What makes Lords of the Fallen intriguing in a landscape of Souls-likes is its parallel realms and how the resurrection mechanic ties into them. The game forgoes the death-to-bonfire flow popularized by the Dark Souls franchise. Instead, it aims to head in a direction akin to FromSoftware’s massively successful Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. While the death mechanic in Lords of the Fallen is largely inspired by that, it surprisingly carves out a new spin on the formula, making resurrection a bridge into more gameplay opportunities rather than a harsh restart. Here’s how it works.
How Resurrecting in Lords of the Fallen works
In Lords of the Fallen, players will explore the realm of the living called Axiom. Its opposite, Umbral, is the realm of the dead. You can peer into the Umbral world with an Umbral lamp given to you at the start of the game. With the lamp, you can spot differences or walk across pathways to reach new locations in Axiom. Exploration in Lords of the Fallen will involve navigating both playing fields with the lamp.
However, when you die in Axiom, you will be automatically resurrected in the Umbral realm. You will be forced to explore this shadowy world to search for a Vestige to return to Axiom. Unfortunately, if you die in Umbral, that’s game over. You’ll have to do the old song and dance iconic to FromSoftware games of running back to collect your dropped Vigor.
At times, you must voluntarily give up your Axiom life to enter Umbral to interact with specific items to progress. However, watch out for enemies in the shadow realm while using your lamp because they can pull you in.
According to IGN, the developers of Lords of the Fallen challenged themselves to innovate on the FromSoftware resurrection feature. The mechanic aims to mitigate death frustrations, yet also presents a death loop system to avoid the repetition of racing back to the spot you died.
“Plunging the player into a shadowy realm of entropic horror tickled all these conditions of satisfaction,” explained creative director Cezar Virtosu. “Where does the player go upon death? If they resurrect on the spot should there be gameplay modifiers in place to allow a change of approach? We opened Pandora’s Box, and the true challenge was to reign in all the emerging ideas.”
The resurrection feature is just one of several unique aspects of Lords of the Fallen. Depending on how well received the feature is on release, this may spawn a new line of Souls-likes revamping how dying works.
