Lords of the Fallen 2 publisher CI Games
made it blatant back in January that it will steer clear of making its games political or including any social elements or agendas in its future titles. It claims featuring such things runs a high risk of pushing audiences away, and it would rather focus on serious games featuring serious stuff like sexy, scandily-clad women. Whatever you want I guess, just make sure to wash your hands when you're done.
This deliberately ignores diverse and inclusive successes like
Baldur's Gate 3, which went on to sell 20 million copies, and cherrypicks high-profile cases like
Concord to justify the belief that the inclusion of queer characters and unconventionally attractive women makes a title fail. Modern games are apparently in such a terrible state not because of greedy executives, ballooning budgets, and difficult to sustain development cycles, but because the female characters aren't hot enough.
It's an existing argument that very small yet very loud corners of the game development world cling to with unwavering ignorance, and Lords of the Fallen 2 appears to be leaning on it yet again, if recent comments from CI Games CEO Marek Tyminski are any indication.
Don't Worry, Lords Of The Fallen 2 Will Have Lots Of Sexy Girls
I played the original Lords of the Fallen, and despite some gameplay and visual qualities in need of improvement and a lack of polish, the game had plenty to offer. It was a compelling Soulslike experience with some inventive ideas I'd never seen before, such as a lantern you could shine around the environment to play with alternative realities in real-time, not to mention a robust and weighty combat system.
Improving on these qualities would be more than enough for a sequel, but in his pursuit to remove progressive politics and ideas from the game, Tyminski has only gone and made Lords of the Fallen 2 political all over again. How ironic.
"Many of you asked why the game initially had body type A/B,"
Tyminski tweeted this past weekend. "Hexworks started early 2020 as an autonomous studio owned by CI Games. Early on, political correctness and filtering meant not every decision reached me on time. I got a lot more involved from late 2024 and now act as Head of Studio alongside my CEO role."
He went on to say that A/B (over male/female) was the "wrong decision" and that Lords of the Fallen 2 will be "built on real player feedback, and it's crystal clear in the last two trailers."
When asked by a user whether the game would include attractive female characters, a short and sweet "
yes" was given in response, which makes it embarrassingly clear the sort of audience Lords of the Fallen 2 is trying to court.
Within these posts, Tyminski seems to imply that the game perhaps once included a more diverse or even realistic character creator, but anything allegedly woke or progressive was stripped out and replaced with a toolset which mostly restricts players to super buff male protagonists or gorgeous women for them to objectify.
By claiming you are removing content you personally deem as political from a piece of art and replacing it with your own, you are creating a new agenda, whether you want to accept it or not.
But That Won't Make It A Good Game
It stinks of fake outrage, trying desperately to sell a 7/10 Soulslike by playing up the idea that the modern gaming landscape has somehow robbed straight male audiences of traditional experiences they now have a responsibility to take back. A similar thing occurred with
Shift Up's Stellar Blade, which was held up as a symbol of resistance in the modern culture war. The game wasn't afraid to put an incredibly gorgeous heroine front and centre whose chest, butt, and overall figure existed as objects for players to obsess over and customise.
There was a belief among certain audiences that video game critics and progressive gamers were looking to tear Stellar Blade down, believing it stood against the DEI agenda we'd been slowly but surely infecting the entire medium with. But instead, it reviewed incredibly well and sold millions of copies, and now a sequel is even in production. Personally, I enjoyed Stellar Blade, and even thought Eve was a fun and attractive main character with loads of cool outfits to unlock.
And so the culture war moved onto a new target, and to this day the cycle continues. Lords of the Fallen 2 is a special case, however, because the developers behind this sequel seem to believe that cultivating this movement is going to make their game more successful. Either that or they truly believe in the nonsense they are spouting.
This game is not about progressive politics or the agency of players regardless of their gender or politics, but about fierce combat, uncompromisingly attractive female characters, and a world worth getting lost in. The irony is that in Tyminski's laughable pursuit of stripping Lords of the Fallen 2 of every single trace of diversity, he has turned the game into an object of political ridicule long before it lands in our laps. It will be remembered for that, and nothing more
