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Preview: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Middle-earth has been imagined and reimagined, defined and redefined. First coming to life in Tolkien’s novels, Middle-earth featured heavily in Peter Jackson’s films and in a range of video games over the years. The novels are indisputably the definitive descriptors with the video games trailing far behind. That said, after spending some time with Shadow of Mordor at E3, I’m able to say with a serious degree of confidence that video games may finally have a Middle-earth that can proudly stand alongside the novels and even outshine the films. In the year when Batman: Arkham Knight is being released, it’s an enormous feat for any other game to trump the Bat hype. Shadow of Mordor is that game. Shadow of Mordor is the business.

Set during the time between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Shadow of Mordor is an open world adventure game starring ranger Talion. In the opening moments of the game Talion is slaughtered by Sauron and resurrected by powers and for reasons unknown. This experience has left Talion caught between Middle-earth and the Wraith world and has given him supernatural abilities. Swapping on the fly between his Wraith and human forms, lets Talion mark enemies, see through walls, locate items and more throughout the sprawling, open Middle-earth. Leaping from a height puts Talion into an Assassin’s Creed type dive, but one which can be performed anywhere. Rather than needing a haystack to stop his fall, Talion simply transforms into his Wraith form at the last moment, negating all falling damage. On first glance, Shadow of Mordor appears to be more than just an homage to Ubisoft’s historial murder simulator, but it quickly distinguishes itself as another beast entirely.

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The heart and soul of Shadow of Mordor is its ‘Nemesis’ system. It drives the game forward constantly, always pushing Talion to fight harder, faster and smarter. Each and every named enemy is procedurally generated with various strengths, weaknesses, unique personalities and different requirements to be fulfilled to be able to mount a challenge. As they are procedurally generated each and every playthrough can and will be different. Every named enemy has the potential to become a nemesis to Talion, and multiple nemeses can be active at one time. As the Ork’s fight Talion, if they survive and flee or defeat Talion they’ll remember the skirmish and be more prepared next time they meet.

Fighting Talion and surviving strengthens the Orks and can see a lowly Ork move up the ranks on his way to becoming a War Chief. Ork society is always moving forward and is a tiered system with War Chiefs at the top and they are your ultimate target in each region. War Chiefs are far too strong to simply challenge openly so Talion will need to exploit the procedurally generated weaknesses of his bodyguards or lower grunts in order to either lure the chief out or have his bodyguards betray him and create an opening for Talion to strike.

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As soon as a bodyguard, grunt or War Chief is disposed of, another will take his place. Talion will always have enemies in Middle-earth and more than likely most of them will have come across him at some time or another. This means that a lowly Ork first encountered early on may become a fearsome War Chief later in the game. It feels like a truly revolutionary and current-gen mechanic and one that has me truly excited.

Monolith were not ready to reveal details of the narrative, size of Middle-earth or regions we could expect to play in. The section I played was somewhere during the middle of the game, so a sense of an overall package is hard to form. With the power of the Nemesis System driving it though, Shadow of Mordor has the most potential of any game I saw at E3. With the refined combat of the Arkham games, solid Assassin’s Creed-style open world exploration and a beautifully crafted world, it has already got me hooked. Keep your eyes on Shadow of Mordor because it’s going to be a revelation.


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