Despite nailing many aspects of the Souls formula that fans know and love, Lords of the Fallen launched to a mixed reception. Glitches and performance issues marred the experience for many, and now, players lamenting about how easy it is to fail NPC quests or lock yourself out of endings.
In a Reddit post dated Oct. 24, one player recounted how they accidentally failed the quest to unlock Lords of the Fallen’s Umbral ending simply by opening a door after defeating the boss guarding it.
The Redditor explained that opening the door to Bramis Castle immediately after defeating the Iron Wayfarer makes the Umbral ending, one of Lords of the Fallen’s three unlockable endings, impossible to achieve.
To get the Umbral ending, you need to wither the Rune of Adyr at Mother’s Lull “the instant you beat the Iron Wayfarer,” which means immediately heading in the opposite direction to the bottom of Revelation Depths.
Fans are perplexed by this design decision—after beating a boss, most players naturally want to continue onward to see what’s next, and it feels grossly unfair to be punished for curiosity. In fact, the simple act of cleansing one of the five “beacons” after beating your first major boss locks you into the Radiant ending, making the other two unobtainable, which most players won’t realize without a guide.
The game literally tells you to cleanse the beacons: I played the whole game trying to pursue an alternate ending without noticing I’d locked myself into the default path just a few hours in, so I understand why fans are frustrated.
On top of this, players are realizing that most NPC questlines are needlessly vague with unintuitive, hard-to-notice fail states. I finished the game without completing a single NPC quest and it seems most players had a similar experience.
In another post to Reddit on the same day, a user complained that quests for NPCs like the petrified woman, the tortured prisoner, and Byron are far too easy to fail. To complete Byron’s quest, you need to buy his wife’s pendant from a merchant in Revelation Depths, beneath the Cistern, but the key needed to access Revelation Depths drops from a boss at the top of the Cistern.
There’s an elevator upward to the next area in the Cistern boss room, but if you make the mistake of using that elevator after beating the boss, Byron’s quest immediately advances to the next step (without you giving him the pendant), and you miss out on the Umbral Eye reward from his quest.
There are many more examples like this across the game. Lords of the Fallen incorporated numerous aspects of the Souls formula into its design, for better or worse, and obscure quest lines are certainly for worse.
It doesn’t help that unlike Dark Souls, Lords of the Fallen doesn’t let players leave messages on the ground, so you can’t rely on hints from other players to discover secrets, hidden paths, or important quest items.
Newer Souls games and Soulslikes like Lies of P improved the formula by adding quality-of-life features, but failing quests in Lords of the Fallen simply for opening a door or going up an elevator feels like a step in the wrong direction.
