Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor E3 Previews
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Monolith's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor continues to garner favorable impressions around the Internet, with several more previews appearing for the stealth-focused RPG since E3's conclusion.
Game Informer:
Aided In a Beast Hunt: One of the Uruks I dominated needed to prove himself in order to advance through the ranks, and it went on a beast hunt to show its skill. I stood on a nearby cliifside and sniped at the pack of carragors my ally was hunting, assuring he survived to move up in the hierarchy.
Transformed Into A Wraith: Talion's dual nature has been a big part of his appeal is since the game was announced. So it was satisfying to finally get to see the transformative qualities of the character. At numerous points throughout my demo, I saw Talion's face and body shift into a ghostlike form. The wraith looks very elflike, leading to some interesting assumptions about who or what the wraith is within Middle-earth lore.
Shadow Strikes: One of the coolest moves in the game is the shadow strike, which allows Talion to teleport to a high or distant location for an instant attack, which often instantly kills the target. An upgraded form of the attack allowed me to chain these shadow strikes together to kill two or three targets in one flurry of motion.
However, as a wraith, you aren't confined to the physical realm. Your supernatural powers allow you to teleport to enemies and perform ghostly takedowns, or to make them serve your own purpose. This domination mechanic is key to how Shadow of Mordor goes well beyond Assassin's Creed. Removing a target from play isn't the end of that enemy. Dominated Orc captains can be ordered to betray their warlord masters, bringing them out in the open for an easier kill. If a warlord is then dominated, he and his army can be sent to cause a riot with another warlord, creating a power struggle that changes the entire setup of your next assassination mission.
What appears to make Shadow of Mordor even deeper is the fact that your choices in dominating Orcs and sending them against their brethren don't result in immediate, scripted consequences. They simply change the landscape of the next major encounter. Once that encounter begins, who lives and who dies is still entirely governed by the systems that determine an enemy NPC's strengths, weaknesses, and combat aptitude.
IGN:
But aside from all of that, Shadow of Mordor is simply a blast to play, thanks in part to Monolith Productions drawing heavy inspiration from some of best games and franchises of the past decade. The sensation of hopping from grip to grip as you scale straight up a wall comes across with a heavy flavor of Assassin's Creed (perhaps too heavy?). This is great, seeing as how the AC series has taken the concept of climbing and parkour and transformed it into a digital art-form over the past seven years. But the Ubisoft love doesn't stop there Mordor's Nemesis system as well as the ability to free wild wolves and let them wreak havoc on unsuspecting Uruk-hai is a treat on the levels of Far Cry 2 and 3.
The combat itself in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a quick, challenging, and brutal take on what Rocksteady pioneered with the Arkham series. Taking on a mass of enemies requires careful timing, but a patient and skilled player who pays attention to the visual cues above each character's head can quickly find themselves slashing through dozens of orc in a matter of moments. While some might cry foul as the familiarity, remember that both games are under the same umbrella at Warner Bros. And hell, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Talion boasts a shadow power granted by the wraith that helps him gain advantages in battle. Early on, he uses it to control and mount a massive beast to ride across the land. During combat with one of the lieutenants, Talion uses the shadow ability on his weakened enemy to command him to join his side and betray his war chief.
But it's not as simple as progressing up the tree to take down a warchief. Players must compare power and other abilities to give them a strong chance of overthrowing the chief. If the warchief kills his lieutenant or you, he grows even more powerful. To make matters worse, he'll remember conquering you and remind you of his victory in future conflicts. Every victory means one more ally joining your cause and more forces to battle foes.
...it's because he remembers the two encounters we had. His name, look, stats and personality converge to create a character that is wholly unique to my game, I am told.
I reached out to find out more about how exactly this unique system works. Design director Michael de Plater had an explanation for me. "There are many different components of the Nemesis System that are both specific and connected," he said. "Each dynamically generated enemy remembers the interactions players (and other enemies) have with him and reacts accordingly when they meet again." Hence the taunting in the video above.P
"To name just some examples, uniquely generated elements like visual appearance, personality, skills, abilities and power level, become connected to an Uruk's battles, relationships, dialogue and location within the world; each of these influences the others to ensure that they are generating memorable characters who continually evolve to create unique stories at the same time as proposing varied and challenging gameplay scenarios," he continued.
The bodyguards themselves, much like grunts and captains, can be forced to bend against their will and even be pitted against one another, or even take on the war chief themselves. If Talion bends a bodyguard to their side and proceeds to kill the war chief, then that possessed bodyguard can be promoted to that role and still be under Talion's dominance.
This perception of military rank is implemented in different ways. One of the most interesting parts about Shadow of Mordor is that there isn't really any such thing as a Game Over. If you die, you soon respawn, and if you're killed by a captain, that person may have been promoted to war chief as a reward for their victory. It offers this interesting motivation where you can decide whether to go after and kill the enemy that you was your original target, or chase after the bastard who was promoted with the help of your corpse.
Each player will have a unique experience in this regard: Sauron's Army hates you (of course) and the war chiefs want to hunt you down. In one of the main menus you can access Sauron's Army and see all the different characters each one has individual names, traits and characteristics. These will be unique to each player, requiring different strategies to take them down.
When I played initially, I went straight for the one war chief, despite him having two body guards. However, I didn't realised that one of his traits was being averse to combat. As a result, once I engaged in combat with him, he called in a bunch of minions (and his body guards came running) and he actually escaped. This changed the entire mission structure two of his body guards actually ended up started duels with other mini-bosses which I could interrupt to take them out or brand them, or leave them to the duel to leave one less mini-boss to battle.
Now that he's gotten a taste of greatness, Rûg wants more. He challenges a higher-ranking orc to a duel, and then atop a narrow wooden bridge, surrounded by his bloodthirsty brethren Rûg realizes the error of his ways. It takes less than a minute for a mountain of an orc to finish Rûg off, but with his last moments on this Middle-earth, Rûg sees what surely must be a trick of a waning mind. The human that Rûg had killed to gain his power solemnly stands among the cheering orcs, his face saying, (Gotcha, fool.)
Although I might have embellished a bit, this is exactly what happened during my long E3 demo this week of Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor. The game takes place between The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings and stars Talion, a ranger who was killed along with his family by Sauron's orc forces. He's revived but his family isn't by some mysterious power. And he's given cool Wraith powers that let him slow down time while shooting a bow, see the outlines of orcs through walls, and most importantly, corrupt the minds of his enemies so that they'll fight for him.
My Shadow of Modor demo at E3 dropped me into the fields of Middle-earth near an abandoned castle that's home to a whole orc collective. I'm sneaking in to kill their leader, though I got a little warm-up against his underlings first. The Batman: Arkham-style combat is easy to adapt to, and after I beheading a group of orcs with ease, I take on their leader. I felt more confident than Legolas and Gimli combined. And then I.died. While I'm humbled in defeat, the victorious orc moved up the ranks, more powerful than ever.
As I wait to respawn, I get acquainted with the entire army of orcs, all with specific names and ranks, including one lieutenant that another GamesRadar editor had battled weeks before in another demo. Shadow of Mordor has a long memory, while my mind is currently focused on revenge on that one orc that killed me.
And Continue Play:
Perhaps the biggest feature of this open world epic that spans the 60 years between J.R. R, Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, is its adaptive Nemesis System; as the player progresses through the story, each enemy that Talion meets will remember their previous interaction and adjust accordingly for their next encounter. This system has the potential to allow for massive replay value, as the player may decide one day to flee the battle only to have his nemesis taunt him for doing so, or maybe next time he'll be taught a lesson he won't soon forget the options seem practically limitless.
Another very interesting aspect of gameplay is Talion's Wraith abilities, and how they are used to disrupt Sauron's army by imposing his will on the creatures around him. The player can choose to create minor power struggles within the rank and file, allowing the massive war machine to start crumbling to pieces, or simply just to go straight in with the traditional hack'n'slash. The player is also working with their own Orc forces, growing in power by helping their own army complete missions or by helping Talion disrupt Sauron's forces from the inside by assassinating Orc commanders or gathering covert intelligence.
