Lords of the Fallen Previews

City Interactive and Deck 13 are present at this weekend’s PAX Prime, and that means that we have some new previews of their promising action RPG Lords of the Fallen to take in.

Gamer’s Nexus starts us off:

One the main ways Lords of the Fallen breaks away from action-RPG conventions is through its boss battles. This is done primarily by information conveyance, battle staging, and preparing the player for battle. For starters, any time there’s a boss battle, there are indicators in your surrounding environment (like a pile of corpses outside a door), conveying to the player that it may be time to re-equip and focus. It’s a small feature, but it makes a huge impact on the player’s experience.

Boss battles are broken down into multiple stages that vary the strengths and weaknesses of each boss. In the demo, the boss lost some of his shield at every stage. Once the shield was completely broken, it wielded a powerful two-handed twirling attack that Gop made sure to steer clear of and for good reason: You usually want to do that when your enemy’s weapon starts glowing with fire.

Then we move to Destructoid for some more details:

It’s obvious that combat is the primary concern in Lords of the Fallen. Actually, the developers went so far as to say that it really isn’t story-focused. Sure, there will be a narrative, cut scenes — everything needed to make it a coherent experience — but, Deck13’s putting more emphasis on ensuring that the fighting sequences are up to snuff.

However, exactly how those fighting sequences play out are entirely up to the player. Magic spells looks as if they’ll play a big role, but the game can be beaten strictly with conventional melee attacks. Each class will have a few unique spells, which appears to be the only way that players are barred from complete customization. As shown at E3, changing gear can effectively switch the player’s class on the fly, but these magic spells are a way to lend weight to the class decision made at the beginning of the game.

Before concluding our info-gathering at The Game Fanatics:

What the players can customize is Harken’s class. Harken can either be a Rogue, Warrior, or Cleric, and special abilities will be available to each side. Now it’s important to note that armor and weapon options won’t be affected by this choice. You can play a Cleric, and deck yourself out in (Rogue’s Leather Armor) and use daggers to combo your enemies, or be a Rogue and use a shield and warhammer. Essentially, the special abilities were the only thing your class choice dictated, but we were assured that these abilities would be game changing in terms of how a player would be able to approach combat.

Combat-wise, Lords of the Fallen offers players two styles a melee and magic style; you can focus on one or the other, or both. The melee is unique in the RPG genre as it’s very tactical, think old school International Karate (Atari) meets Moonstone (Amiga) meets current-gen Dark Souls; a very concise combat style with more one-on-one fighting and dodging. There will be lots of one-on-one combat in Lords of the Fallen, lots of rewarding melee combos, coupled with powerful magic. When going into detail about the combat in Lords of the Fallen, Gop said,(there’s a little Tekken, a little Street Fighter,) timing and combos will be your best friends if you go down the melee route.