Lords of the Fallen might already be on your holiday 2014 shopping list, but if not, we’ve got a bucket full of reasons explaining why you should be on board.
Lords of the Fallen is one of the outliers in this year’s holiday release scrum. It hasn’t been widely publicised, and while it has some veteran talent on board, developer Deck 13 Interactive isn’t particularly well known.
This lack of awareness is likely to impact Lords of the Fallen’s sales, as the hype machine is a super important factor in the battle of the brands (perhaps unfortunately). But if you fail to check it out, you may be missing one of the most interesting games of 2014. Here’s why.
It’s Tomasz Gop’s passion project
Tomasz Gop was producer on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, which was a great game, and elevated CD Projekt RED from “ambitious” to “accomplished”. Under his guidance, The Witcher 2 made significant changes to the first game’s formula, as part of a process of evolution set to continue in The Witcher 3.
But Gop wasn’t happy – he wanted to work on his own IP, freed from the constraints of the Witcher canon. You may not know this, but in Poland and a few other European territories The Witcher is a well-known fantasy property; people can debate the politics of the various kingdoms and the merits of various battle approaches much in the same way you passionately defend the version of Star Wars where Han shot first. The Witcher games have deviated from this canon, but are still framed by it.
Gop wanted freedom from that – not just for creative satisfaction, but because The Witcher is about a certain kind of approach to questing and combat. Having made a game as great as The Witcher 2, imagine what Gop can do without restraints?
It’s “next-gen” only
CD Projekt RED made no bones about the fact that it waited for the PS4 and Xbox One to hit the horizon before starting on The Witcher 3, because it had terrific ambitions for the third entry.
Gop has similar ambitions for Lords of the Fallen. Like The Witcher 3, it takes the latest console hardware as its base line, with the PC version building on that beginning. It couldn’t be done on PS3 and Xbox 360.
You know what that means, don’t you? Bigger, better, fewer loading times. If you ever find yourself thinking “gee, this RPG could stand to have a bit more content” it’s likely Lords of the Fallen will meet your desires. Plus, it’s going to look absolutely gorgeous.
It has infinite content
So I’ve just said a little bit about how exciting it is that Lords of the Fallen will be so large, but I’m pausing to emphasise that Gop believes it has infinite content.
It is okay to laugh hollowly here because – infinite? Really? Really? But he’s quite serious, apparently. Lords of the Fallen has a main campaign you can rush through in about 15 hours, then the usual slew of side quests and so on, and then much much more.
“Technically, with New Game +, exploration, lots of secrets and optional loot, [it] might be infinite,” Gop said once. Golly.
It’s “RPG soup”
Gop’s been quite cheerfully open about his influences, and so he’s not doing that boring perjury where developers pretend their game sprung, fully formed, from their brows. No, Lords of the Fallen is the kind of project you probably nurture in your own secret heart: all the best bits of your favourite games, untied at last.
“Cutting the long story short, it’s not ‘unlike anything before’. It’s more like ‘all the best games you’ve played before’. We’re aiming at getting the different proportions of ingredients from RPGs, fighter games and even strategies into one big bowl to make a soup that is spicy, filling and addictive,” Gop said.
RPG soup. Yes. Place it before me, for I would feast.
Next: The Dark Souls influence…
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