CI Games has announced the creation of a brand-new development studio called Hexworks. Situated in both Barcelona and Bucharest, the new studio will develop Lords of the Fallen 2 before focusing on new IP.
“It’s been a long time since we started talking about Lords of the Fallen 2 and trying different ideas,” CI Games CEO Marek Tyminski said. “I am very excited for us to be able to announce the new studio that has been already at work for the last half of the year and made significant progress.
“Initially we decided to keep that quiet as we didn’t want to bring that to public eyes before we would build the core team and before we would all agree on the details of the first project and move forward with our vision. So, this is the time to officially say we are here and we’re here to stay.”
The 25-person team at Hexworks is comprised of veteran staff with AAA game development experience, led by creative director Cezar Virtosu and executive producer Saul Gascon. Virtosu was previously at Ubisoft Bucharest and Paris-based support studio Virtuos, while Gascon was global development director at Overkill Software (and executive producer on the now-discontinued Overkill’s The Walking Dead) before a brief tenure at Smilegate Barcelona.
The new studio will finally provide a stable home for Lords of the Fallen 2. The action-RPG sequel has had a troubled development thus far. First, it lost its original executive producer, Tomasz Gop, back in 2015. Gop was heavily involved in the development of the first game and was previously a senior producer on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Then, Defiant Studios began work on the game in 2018 after taking over from an in-house studio at CI Games. In May 2019, however, Defiant was removed from the project in a less than amicable split between the two companies.
CI Games announced that it had terminated its agreement with Defiant because of “inadequate execution” at a key milestone in the game’s development. The studio said the quality of work was lower than expected, although Defiant categorically disagreed with this statement.
Hexworks will now finish development of the game, which is described as “a shift from the original’s power fantasy to a dark fantasy.” CI Games also promises it will be much more challenging than its predecessor, matching the combat experience those in the Soulsborne and Souls-like communities enjoy.
Lords of the Fallen 2 will be coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
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