I understand not being able to get it in the previous gen copies of the game but I would like to know what this means for what is there. I would guess it's the same game but without the dynamic "relationships" you build with the different enemies.

Yeah. My guess is all the orc captains are still there, they just don't wander around/have contextual lines and stuff. Like there probably still are the power struggle side-missions, but the backstabbing and stuff might not be as complex.

(Apologies in advance if I digress, but this seemed like as good a place as any to discuss this.)

The nemesis system is badass. I'm not really big into middle-earth or all the LOTR lore (having simply enjoyed the movies but not one who became obsessed with them by any means), but I may have to pick this game up simply because I really like the nemesis structure. I'm not sure what the limits are on last-gen with it, but that's pretty much the entire appeal of the game in my book, as otherwise this seems like your typical open-world game.

I'd love to see the nemesis system make it into other games. I think it could make for some really interesting alternate history stuff for a war game. Anyway, just wanted to give some props for a cool idea in Shadow of Mordor. Carry on.

Hey, have we thought about calling it the Nemesystem? Okay, bye.

@dondo: I'm curious about this as well. I have it on PC so it doesn't really affect me, but I wonder if it's pared down to a simple roster of Captains with strengths and weaknesses. I would even be surprised if the roster filled back out as you killed them; I could see it being as simple as 5 War Chiefs, and then a static group in the lower ranks without any contextual dialogue or growth.

This may sound odd, but I'm actually glad it's excluded from previous gen versions--and I say that as a PS3 owner who would really like to play the game.

I've long thought that the advances this generation wouldn't be in graphics, but in AI. If the AI that makes up the nemesis system really can't run effectively on last-gen tech, that's a point in favor of my hypothesis. And it means we still have a lot of cool AI tricks to look forward to as the generation goes on.

I may be getting a PS4 soon for this and Bloodborne...

It would basically be [Ubisoft open world game] with Batman combat. Fun, but less interesting.

Or Nemesys™

I have a hard time believing the AI is being crunched so hard and constantly that it is a higher priority to cut than some of the shinier graphics tech.

I really hope it makes it into other games, but it seems to rely fairly heavily on the player coming back from the dead to have multiple encounters with the same characters, something that would be harder to write around for gta cops or something.

My brother in law might rent this when it comes out on PS3, I'm extremely curious what the differences are.

In that specific case they already have a setup for it since whenever you die you just end up in the hospital.

@pete0r: Systems are far more demanding than graphics in many cases. Take Sports games for example. This year in NHL was the first year we ever had individual AI for all players on a team, plus the overhead Team AI and Game systems. Previously your the whole team was just one loose AI. Or maybe groups of players.

It's not that the Nemesis System is necessarily "higher priority" to cut, but that the graphical sacrifice/loading/etc needed to include it would probably be untenable in the current market.

One thing I've thought of is that Crackdown did a much more limited version of this early this generation. Mercenaries before that.

It was still good there. The idea never was messed with until this game came along. And then they obviously made a much more expansive system.

Revisiting the crime organizations with a system like this in Crackdown 3 would be awesome.

I am really early on but I was going in ready for the nemesis stuff to not be anywhere as cool as people are saying and I have already been blown away by how much fun it was to Hunt down the only captain who had killed me, I went in kinda recklessly and almost died got a 2nd captain on me and had to dodge and weave but I did Not want that asshole to get away.

I caught him and shanked him and it was awesome.

I cant imagine the overhead Nemesis AI crunching in the background is not possible to do on last gen, it seems very light weight and mostly does it stuff when you die like it takes a turn Civ style.

In the big battles you take part in though where you have like 100 orcs with several Captains, creatures and grunts with different alliances going on. I imagine the realtime AI will be alot dumber on last generation hardware. Dynasty warriors clones anyone?

I really don't think "advanced AI" is the reason Nemesis was excluded from the previous gen versions of Mordor. It doesn't seem that complex, and plenty of games have been done before on those platforms with AI that was similarly complex.

Or a new Mercenaries where the Deck of 52 thing is actually a dynamic system, rather than just a list of bosses.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the older systems could handle it, it was just excluded for marketing reasons/to drive sales for the new console versions.

EA will never make a new Mercenaries game, and with how their ownership of Pandemic went down I don't think they should.

I was hunting a Warchief last night after killing his bodyguards, thinking that it shouldn't be too terrible to take him down. Unfortunately the mission led me into a stronghold where no fewer than four (!) other Captains aggroed me. Thank god the Warchief was vulnerable to stealth.

Yeah there are a lot of directions to go. It's just cool to see reactive AI like this because it fits these open games better. I would love systems like this in Just Cause for example. Loved just messing around in Just Cause 2 and capturing turf but the missions were terrible.

@mb: Which games are similar?

I find Mordor obviously complex and impossible to replicate on a ps3-level machine. Scratching my head thinking what I'm missing since so many people seem to think this is a marketing omission.

I've never devolped anything which is really the same myself to be fair but the systems experience I have does make it seem reasonable this is a ressource heavy process. There's a very large number of simulations running. You could fake a lot of it with canned scripts, but that ain't the same.

AI groups in most games are exceedingly simply and ultimately graphics, which are also reasource intensive, are the obvious priority. NBA 2k15 didn't share AI cross platform and neither does NHL, no clue why it's hard to believe this is any different.

Unfortunately some people just seem angry about the idea that the new consoles/some PCs can do things old

machines can't. Internet as usual I guess.

I mean, I appreciate that marketing tends to be BS, but... Think about. Businesswise only an idiot would lie about the nemesis system and ruin his own sales. LOTR isn't the game to push people across the new console line, so why lie?

It's always such a relief to see "vulnerable to stealth" on an enemy.

@theht: or vulnerable to ranged for those hot Shadow Strike captain kills.

@geraltitude I didn't say there were similar games, I said there were games on PS3 & 360 that had some pretty good AI - so the excuse that the AI was so complex that the old consoles couldn't handle it seems like BS to me. Just because there are some interactions between some AI elements doesn't necessarily mean there is a full on "simulation" constantly running in the background of Mordor. A lot of the Nemesis system seems to be about the illusion of a grand simulation happening but without actually simulating most of it. For instance - Captain A attacks Captain B and there is a struggle, and you get a new mission to interfere with it if you want to. Those characters typically aren't even loaded into the world, and aren't even doing anything unless you go to the mission and load it up, then the "simulation" really starts happening. Beyond that, it's probably a very simple algorithm to determine which captain is victorious in their little struggle they're having off-screen somewhere.

It all works very well and does give the sense that a lot is happening in the world, but that's just it...a whole lot really isn't happening.

@pete0r: This exact version of the concept works best in some form of fantasy sure, but In GTA you just wake up in a hospital, why is that any different? Also think bigger. I think it was Alex that tweeted something about trying this out in a wrestling game. Any sports franchise would be great though, working your way through the ranks, building up to the big boys at the end, have something like a morale system so beating somebody who beat you at hockey a few games back gives your team a stat boost. There's a lot of cool ways to work it, and hopefully a bunch we can't even imagine.

@mb: It's easy to look at it and say that, but we ultimately don't know what it is and is not simulating at any given time. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, since the Nemesis System ended up being precisely as awesome as they said it would be. And to another poster's point, why would they rip out the only unique feature of their game and risk losing sales if older machines are capable of running it? Between the delay and the removal of the Nemesis System from the older gen, it's pretty clear that there's some difficulty in getting it up and running properly on the previous generation of consoles. Maybe the port team had the exact same thought process as you and found out that it was a little bit more involved than they thought.

I'm just imagining other games with the nemesis system, like a Skyrim game where factions are after each other or you become the leader of the dark brotherhood and all the time you are waiting for someone to try and claim it for themselves hunting them down and killing them before they get you

It might be CPU (new machines have at least 2x the processing cores as the previous gen), or it might just be memory (the new machines have at least 10x the memory of the previous gen) - either of those could easily be the blocker that's stopping them putting the nememis system onto older machines.

Is there anyone that can tell exactly what fetures has been stripped from last gen?