.
Den of Geek:
City Interactive's lead developer Tomasz Gop claimed that Lords of the Fallen will be the most challenging of the next gen RPGs, and boasts that the game is more centered on combat and action than anything else. While I didn't see anything out of the ordinary as far as difficulty is concerned, the action within the game looks incredibly fun. You can play as three different classes: a Warrior, Rogue or Cleric. Each type of character plays as you would imagine: the warrior uses heavy armor and is strong, the Rogue is quick and uses mostly daggers, and the Cleric uses lighter armor but uses a heavy hammer that has to be timed well to be most effective. Each type of character has their own action, as well. A Cleric has the Dogma skill which allows him to spawn a clone of himself to fight alongside him. The Warrior had a power skill, and the Rogue had Shadow, which allows him to disappear to stealthily kill his foe in a powerful way.
Lords of the Fallen won't only focus on the action, though, as CI games promises there will be plenty of background lore for the medieval fantasy RPG. The story that we were given is that the game takes place 8000 years ago during a time when there's a fight against god and his army. In fact, if you look closely at the first image we received from Lords of the Fallen, you'll notice that what appears to be mountains is actually the hand of that fallen god. As you traverse through the world, there is more lore scattered about in different forms. We saw the protagonist, Harkyn, pick up a couple notes that were randomly spawned in the world, which contained lore. Tomasz Gop stated that finding lore is a major factor into the game's replayability and branching off from the main storyline. In fact, Gop teased that the game will be heavy on secrets and discovering, and re-exploration will be important to find hidden items that weren't there the first time.
Twinfinite:
There are a number of features that Lords of the Fallen has which sets it apart. Equipment and weapons are completely customizeable and there are secrets hidden throughout the game world that can be unlocked for amazing upgrades. The demo had three starting character types (Rogue, Warrior, Cleric) but you have the ability to customize it however you'd like as you progress. Characters can also learn Action Skills which can help you by increasing your power, distracting enemies, or rendering you invisible for a short time.
