Going from zero to a hundred in a minute. That's a bit of a feeling about the progression they made at Hexworks studio working on Lord of the Fallen (2023). We recently had the chance to speak with Hexworks' art director, Javier García Lajara, where he gave us this and other thoughts on the Souls-like ARPG, which is currently celebrating its first anniversary, which you can see in the full interview below.
First of all, a year later, he assessed how the game's launch happened, its initial success and the difficulties it faced on different platforms, as well as the constant rhythm of improvements in the form of updates it has undergone in just 12 months.
"Yeah, so basically in a month we reached a million copies sold and after that we kept working on several updates of the game, and post-launch content for several months, and we are around one million and a half more or less, I don't have the final numbers but it should be like that."
"Unfortunately we had like not a perfect launch, mainly on PC, you know the PC market is full of different specs, PC computers for everyone at home is completely different (...) so we were trying to fix all these problems after launch and we spent several months doing that. I think we managed to do it and the game right now is a completely new experience"
And looking towards the horizon, Garcia was already putting the honey on our lips by talking about Lords of the Fallen 2, and announcing one of its key points: to deepen the dual world concept that underpinned the first game, and iterate on it. Let's remember that in Lord of the Fallen there are two realities or Realms (Axiom and Threshold). One is the main world, and the other is that world, beyond the veil and more dangerous, where the greatest dangers await us, and also the greatest rewards. García Lajara told us in this regard:
"Yeah, we are not only keeping [the dual realm], we are improving it, we are leveraging on what we do there. So it's a sequel from Lords of the Fallen, I can't say too much about that. Epic joined the ship for funding the project and we are using of course Unreal Engine 5". And art-wise: "It's not going to be a revolution, it's going to be an evolution of mainly Umbral, and even though our game is dark and gritty and full of details, we want to open it a little bit more, so let's try to reach a wider audience, speaking of art, so that's also working closely with our art director, Alex Chaudret, great guy, great art."
So if you're looking forward to the next Lords of the Fallen, you at least know that Hexworks are very aware of what sets them apart from other titles in the saturated soulslike ARPG genre, and that they'll be going deeper into that in the sequel.
Just a few minutes ago it was revealed that the current Lords of the Fallen is going to release an update on all platforms, and will also be improved on PS5 Pro.