Lords of the Fallen E3 Previews
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E3 coverage of City Interactive and Deck13's action RPG Lords of the Fallen continues to be brought to our attention, so I thought I'd round up another list of previews for your to read through on this Sunday evening.
ActionTrip:
Each prisoner has a brand on his or her face to show just how horrific their crimes were before their capture. Our hero has a massive brand on his face, but the demo didn't show enough to dive into his background. According to one of the game's developers, his back story is one that will be explored throughout gameplay, so he did not want to give any additional information other than to say he is a bad, bad man.
Like Darksiders, the game is a bit of heavy-hitting hack-and-slash with some magic abilities mixed in. Since every enemy is a hulking mass of murder, you can't just run in swinging your own giant sword and expect to live longer than three steps. I know, because I tried. Every room must be entered with caution, every enemy observed and noted where they are hiding, what they are wielding, and how much armor they are wearing. And even then, I can almost guarantee you that you won't see that one little guy hiding underneath the stairs, who makes so much noise, two brutes with insanely large shields will come running to make you the jelly in their shield sandwich.
The game features three main classes: cleric, warrior, and rogue. These classes all have their own magical strengths, but as far as weapons and armor are concerned, they can all equip whatever they get their hands on. That's a bold direction to go in, because on the one hand it eliminates the desire for experimentation with each of the characters classes. On the other hand, though, it also means that you won't be getting frustrated because you found a weapon (or series of weapons) that are completely useless to you.
Big, bulky, monstrous enemies lurk within the dreary confines of the game's many decaying structures. As previously mentioned, combat plays out a lot like in the Dark Souls games. You have to pick your spots, memorize enemies' attack patterns, and unleash some devastating blows when a very narrow window of opportunity presents itself. Combat is tough, no doubt, but I'm not certain if Lords of the Fallen is as difficult as Dark Souls. Perhaps it was just the demo I was playing, but Dark Souls 2 definitely seems to be more punishing.
We sent one of our writers who has more than 400 hours of combined "Dark Souls" and "Dark Souls 2" experience on Xbox 360 to play a hands-on demo of "Lords of the Fallen" at CI Games' E3 booth, and despite having similar control schemes, said writer definitely agreed that this game is even more wonderfully challenging than those two. The controls are very responsive, but the enemies are unforgiving. The level we played was claustrophobic and tight, with timing and range of attacks being at an absolute premium.
Several weapons were at our disposal, including a staff (which offered good range but slower attack recovery time), a dagger (which had high speed but low damage), a huge sledgehammer (which took forever to swing), and a sword (which was the most balanced weapon we got to try). Each weapon had its own move set, the option for two-handed wielding (or one hand with a shield), and its own unique feel in battle.
You'd honestly probably have to be a god of battle to beat this game too, because this sucker is hard. Enemies do lots of damage, take lots of hits, and are generally difficult to deal with. Fighting head-on isn't always necessary, or even advised, as I found at least one enemy that I could kill using the environment without landing a single blow.
One potential problem is that magic seems to be used as a crutch in Lords of the Fallen. There were a number of enemies that carried shields and it seemed basically impossible to get around them to do some free damage, but if you wait long enough for your spell to be ready you can easily take out these same monsters using magic. It's not as though this dependency on magic requires a distinct playstyle, as every weapon type can use some kind of magic, but I have to wonder if an experienced player could ever defeat those enemies without relying on it.
The presentation feels like it is literally ripped from the Dark Souls games. Dark and dreary, Lords of the Fallen paints a depressing look at the end of times. Castles are crumbling, monsters are slaughtering humans, and blood paints the walls. City Interactive told me that there would be a wide array of different environments, but I was only shown a castle. Lords of the Fallen is a next-gen exclusive and comes with a nice next-gen coat of paint. The environment is pleasantly detailed with some destructible elements, and the player character model contains extreme detail to show off all the fancy different armor and weapons that can be equipped.
Lords of the Fallen does suffer from some glaring issues. I was only given one level to play, a castle, so this might change in other levels, but the level design was rather claustrophobic. Tight corridors punctuated the experience, which would have been fine if there weren't enemies that took up the whole corridor. Dodging and attacking were nearly impossible due to the size of the shielded enemy and the small space of the level. The camera was also dreadful, and kept getting caught in the geometry leaving me with terrible perspectives. This could all be fixed in the final game, but what I played had a lot of problems.
In fact, it took genuine effort on my part to keep acknowledging that I truly was playing Lords of the Fallen and not tackling some as-yet-unreleased content from Dark Souls itself. The weight of my character, my enemies' attack patterns, picking up experience from my corpse upon death, the stat point allocation system... even the very environment seemed to have been transplanted rather than newly-created a woeful conclusion to reach after such a brief time with the game.
Some unique elements kept the demo from being too straightforward, however. The aforementioned mutants flew into a rage if I made too much noise, but I had the option to sneak behind them and avoid combat altogether, which struck me as an interesting strategic option. I also lured a knight onto an unstable portion of the castle floor, causing him to fall to his death although it's worth noting that my second attempt to do so, which I had ostensibly botched, ended with him stupidly walking into the hole anyway. I imagine that the AI will be improved between now and the game's official release, at any rate. I wish I could have heard the music playing during the demo (if there even was any), because it might have augmented my sense of immersion, but alas, E3's atmosphere is often not conducive to hearing things.
And Xbox Achievements:
Harkyn's stamina gauge seems rather miserly too, with us able to only string together three sword swipes before having to back off and catch our breath. The key is to not get too greedy our CI Games rep tells us, so learning attack patterns, knowing when to defend or evade with a roll is vital, as is knowing when to hold back and stop attacking. You're also able to switch between two-handed and one-handed stances at the touch of a button, making Harkyn more mobile but less defensive with the latter or vice-versa with the former.
Pressing on, we come to a steel portcullis leading into the demo's final boss arena, guarded by a demonic spider with a line in leaping attacks with its spiky limbs and some nasty egg laying that leads to its little scuttling offspring hatching then nipping at your ankles. Vulnerable while it coils up its big yellow abdomen to lay a stinking arachnid ovum, the demonic spider is easy to dispatch with a few tactical sword swipes, before Harkyn pulls a dusty lever and the gate clunks open.
