Coming out of nowhere in 2014, Warner Bros. and Monolith's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor surprised everyone with its quality. This is a game (a licensed game, no less) that was high in people's game of the year lists.
It was alsoa game that everyone thought would see a raft of copycats thanks to its innovative Nemesis system, which saw orcs of different abilities and vulnerabilities rising up in Sauron's ranks as you progressed through the game, returning to stove in your skull with an even bigger club every time you failed to not quite finish them off.
So it was a shock that it took three years for the follow-up Middle-earth: Shadow of War to be announced. But now it's on the horizon, and out very soon (August 2017) for PS4, Xbox One and PC, we've got a laundry list of ways it could top even the first game. Go on Warner, give us the precious already.
Shadow of Mordor came to Xbox 360 and PS3, as well as PS4 and Xbox One. As such it meant that the game looked reasonable, but similar to games like Destiny, you could tell it was developed with both generations' hardware in mind. Unlike Destiny, it also ran like an orc with both its legs hacked off on the older hardware, with terrible framerates only masked by the fact that everything was a greeny brown anyway, making it hard to really be sure.
This time round, we want to see Monolith go hard with the current consoles. Given that Warner's have already announced the game is coming to the souped up Xbox Scorpio, we're expecting great things. You don't talk about hardware that we don't have specs for unless you're planning to use it, right? We want to see every pustule on our rival orcs' faces, please.
We're still stunned that nobody has tried to copy this system in the years since release. While the game leaned heavily on Warner Bros' signature Batman Arkham-style combat, and even had many similarities to Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series, the Nemesis System was unique and blew us away.
If you were killed by an enemy, he would be stronger when you met him again, and he'd remember you. There was a hierarchy to the enemies that required planning, and we want more of it. Perhaps this time the hierarchy will include massive beasts, and slightly fewer orcs. We're not complaining, it's a cracking system, but now the hype is real for a new game, we want more depth, just more of that system.
A tighter world
One of the few problems we had with the original game is that it suffered from being a very large world. This meant that side-quests were a little repetitive and that, in tandem with the graphics being only OK, meant that we grew slightly bored of trekking around doing the same thing over and over again – even if you could do it while riding a caragor and trampling over everything in your path. Give us less reason to fast travel this time please.
You may not know this, but Monolith Studios are responsible for some of the scariest games of the last generation. The studio put out Condemned (both games, and boy we'd do something illegal for a third game) and some of the F.E.A.R. series, too. While Lord of the Rings isn't necessarily known for its horror, there's no reason why we can't hope Monolith doesn't lean into those past games and deliver some tension and scares. Just no more 'press X to hug wife', please.
Air combat, please
Bear with us, but while the superb Batman-style combat on the ground is amazing, there are winged creatures in Lord of the Rings and that means there's no reason we can't get on their back and fly high, and mix it up with some air combat. Surely Monolith and Warner Bros. will go bigger and better with the sequel, so it'd be very cool if we could ride an eagle or maybe boot a Nazgul off his fellbeast and watch him plummet into a volcano.
While we don't hate quick time events (QTE) as much as other people, there's definitely a point to be made that you're this supreme badass for the entire game, only for major moments to be stolen from you by a few button presses. There's scope and scale for some incredible encounters in Middle-earth, so let us keep control and take down the big baddies our own way, with freedom and tactical nous.
A better story
Again, we didn't dislike the story, so much as feel that Shadow of Mordor left a few unanswered questions and was a little bit light. Starting strong, it just faded away a bit, perhaps due to the open world nature of the game. We'd like to see a tighter story in tandem with our wish for the more focused world. There are plenty of games out there with a million icons all over the map, but we'd like our Middle-earth laser focussed where possible.
Everything's better with friends, right? There's so much potential in this type of game, and few developers add multiplayer that feels organic. Rather than the potential for some kind of tacked on challenge rooms, or PvP multiplayer, we'd love Monolith to add in something that lets us enjoy the world with our friends, even if it's an optional extra mode.
Ubisoft bungled this with the multiplayer in Assassin's Creed: Unity, but we still think there's a rich vein of potential here, just waiting to be mined by the right necromancer with an unlimited horde of mindless slave daemons to bend to his or her whim.
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