Here's That Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor Walkthrough Everyone's Talking About

I have always been up for games in existing IPs using the Assassin's Creed brand of open world gameplay, and if the missions are as dynamic as it seems then this could be the first LotR game I've been interested in a very long time.

It-its not?

Honestly this only uses the LOTR license because its popular, nothing in it fits anything Tolkien has ever written. Could still be a good game but I personally would rather have seen their own universe than trying to cram their ideas to make them fit into Middle Earth and not really succeeding.

The wraith mode feels more like Dishonored to me, even giving the character the powers from an entity with mysterious intentions. The rest totally feels like Assassin's Creed.

For me, any game that boasts "player choice" or "actions that affect the game world", I immediately take it with a grain of salt. Those tend to be massive overstatements and frankly too much player choice ruins the experience. Things like forked content where the player only gets to do mission X or ending Y if they made the correct choices 10 hours earlier.

Now tell me this is a rogue-like, where each playthrough is short and the random events + choices yield a somewhat unique story each time through. That is the correct way to let players "shape their story". IMO.

Assassin's Creed with some added features. And Monolith. Yes, I'll get this.

I'm getting a weird Saboteur vibe from this. Which is cool cause that game, while not the best, had a ton of interesting things about it.

Welp, I'm sold

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I hope this gets a decent co-op horde mode.

Yeah, this is Assassin's Creed as heck. I did a double take when they said the main characters name was Talian. Like I-Talian, the Midde Earth assassin?

But oh well, I guess iteration is just a fact of video games. Assassin's Creed is fun. There are worse games they could borrow from.

Call me a nerd or whatever, but I'm more concerned at the moment about the Lord of the Rings part of the equation. I'm not looking forward to seeing the gymnastics they have to do to make this new character a pivotal figure in the war against Sauron.

I really hope they can carry through their 'procedural enemy' promise. I just don't understand how it will work, since you can't procedurally generate animations that look fitting to everything else or audio clips for combat and dialogue. I could easily see it being like, oh, you're fighting X the Fast Coward! If you don't kill him this time, he'll become a spy and ambush you later in the game. it just seems too easily exploitable, but I really hope it blows me away.

Make another Condemned!!

I haven't been this excited about a LOTR game since I saw the trailer for that sick OG xbox game.

@clonedzero said:

Do you mean in the comments on this video or just everywhere? Because there was only one person here who said that, which is pretty far from "lots"

Anyway, the gameplay seems cool, although like everyone else has pointed out it's very much a blend of assassin's creed and batman. That's basically the standard now for third person action games. But does this need to be in the LotR universe? The tone and pacing of this definitely does not fit that world and you could swap literally every instance of "orc," "mordor," "sauron," or "middle-earth" out of that trailer and it would not have changed a thing. Seems like a cheap way to get more people to look at your game instead of going to the effort of crafting your own world that fits the style of the game.

Or maybe it will totally make sense once we see more of the story.

I would've asked this guy to be in the Fellowship.

If it occurs between Hobbit and LOTR, as the GB page says, then there are five wizards currently in Middle-Earth, not three (though the whereabouts of two are partly-unknown and not addressed in those books): Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast, as well as Alatar and Pallando (the "blue wizards").

Unfinished Tales says Alatar and Pallando were sent to the far east of Middle-Earth, but that's about it.

Batman meets Ass Crees meets LOTR...exciting!!

The rings were forged by Sauron, who is essentially a demi-god like the wizards (as they are all Maiar).

I don't recall them saying this dude has one of the rings of power - I bloody well hope he doesn't, because that would blow up a lot of established LOTR canon.

Those cloak and hair physics look great.

As a Lord of the Rings fan:

a) It's way too early to tell if the main character is going to be bland or not, and there's absolutely no way to tell from this eight minutes of action-oriented gameplay.

b) There are ways to make such a character fit in the overall lore of Middle-Earth, depending on when this is all happening, exactly what he does, and where the story ends. Plenty of room in that universe for a character that doesn't intersect with any of the events in the books - so long as the consequences of his actions aren't too far ranging. Killing some randomly generated orc "lieutenants" on a quest for personal vengeance would probably qualify.

c) The seeming use of magic is going to be hard to explain, I agree. At the same time, if the game is fun, and it's use of the lore is interesting, I'm not going to get too pedantic about it. And Middle-Earth has seen at least a few other people with supernatural aspects to them, if not traditional magic wielders, in books like the Silmarillion.

If Sauron is his ultimate goal I have a sneaking suspicion he might not succeed in his mission.

Gameplay looks terrific, shame it has the LotR license bolted on to it so incongruously.

This could be so amazing....

BAH I say to all the Skeptics and Assassin's Creed comparisons (But seriously it looks crazy similar to it tho), this could really be something special if the powers and interaction stuff work well. Could be a really cool release and probably the first LOTR game i've been excited about since the first Battle for Middle Earth game

looks like an interesting game with mechanics lifted from other games. They needed a fantasy world but could not bother to create their own. So why not just put it in middle earth? Even if the lore part doesn't make any fking sense and doesnt fit there.

Man, this high speed magic teleporting ghost parkour decapitation assassin revenge game looks fucking awesome. I think this video is mislabeled though, it says something about a Lord of the Rings game????

edit: I hope this nemesis system doesn't just end up being "Hero! You [VICTORY_CONDITION]ed me at [PREVIOUS_LEVEL]! I'm going to [THREAT]!

The overly streamlined Assassins Creed style combat does nothing for me. While the nemesis system is a ambitious idea, they're going to way over hype it and set impossible expectations for it.

Looks pretty awesome.

Fucks up the lore but eh, i don't care honestly. Someone else can get super angry and write an overly aggressive blog post or something.

It's also kinda funny lots of people are calling the main character "bland" and "generic" when we know almost NOTHING about him yet.

Well, that seems ambitious. So ambitious that I can't help but be skeptical. However, even just the concept of an open world LOTR game with some stealth elements is enough to get me excited, even if that Nemesis stuff turns out to be naught but lies.

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

I don't give a flying fuck about Lord of the Rings, but this looks like it could be really fun if they can keep the combat from getting overly repetitive.

Reskinned Assassin's Creed game looks better than Assassin's Creed

I am now excited about a video game, this has not happened for a while.

@moregrammarplz: He's matched by Sauron, Tom Bombadil, The Wizards and The Wraith King. And of course a lovable hobbit with a lust for adventure. Still I'm not even that big into LOTR and think this looks kinda lore shattering.

I'm excited

Mark me down for cautiously optimistic.

This is the first cool LOTR thing ever.

But the wizards are not the only ones capable of magic, are they? I mean, there're magical abilities throughout Middle Earth, as far as I know. For instance, Frodo keeps going invisible whenever he puts on the ring, which I would say is a magical ability and he's no wizard. And, in this case, I thought the main character had a ring from one of the wraiths, giving him their powers. Makes sense with the powers like the eagle vision, although I don't know whether wraiths were capable of Saruman's handprint-thingy but I don't think it's ever been said whether Saruman was the only one capable of it, or was exclusive to wizards.

I have to say, I was laughing as soon as he started climbing, and then when he tightroped his way between structures on the exact same cables that exist in the AC series I thought WB Games was pretty shameless. Being a fan of the AC series, though, I'm quite happy to play the same game in Mordor. I want to see more of this controlling other people through your handprint, though, as it seemed a bit like it was only part of the storyline. If you can build up your own army that would be pretty rad.

@development: Also the Wraith mode looks like Eagle Vision from AC.

It looks pretty cool but I gotta say the similarities between moves and even the environment (those cables he walks over are literally straight out of AC games) are somewhat unnerving.

Sick nerd burn!

It's a nice looking game and I like the facial animations of the orcs, certain mechanics do resemble Assassin's Creed but that's cool and it's Monolith that's making it so I'm interested.

@breadfan: Wow! Agreed. This looks amazing. Not really caring that a wraith is not canon. Question is will this be a fun game? Thinking: yes!

Considering the control issues AC has seemingly been unable to solve throughout the series, it will be interesting to see if this game can do it better.

If this wasn't a LOTR game, I would be stoked as fuck.

@internetpizza: Well, with a trailer of such an early build, that's really the last thing that should worry you.

I've never cared for the LOTR universe, but I have to say, this looks fucking sweet!

Give me this mechanic in elder scrolls, fallout, or mass effect. I think it'd be nice if not every interaction had to end in violence. Why can't I just have an intellectual spy game or something like that.

Even if this doesn't turn out as fun as the trailer makes it seem, I really like what they were talking about with the way story progression works.

I've been wanting an Assassin's Creed game without the AC trappings for a while now. I'll check it out, definitely.