How Supernatural-Napoleonic Wars Story ‘Valor Mortis’ Became Lyrical Games’ First Release: ‘A Setting Nobody Else Is Touching’

Lyrical Games will make its market debut this week with the launch of Soulslike game “Valor Mortis.” Set in a supernatural reimagining of 19th-century Europe, “Valor Mortis” lets players take on the part of William Dowsett (voiced by James Alexander), a resurrected English soldier of the Grande Armée who wields both Napoleonic-era weaponry and devastating supernatural powers. The game also stars Vincent Cassel as the legendary Napoleon Bonaparte and Jennifer English as The Shrike, a key figure in the resistance to Napoleon’s war. Developed by “Ghostrunner” studio One More Level, “Valor Mortis” is the first of multiple titles in the works at the Lyrical Media’s indie video game publisher and the game’s ambitious first-person take is setting a high bar for what Lyrical plans to produce from here.

A third-person camera gives you that for free. In first-person, you lose a lot of that awareness, so the team had to rebuild it. They spent an enormous amount of time on the parry window specifically, plus lock-on, audio cues and hit feedback, so a perfect parry feels as readable as it does in a third-person game.

The other hurdle was pace. Ghostrunner is all about speed, and Valor Mortis is deliberately slower and more methodical.” “Valor Mortis” launches Tuesday for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S and for PC via Steam priced at $39.99. Notably, the title will be available on Day 1 for those with an Xbox Game Pass subscription, though Rochkind declined to share details about striking that deal while still making the game available for purchase across platforms.

See below for more from Variety’s interview with Lyrical Games’ Rochkind below. I knew I wanted to work One More Level within five minutes of playing Ghostrunner when it released in 2020. Strong game-feel is the rarest talent in this medium, and when you play something with truly great game-feel (and you play a lot of games), you know it immediately.

It took a while for the stars to align, since they made Ghostrunner 2 before being ready to tackle this. The pitch for Valor Mortis checked every box. You had a proven team with a unique specialization, working in a genre with a huge audience, but with two real twists: a first-person camera and a setting nobody else is touching.

That’s Lyrical Games’ thesis in a nutshell: midtier budgets, unique takes on proven genres and genuine partnership with developers. If this game says one thing about us, I hope it’s that we’ll push our chips in on talented teams with a strong point of view. After the announcement of the game went well, we realized we had something here, so it was a question of how we can pour gasoline on the fire.