GDC 2023: Lords of the Fallen's Parallel Realms Has Me Eager To Explore Every Corner Of The World

mmorpg.com:

Atmosphere. Incredible atmosphere. This is what I kept thinking as I watched a demo of the upcoming Lords of the Fallen last week at the Game Developers Conference. Set a thousand years after the first entry in the series, the new Lords of the Fallen acts as a reboot of sorts, bringing new features, mechanics, and a new open world to explore.

Unlike the previous Lords of the Fallen titles, this time around you get to choose and customize your character, from the type of build you want, body type, and more. Thanks to Unreal Engine 5, armor and clothing will effectively fit every body type, so the team is able to create highly detailed assets that will just *work* on any character you create.

In our demo I got to see the traditional sword and board-style character, as well as a magic-slinging sorcerer. The play styles, like any good Soulslike, look as varied as they should be, with the Sorcerer opting to fight with spells, only going in for Melee to close things out, while the sword and shield character excelled at close combat, using its block and parry to great advantage.

One major change from the series is how parrying works in Lords of the Fallen. Before you had to have frame-perfect timing to pull off a parry. Missing that timing would leave you open for attacks, oftentimes punishing ones. As a result, many but the most skilled players would eschew parrying altogether (*raises hand*) instead opting to block or dodge.

Now there is a mechanic called “last-minute blocking.” This was part of an effort to help onboard with the smoothest possible learning curve as possible, and it also helps to solve that frustration that would lead players to just opt out of parrying altogether.

“Last-minute blocking has been an