Lords of the Fallen II Interview - CI Games discusses iterating and improving on a soulslike sequel
Last week during The Game Awards 2025, CI Games revealed gameplay for Lords of the Fallen II, a sequel to the 2023 reboot set to release next year for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Epic).
Alongside the gameplay reveal, RPG Site had a chance to interview game director James Lowe about approaching the action RPG sequel, creating a game for both newcomers and veterans, boss encounter design, game balancing, updates, and more.
Lords of the Fallen II is set to release in 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Epic).
RPG Site: How do you balance designing Lords of the Fallen II to be its own standalone experience for newcomers while also delivering a fresh experience that is enjoyable for those who have played Lords of the Fallen already?
James Lowe: Striking that balance is always one of the biggest challenges when building a soulslike. We’re effectively designing for two core audiences at once: players stepping into our world for the first time, and veterans who know the rhythms and expectations of the franchise.
For newcomers, our priority is to make the entry point far more welcoming. We heard a lot of feedback on the onboarding in the last game, and this time, the early experience is much more streamlined. It’s short, clear, and designed to get players into the heart of the action quickly.
At the same time, we want longtime players to feel genuinely surprised. There are mechanics, systems, and narrative beats that returning lampbearers will recognise… but we’ve intentionally twisted some of them.
Another important factor is the setting. Lords of the Fallen II takes place in Thorngar, a completely new location set in a different time period, far from Mournstead. That means players don’t need any knowledge of the first game to dive in; it stands firmly on its own. But for veterans, the world will feel familiar in tone and theme, whilst also new and exciting, and they’ll find plenty of carefully placed easter eggs that hint at what’s happened across the larger timeline.
Soulslike games naturally escalate in demand, and the new mechanics in Lords of the Fallen II lean into that. They challenge the old guard in fresh ways while giving new players a fair but exciting climb.
James Lowe: Striking that balance is always one of the biggest challenges when building a soulslike. We’re effectively designing for two core audiences at once: players stepping into our world for the first time, and veterans who know the rhythms and expectations of the franchise.
For newcomers, our priority is to make the entry point far more welcoming. We heard a lot of feedback on the onboarding in the last game, and this time, the early experience is much more streamlined. It’s short, clear, and designed to get players into the heart of the action quickly.
At the same time, we want longtime players to feel genuinely surprised. There are mechanics, systems, and narrative beats that returning lampbearers will recognise… but we’ve intentionally twisted some of them.
Another important factor is the setting. Lords of the Fallen II takes place in Thorngar, a completely new location set in a different time period, far from Mournstead. That means players don’t need any knowledge of the first game to dive in; it stands firmly on its own. But for veterans, the world will feel familiar in tone and theme, whilst also new and exciting, and they’ll find plenty of carefully placed easter eggs that hint at what’s happened across the larger timeline.
Soulslike games naturally escalate in demand, and the new mechanics in Lords of the Fallen II lean into that. They challenge the old guard in fresh ways while giving new players a fair but exciting climb.
RPG Site: What would you say constitutes the most significant difference between Lords of the Fallen and the new sequel?
Lowe: We can’t reveal everything just yet, but as you’ll have seen in our latest announcement, aggression and speed are at the heart of the Lords of the Fallen II combat system. The combat philosophy this time is about staying in the pocket, pushing the pace, applying pressure, and trying to dominate the encounter rather than purely reacting to it. When players embrace that style, the game rewards them in some very cool ways.
It’s also worth saying that this entry is a lot more brutal and bloodier than the last. The intensity of combat, combined with the evolved tone of the world itself, amplifies that sense of ferocity in every encounter.
Beyond that, I can tease that the Umbral toolkit has evolved significantly. Your ability to interact with both Axiom and Umbral has expanded, giving you more creative ways to create chaos across the realms.
Lowe: We can’t reveal everything just yet, but as you’ll have seen in our latest announcement, aggression and speed are at the heart of the Lords of the Fallen II combat system. The combat philosophy this time is about staying in the pocket, pushing the pace, applying pressure, and trying to dominate the encounter rather than purely reacting to it. When players embrace that style, the game rewards them in some very cool ways.
It’s also worth saying that this entry is a lot more brutal and bloodier than the last. The intensity of combat, combined with the evolved tone of the world itself, amplifies that sense of ferocity in every encounter.
Beyond that, I can tease that the Umbral toolkit has evolved significantly. Your ability to interact with both Axiom and Umbral has expanded, giving you more creative ways to create chaos across the realms.
RPG Site: Can you describe, broadly, how you design and test a boss encounter in Lords of the Fallen? How do you maintain a good level of challenge without leaning too far into gimmicks?
Lowe: Boss encounters are the climactic moments of Lords of the Fallen, so they’re also some of the most time-intensive and most rewarding parts of development.
We always begin with a simple question: what is the core problem we want the player to solve, and how many viable paths can we give them to overcome it? Once that foundation is set, we layer in the thematic identity and the spectacle we want the boss to deliver.
From there, we move into extremely rough prototypes. The key at this stage is speed: build fast, fail fast, learn fast. We iterate aggressively to nail down the encounter’s flow: how the player reads it, how it escalates, and how it resolves. Once we hit that point where the encounter feels “this is really good and brutally fair,” we take it into broad internal testing across multiple player profiles and formats. Only after that do we begin the long phase of polish and refinement.
Lowe: Boss encounters are the climactic moments of Lords of the Fallen, so they’re also some of the most time-intensive and most rewarding parts of development.
We always begin with a simple question: what is the core problem we want the player to solve, and how many viable paths can we give them to overcome it? Once that foundation is set, we layer in the thematic identity and the spectacle we want the boss to deliver.
From there, we move into extremely rough prototypes. The key at this stage is speed: build fast, fail fast, learn fast. We iterate aggressively to nail down the encounter’s flow: how the player reads it, how it escalates, and how it resolves. Once we hit that point where the encounter feels “this is really good and brutally fair,” we take it into broad internal testing across multiple player profiles and formats. Only after that do we begin the long phase of polish and refinement.
RPG Site: Lords of the Fallen has improved a lot since launch, with multiple major free updates after launch. Will Lords of the Fallen II offer a polished experience at launch, like what players get right now in Lords of the Fallen?
Lowe: The journey from launch to Lords of the Fallen Version 2.5 was a tremendous learning experience for the entire team. Our close relationship with the community shaped that evolution (a staggering 70+ updates) in a really meaningful way, and those lessons have directly informed the sequel.
With Lords of the Fallen II, the day-one experience already incorporates everything we learned along the way, all the systems, processes, and refinements that came out of those major updates. The team is more experienced, Unreal Engine 5 is more mature, and we started development with a major advantage this time - the entire base game. Players will be stepping into the version of the game we always wanted them to experience from the very start.
Lowe: The journey from launch to Lords of the Fallen Version 2.5 was a tremendous learning experience for the entire team. Our close relationship with the community shaped that evolution (a staggering 70+ updates) in a really meaningful way, and those lessons have directly informed the sequel.
With Lords of the Fallen II, the day-one experience already incorporates everything we learned along the way, all the systems, processes, and refinements that came out of those major updates. The team is more experienced, Unreal Engine 5 is more mature, and we started development with a major advantage this time - the entire base game. Players will be stepping into the version of the game we always wanted them to experience from the very start.
RPG Site: Do you have post-launch content and feature update plans already? Should we expect a similar cadence of patches to Lords of the Fallen?
Lowe: We can’t go into specifics just yet, but what I can say is that our commitment to Lords of the Fallen II matches the dedication we showed with the 2023 title. Our philosophy this time is to focus on expanding the experience rather than fixing it. We’ll support the game in the ways it needs, but the aim is to ensure that post-launch efforts are additive rather than corrective - new content, new features.
Lowe: We can’t go into specifics just yet, but what I can say is that our commitment to Lords of the Fallen II matches the dedication we showed with the 2023 title. Our philosophy this time is to focus on expanding the experience rather than fixing it. We’ll support the game in the ways it needs, but the aim is to ensure that post-launch efforts are additive rather than corrective - new content, new features.
RPG Site: Can you go into the optimization challenges you ran into with the seamless world without loading screens on lower-end systems?
Lowe: Optimization is always a journey, and building two interconnected, seamless worlds makes it even more complex. One of the biggest learnings from the previous release was the importance of integrating optimization pipelines right from the start of production, not late in development.
For Lords of the Fallen II, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Our workflows, tools, and profiling processes have been active since day one, ensuring that players across a wide range of hardware can experience the world smoothly and consistently. The goal is for lower-end systems to deliver an experience that feels comparable to high-end setups, and we’ve designed with that in mind from the outset.
Lowe: Optimization is always a journey, and building two interconnected, seamless worlds makes it even more complex. One of the biggest learnings from the previous release was the importance of integrating optimization pipelines right from the start of production, not late in development.
For Lords of the Fallen II, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Our workflows, tools, and profiling processes have been active since day one, ensuring that players across a wide range of hardware can experience the world smoothly and consistently. The goal is for lower-end systems to deliver an experience that feels comparable to high-end setups, and we’ve designed with that in mind from the outset.
RPG Site: Many Unreal Engine 5 games have issues on PC, even today, with traversal and loading stutter. Has the team managed to sort that out in Lords of the Fallen II?
Lowe: Being one of the earliest UE5 titles to launch gave us a unique head start. We learned a huge amount during that process, and we’ve significantly hardened our pipelines to mitigate the kinds of issues other developers are encountering today.
Our close collaboration with Epic has played a major role in that. Instead of reacting to problems as they appear, we’ve been able to approach them proactively, designing systems with known constraints in mind and building solutions into our workflows early.
That preparation has made a substantial difference in how Lords of the Fallen II performs across platforms.
RPG Site: Thank you for your time!
Lowe: Being one of the earliest UE5 titles to launch gave us a unique head start. We learned a huge amount during that process, and we’ve significantly hardened our pipelines to mitigate the kinds of issues other developers are encountering today.
Our close collaboration with Epic has played a major role in that. Instead of reacting to problems as they appear, we’ve been able to approach them proactively, designing systems with known constraints in mind and building solutions into our workflows early.
That preparation has made a substantial difference in how Lords of the Fallen II performs across platforms.
RPG Site: Thank you for your time!