During the Dark Souls craze last generation, tons of developers were jumping on the Soulslike bandwagon. A couple of the first were CI Games and Deck13 with their almost shameless homage to the Souls series, Lords of the Fallen. Published in 2014, Lords of the Fallen released to middling reviews and managed to amass just under 1 million sales by May 2015. Jump to almost seven years later and it seems like the development of a sequel has started ramping up.
Publisher CI Games recently shared on Twitter a logo for Lords of the Fallen 2, claiming that the game is the developer's biggest project to date. Alongside the announcement, CI Games also revealed that the game is shifting to dark fantasy and that the team is working on a fully revised and challenging combat system. There was no potential release date, although the developer advised people to follow the Lords of the Fallen Twitter account for the latest news on the sequel.
It's safe to say that Lords of the Fallen 2 has not had the smoothest development process, with a number of developers leaving the project. Deck 13 used to work alongside CI Games, but the developer left the project to work on both The Surge and The Surge 2. CI Games then started working with Defiant back in 2018 and has recently dropped them in favor of working with a newly-created subsidiary called Hexworks.
Lords of the Fallen 2 was even announced back in December 2014, just two months after the first game's release. A game with a development cycle of nearly seven years without a single shred of gameplay to show for it is a likely indicator of multiple development issues, not to mention the high turnover of developers.
However, despite the lukewarm reception to Lords of the Fallen, the game did have potential. Deck 13 recently showed us with The Surge 2 that it's possible to take a mediocre first installment of a franchise, polish it up, and deliver a great game. Hopefully, the development of Lords of the Fallen 2 starts to go a bit smoother from this point on, and that CI Games maintains its partnerships.