A technical presentation of Lords of the Fallen from developer Hexworks showcases the game's impressive visuals, including a brief look at character customization. The development of Lords of the Fallen, once known as Lords of the Fallen 2, has been a tumultuous venture. Hexworks took the opportunity presented by Epic's State of Unreal GDC keynote to provide a reintroduction to its upcoming action-adventure game. To say it was impressive would be an understatement.
The Lords of the Fallen sequel, or at least one version of it, was announced as far back as 2014. The project has jumped from developer to developer, however, with current development team Hexworks only inheriting the project in 2020. An official announcement for Hexworks' rebooted Lords of the Fallen follow-up was made in 2022, with a tentative release window of 2023. Despite the quickly approaching launch, much of Lords of the Fallen remains to be shown.
Today, perhaps, marks Hexworks and publisher CI Games' initial effort to begin sharing more about Lords of the Fallen. During the State of Unreal GDC keynote from Epic Games, part of the presentation intended to showcase Unreal Engine 5 projects, Hexworks shared a 4-minute technical showcase trailer for its game. The trailer showcases how Lords of the Fallen uses several Unreal Engine 5 features to create its visual powerhouse of a game.
Hexworks starts the video by briefly showcasing part of its character creation system for Lords of the Fallen. It says it uses a mix of 3D scans of real people and UE5's character customization tech to implement a simple scaling interface allowing players to customize their character's bodytype. The sample shows the slider shifting from a lanky thin character to a heftier character, and then to a more muscled character. Hexworks does clarify that players will be able to customize their character in finer detail after this menu.
Other visual features shown in the technical showcase video include the Lords of the Fallen's high-resolution surfaces, from armor textures to environmental detail, physics-enabled armor and weapon animations, and environmental lighting. While it isn't clear if any of the video isn't pre-rendered, its incredible detail is very impressive. The hint at Lords of the Fallen's two worlds, Umbral and Axiom, is especially intriguing.
The video also closes out with confirmation that Lords of the Fallen is still planned for release later this year. Hexworks and CI Games could easily have not mentioned the game's release window at all, so re-confirming 2023 is encouraging. Hopefully, Lords of the Fallen gameplay will be coming soon.
Lords of the Fallen releases in 2023 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
