Lords of the Fallen 2's new dev is starting from scratch after taking over development from The Surge's Deck 13.

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New-York based Defiant Studios is starting over with Lords of the Fallen 2, scrapping any pre-production work on the game made by series creator Deck 13. The game officially moved to Defiant earlier this year "It's really a reset, it's a fresh start. It's a new engine - Unreal 4 - and a new team" David Grijns, Defiant Studios managing director, told Eurogamer . "A team which does not have a long and illustrious background in action RPG development, but we actually see it as a strength."A Lords of the Fallen sequel was announced in 2014 , and CI Games broke the news that Deck 13 was no longer handling development of the title the following year. After a three year hiatus, Lords of the Fallen 2 found a new home at Defiant Studios, founded by David Grijns, the former head of Avalanche Studios' New York office (the team behind Just Cause 3).Despite not having a background in RPGs, Grijns seems unruffled at the prospect of entering the genre."It's an area of the games industry which is now considered untouchable in some degree," he said. "It's like, 'From Software rules the roost in this particular area of the badlands so abandon all hope ye who enter here.' And those are exactly the sorts of projects we love.""We want to take that fantasy for the player and try to show those fans something a little bit new - a new approach in it. Competition is good. I love the stuff From does but I'm excited about trying to bring something new."The studio hasn't nailed down a concept just yet, but both CI and Defiant want to create a "highly polished experience" with a modestly-sized dev team. Grijns explains that they "enjoy the challenge of building smaller teams for bigger projects," and that he prefers a "a very small, tightly-knit team," over "the brute force approach."It's safe to assume that we won't see the sequel for a couple of years at least, but Defiant seems confident that it can hit all the right notes and give From Software a run for its money.

Shabana is a freelance writer who enjoys JRPGs, wine, and not finishing games. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram