"We didn't set out to make a horror game," Lords of the Fallen creative director Cezar Virtosu tells me, after I'm done gushing over the harrowing sights and sounds of Umbral. "We're not making an alien or anything. We wanted the cosmic horror genre, which is reality warped by divinity. What you were to perceive to be divinity."
He's not wrong about warped realities. During my hands-on time with Lords of the Fallen, developer Hexworks' sequel-slash-reboot of the 2014 game revamped to suit a post-Elden Ring audience, I find myself constantly watching my back. A guttural groan ghosts past my left shoulder, just as another rattles from somewhere in the distance on my right. When I turn around, nothing is there. To check it out, I know I'll need to die – and I already can't wait to do so and rift from Axiom, in all its golden-hued autumnal glory, to the purple skies and thick grey fog of Umbral. Something is waiting for me just beyond the veil, and its presence, though obscured, is bleeding through bit by bit.
