So, this game I've never heard of looks interesting

Open world with proceduraly generated boss encounters and story sequences (although I suspect they're over selling the feature a bit, no way they've got billions of lines of dialogue for non scripted story sequences).

From the gamespot preview:

Through it all, Shadow of Mordor simulates the consequences of holes left in orcish social structure, and offers you choices in how you want to further disrupt it. I joined other press members in directing a stretch of open-world play, choosing how Talion should use the information he gathered from squealers to identify the best path towards vanquishing their leaders. When accessing the hierarchical ladder during interrogation, you can unveil heretofore unidentified combatants, or gather more information about the personalities and combat weaknesses of known enemies. Should your target be a warchief, you might get additional feedback about how to lure him from the safety of his lair. And as you slice and dice your way about Mordor, orcs go about their daily lives and react to the cracks in their order. Enemies have their own missions: they organize and throw feasts, conduct public executions, and so forth. The orcs that succeed in their tasks rise up in the ranks, taking the place of fallen comrades and, in turn, providing you with new orcish fodder to extinguish.

There's certainly some jank in there but they've got some ambitious ideas. Do you think they can pull it off?

They seem to be putting all their eggs in one basket on this one. Hopefully it pays off, I love me some Monolith(NoLF2 is the best) =)

this looks so much like an assassins creed game its ridiculous. even the wires between buildings look exactly the same

@thebeastwithtwobacks: It looks like a mix between Assassin's Creed and The Witcher 2. I am super stoked about that, to be completely honest.

I certainly like the ideas but I don't think this video shows them being well implemented, or at least its difficult to tell with this footage.

I'm happy that Monolith is still making games even if they aren't making NOLF3 or something else that's original.

This looks a lot like Assassin's Creed and Batman, only you have magical abilities. Looks great, fidelity wise. Lots of enemies on screen, great character detail, even if that cloak seems mostly useless. Everything they're planning sounds cool, amazing even, but there's just something a little derivative about this game to me right now.

That shifting into the wraith world seems a blatant rip off of Soul Reaver.

You know, if they actually deliver on what they promise in this video, it could be pretty cool.

It all looks crazy ambitious, so it's most likely either going to be a technical nightmare on release, utterly littered with bugs, or at least won't be nearly as groundbreaking as they're making it out to be. Though even besides its touted 'procedurally generated content' pull, it looks like a fun game regardless, and as others have said kinda resembles both Assassin's Creed and The Witcher spliced together.

At the very least this is another game to look forward to, and one that is at least trying for a little creativity at that. Also feels like a while since we've had a solid LOTR game, too. Last one I remember playing was War In The North, which was... eh, OK, but awfully generic and just sorta forgettable.

Yea, Polygon wrote up an article about it today. The A.I. stuff they're implementing sounds pretty damn cool.

This is very interesting. So much so that I've put this on my to buy list. Neat!

I like the idea of having a really different mission structure in open world games. This could feel a lot more organic. It was very basic, but it's kind of an upgrade of what Viking was doing this last gen.

So is this NOLF Monolith or is it actually Snowblind studios? I remember reading they were absorbed into Mono after War In The North. I played through War twice though, snowblind knew how to make an addictive ARPG.

You lost me at middle

Was that Troy Baker? I'm pretty sure that was Troy Baker guys...

Anyway, the idea of a game set in the most boring region of Middle Earth doesn't really appeal to me, but it does look promising. I'll certainly keep an eye out for that one.

Looks like it could be good but I'm not sure what this has to do with LotR.

Assassin's Creed in Mordor. I'm in.

I was just about to post this preview also. Man if they can pull of those features this game could be a sleepier hit of 2014. It's definitely on my watch list now for 2014.

looks awesome, was that the reveal trailer, never heard anything about it before

I really hope this is good. The Nemesis system sounds real ambitious, but it could start to change the way people create open world games. Might be an alternative to the "talk to NPC/find item" affair which has gone basically unchanged since open world RPGs began.

I also love how they captured the chaos of LotR (films) battles. That final battle in the keep looked amazing! Really reminiscent of things like Helm's Deep

A LotR game that looks and plays good is something I'm very interested in.

They're definitely talking about a lot of ambitious notions. Seems like they're attempting to combine all the best elements of action/adventure games from the last 5 years, if it works it could be really tight. Otherwise, it could go the way of War of the North.

Holy shit, this is genuinely exciting! The gameplay looks like AC on steroids, chasing the guy down as a wraith looks so badass. It looked so much like AC that I kept wondering whether it was being made by Ubisoft, is Monolith owned by Ubisoft? If it's not then they did a damn good job reverse engineering their code. Anyway it looks like they have a lot of awesome bits from AC plus some really cool new ideas as well, really exciting stuff.

Also, I love me some adventure games set in Middle Earth, enough to over look bugginess and poor writing to an extent. I really hope this turns out well.

Well it has about as little to do with LotR as Windjammers. This game is the anti-hypothesis of Tolkiens work.

Looks really neat ... do hope it achives what it sets out to do , if so I will get this

As much as I love Legacy of Kain, I wouldn't call it '' blatant rip off '' when that series has been dormant for a decade. Not even the F2P game will bring this back. Shadow of Mordor looks very promising to me.

At first it looked very Assassin's Creedy, but as it progressed, it seemed to be combining a lot of interesting mechanics. I hope it turns out well! I wanna be a ghost man....

@spyder335: they did an article for Game Informer, but that was about it.

Man, that looks really great. I agree with most of you guys that it's certain to have some bugs but hey at least they are going for something extremely ambitious and new. Sure the gameplay seems familiar but it looks to be well implanted. Gonna keep my eye on this one.

This game looks amazing. Just bought my ticket for the hype train.

yeah, I'm not seeing anything other than the gorgeous graphics that is interesting here. I mean look at it! We've played this before! I still haven't finished the latest one!

This looks like a stinker. It could get better though

"One does not simply Nemesis System into Mordor."

"You shall not NEMESIS SYSTEM!"

"You burned my face and I will burn your corpse! Nemesis Systemmmmmmmmmrrgghhhh!!!"

Love it.

Procedurally generated content is never as impressive as they make out (best case scenario is you enjoy it enough to be able to see the copy/paste tricks and predict what's going to happen). But then again, I don't care about Lord of the Rings so I should probably not comment anyway.

so happy to see Monolith doing an ambitious game like this. looks very promising.

After GoME I'm not touching anything Monolith again until they can prove to me that they can actually ship a working product.

You had me at monolith.

They're talking about precedural AI behavior for a bunch of NPCs in a complexe web of millitary hierarchy and the ability for the player to influence those behaviors trough mind controle, assassinations, etc. That at least sounds interesting. If people could get behind No man's sky with that much ambition develloped by 4 dudes I can be a little hopeful about this game.

If I can just ignore how nonsensical the premise in regards to Tolkien's lore, this looks pretty sweet.

I remember hearing about this game a while back but paid no attention to it. At the time, the idea of the Nemesis system seemed as pretty ambitious, and I might have just shrugged the idea of the game actually coming to fruition. Seeing the video last night, i am pleasantly surprised. Even if the nemesis system turns out into a weak gimmick of sorts (which I really really hope it doesnt), I'm just happy to know that there's going to be a third person game that looks like a lot of fun to play.

Can I rename the character Geralt of Not-Rivia?

Everything about this appeals to me apart from the fact it's tied to LOTR when it really shouldnt be. Sure it blantantly rips off ideas from other games but so do most games that arent indie. Also i'm glad Monolith are making games I care about again.

I agree that it does look a lot like Assassin's Creed. So much so that a former Assassin's Creed dev is claiming that they are using some of his code and animations from Ass Creed 2.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/23/shadow-of-mordor-accused-of-using-assassins-creed-ii-code

I do think the game looks cool though, just hope they're not using assets illegally.

Anti-hypothesis? Did you just make that up? Are you thinking of antithesis? That wouldn't make a lot of sense either. It doesn't have any LotR characters but what they've shown is very much in line with Tolkien's work.

I mean, those climbing animations look reaaaally familiar. Maybe a little too much.

I think they should at the very least try and tweak them a little bit. That sort of just looks like copy and paste.

Either way, game still looks pretty interesting.

@bmehlers: Hah. I thought it looked super familiar. It would also be a lot to tackle to build their own climbing system on top of the other things they're apparently trying to do, so it seems pretty possible it is in-fact Ubisoft's assets. Then again, it's "pre-alpha" so they'll likely change it enough so you can't tell.

As for the game itself: it looks fairly cool, but it's kinda just Arkham Asylum as this point. I know this is the new way people are doing third-person combat these days, but the game's combat and gameplay are nevertheless very similar to AA's, complete with quick-time icons and "gadget" use. It even has Detective Vision (wraith mode). After 3 Arkham games... I don't want to play another one ever again. And that main character is super generic. But yeah, the game looks like it could be alright if they're able to deliver on the things they showed off here.

All you nay-sayers must be dead inside. Don't rain on my hype parade man!

Looks weird. Immediately comes off as just Assassin's Creed: Middle-Earth but some of that enemy relationship stuff seems neat. The wraith abilities look cool too, particularly the teleport.

Could be awesome! Also it's a bit funny that they're just calling it Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

Yeah, been waiting for a game to pull off that signature anime teleport. Guess that could be a cool next gen feature to put in your game

Looks very similar to games like Assassins Creed. But damn, this thing sure sounds ambitious. Hell, I'm just excited about the prospect of LOTR game that might be good. I was left letdown by War in the North. This could be awesome. I'll echo the comments about getting on board the hype train. Colour me cautiously optimistic.

Also like how it's called Middle Earth and not Lord of the Rings. Cause it's not based on the actual Lord of the Rings. That was a different story arc. This should be named something else. Similar to The Hobbit. I like it!!

Looks really nice, I'll be keeping an eye on this game.