Lords of the Fallen - The parallel World of Umbral

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Executive producer and studio head Saul Gascon explains the parallel world of Umbral on Gamedeveloper:

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Creating Lords of the Fallen's parallel world of Umbral

Hexworks studio head Saul Gascon discusses the process of building a parallel world that instills vulnerability.

A player character from Lords of the Fallen stares down creatures in a dark fantasy world.

Lords of the Fallen arguably wears its influences on its sleeve more overtly than most, though it would be unfair to say that this reboot of the 2014 game is merely following in the footsteps of the Dark Souls series. Besides its grim dark fantasy aesthetic, interconnected level design, and punishing combat encounters, its parallel worlds of Axiom and Umbral are unique.

On one hand, the idea of a change in the game state upon death has been inherent in FromSoftware's games from the beginning. The studio introduced the world tendency system and the idea of the player character having human and soul forms in Demon's Souls. Having similar consequences occur was something that Hexworks had wanted to introduce since the game's inception, according to studio head and the game's executive producer and studio head Saul Gascon.

"Our objective was to introduce innovation and add an intriguing dimension to the death loop, ensuring that when players faced defeat, something extraordinary would occur," he explains. "However, initially, we grappled with uncertainty regarding what that 'something' should entail, prompting us to explore a plethora of possibilities."

Rather than just a change of the player's state upon death, Lords of the Fallen transforms the whole world as dying slips you from the land of the living to the land of the dead, featuring more hostile threats but sometimes new paths that were either not present or accessible before. More importantly, Umbral is actually running in parallel to Axiom simultaneously, such that when holding a special lantern, you can peer into the dark world.

Indeed, it was this mechanic that led the team realizing they could make something truly unique. "We subsequently reverse-engineered everything, building upon that core, yet astonishing, feature."

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