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

Looks cool. Could be good. They may very well be promoting way more than they can deliver.

I don't mean that they are making Peter Molyneux level promises, but more like the Radiant AI and "never ending quests" in Skyrim, that while impressive and technically delivering, didn't nearly live up to the expectations they had build upon themselves.

Oh, and I agree with that this character really doesn't fit in the Lord of the Rings universe. Which is fine, because none of the LoTR games really fit the universe. It's not hard for me to separate the core LotR mythology from things like this --- fun, but dumb.

They both comment on "You left X to burn" I'm worried that's the first hint on a lot of repeating dialogue for a game which can be a problem with procedurally generated stuff.

Also NEW Orcs.

LOTR Films: Violent Monsters

Hobbit Films: Intelligent Warmasters

This: Smart Sociable Cockneys with Towns and speeches.

I'm super big into LotR, but I couldn't give less of a shit about how faithful this is to canon. LotR wasn't really written with the intention of being made into an action game (also, the ivory tower approach to LotR is kinda' silly and overzealous), and it's been fairly well established that people kinda' like comic book-y, over-the-top action games, even when dealing with history.

As a result, I kinda' feel like the canon here is about as important here as historical accuracy is to Assassin's Creed.

Now, they could wind up with a totally lame plot, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

Hardly looks faithful to LOTR (paints pretty broad strokes) and the actual characters shown are pretty vapid. Though if the structure actually pans out to be near as good as promised and is designed around multiple playthroughs, has more RPG mechanics than AC, it could be totally rad. The combat doesn't looked too great - a slightly different take on AC/Arkham, maybe with some Witcher 2 thrown in. Hopefully they get it to an interesting place to keep it varied/engaging on multiple playthroughs (higher difficulty settings possibly.)

Now there's a game.

@brnk: You must be the life of the party.

First Arkham/AC Style game we've had in a proper fantasy setting. That's kind of all I needed. Glad to see this sub-genre of open world games has life beyond Batman and Assassins.

Can't wait to find out more.

Big promises, over the top violence, dumb writing wherein everyone blurts out their personal histories, painfully bland and macho protagonist... this looks kinda dumb, duders.

The purist Tolkien fan in me thinks the story/premise of this game are retarded.

The gamer in me/fantasy nerd/tabletop RPG player in me thinks this looks insanely fun.

@moregrammarplz Unless this is there version of an "elseworlds" approach to LOTR, which I am fine with. They haven't tried to say that this is canon or anything. I agree with you though, but I still think this looks great. I see this as the same problem game makers have when they want to use magic in LOTR which doesn't really word in a DnD kind of way.

@spoonman671: mages is cooler word than wizard.

I'm fascinated by the concept of the enemies power structure being generated at the start of the game, so you can play sides against one another, also like the idea of the dynamic narrative.

Mages? MAGES?!

Morgoth is forever locked behind the Void by the Valar. If Morgoth was back on Middle Earth he wouldn't be riding around on some human ranger, he'd be destroying the mountains by looking at them.

Jeez....that looked great!

It looks like a very fun game, but I would have vastly preferred Monolith had created a new world/characters instead of trying to bend Middle-Earth to fit all of there game play ideas in. I find it funny how WB obviously had them make it in Middle-Earth to get more sales when it's that decision that makes me not want to play an fairly intriguing game.

I really want to play the game for its gameplay, but I really really don't want to deal with the game being in a setting it has no business being in.

Aw Man! I really hope they stick the landing with this one.

say whaaaaaat the game actually looks sick homies

I've heard this "dynamic, living, breathing world" shpeal before. I'll believe it when I see it.

this looks pretty well done but (forgive me if i'm wrong) the gameplay seems really reminiscent of a couple other big action franchises. for that reason i'm not seeing whats so exciting about it unless you are really into tolkien stuff i guess.

This looks metal as fuck

Is it out this year or next?

Actually looks okay.

I was wondering where the next assassins creed would be. Guess it's Mordor.

@development: Actually that vision mode looks a lot more like Eagle Vision from AC to me.

This looks surprisingly good but when it comes to fantasy I prefer to play the not-so-powerful type, rather than a mage superhero assassin. Though he looks pretty cool.

Very cool gameplay concepts though with villains. Pretty much every openworld RPG should follow on that point, it's something that happens in D&D and has been lacking for too long. Some more canned examples in other games I guess but this create-a-villain system looks more open.

Finally, and I damned myself with this, but, after reading the ign article about the Ubi developer who says this is Ezio code running many of the animations, and now I can't help but see it everywhere.

You saw that too huh... Yeah I'm expecting this nemesis system to be pretty much just interchangeable bits of dialogue and cutscenes as well, much like the Telltale adventure games of late. Not that it's a bad idea, but I'd rather they not try to oversell it like that. The Telltale games disappointed for the same reason I thought.

@arbitrarywater: well my problem with lotr is that all the mages......suck. All the do is force push or summon birds. At least Throw some fire come on.

People who like Lord of the Rings, and there are plenty of them out there who like it more than I do. This just seems like it's descending into generic dark fantasy at some point.

I would welcome a fantasy setting Assassins Creed. But I really think this particular setting wouldn't work. I mean, Mordor is not a beautiful place, the visuals there are dull and uninteresting, there's no one that looks like you, so you can't merge around in crowds, which'd make most of the unique gameplay aspects of AC impossible.

Also, I'm pretty sure rangers do not have superpowers in LOTR. Magic is super rare among humans, so this is forcing the scenario so much already, it could just as well be set somewhere else.

@arbitrarywater: lotr is boring, this is awesome

Who cares about this not fitting in.

Listen here Player! You left me with [MY BURNED FACE] and now I am going to [BURN YOUR CORPSE]. I can't see it being much more dynamic than that.

Of all the Lord of the Rings games that make Tolkien roll in his grave, this is perhaps the most egregious. It looks neat and it's now on my radar, but the connection to the source material seems incredibly tenuous. I'm pretty sure Lord of the Rings doesn't have crazy wraith magics. Or Assassin's Creed style parkour, for that matter.

Yeah, I mean who is he to put value on the established lore he loves?!

I agree completely about the shoe-horned magical abilities. Tolkien's magic is mostly non-obvious, almost more of an invisible influence on will itself. This is just diluting it further. Middle-Earth doesn't work by DnD rules, and that's what still makes it stand out in a world over-saturated with high fantasy knock-offs.

Never mind that the game looks like a boring copy/paste job, uses the least visually interesting locale in Peter Jackson's representation of Middle-Earth, and is already over-selling itself, like when the Orc's dialogue specifically references the earlier face-burning. I'll be surprised if they actually record a line of dialogue for every variation, with every voice, etc.

Well then. That was an effective video.

Putting some hope into this.

Wow... its kind of hard not to see the point of the AC designer about lifted assets. Everything, from the climbing to the shape of the ropes, looks lifted from Assassins Creed.

As long as it doesn't have Assassin's Creed horrendously boring combat mechanics i'm fine with it. Be closer to the Batman games and you can take my money.

@moregrammarplz: magic in LOTR is not exclusive to wizards, unless Galadriel is now a wizard too.

I hear ya! Me too, this looks brilliant!

I hope this is not a Star Wars 1313 situation. This looks promising.

Does anyone remember that LotR RPG for PS2 that was basically a Final Fantasy game and incredibly non-cannon? Because it was super fun and who cares if it's non-cannon. I'm looking forward to this for the same reason! (if it's fun or not is still to be determined)

I really, really wish that LOTR developers would look a little further than the timeline of the books. Without trying to sound too geeky The Silmarillion is full of epic battles, hordes of evil Elves becoming Orcs, shape-shifting demigods fighting giant evil wizards, and hundreds of Balrogs riding fucking Dragons into battle!

Imagine all that and more with a Peter Jackson design, perfect for a crazy Assham mash-up

Instead we seem to be stuck with bloody Aragorn Starkiller in Unheard Of Plot Twist XIV.

Am I the only one here who would be totally cool with this game being outrageously non-canon and end with Talian climbing the Black Tower and stabbing Sauron in the fucking eye?

Well on one hand the is like the only LoTR based game that has ever looked remotely good to me. So that's a plus.

The whole dynamic enemies and memories stuff sound like the usual over promising and the "reactionary dialogue" certainly was pretty straightforward. It might turn out to be cool, or just a simplistic system that makes little difference in the end. There seemed to be a hell of a lot of generic lieutenants in that assassinate menu and still only the one unique commander.

The amount of things this lifts from AC series is pretty nuts tho, those climbing animations are going to be hard to put out of your mind when playing it, as they are exactly the same.

And finally the wraith superpowers seem kinda op in the LoTR setting.

This "Nemesis" system is not procedurally generated and I hope Monolith is not claiming it as such. There is very clear if A then B branching storylines. Your choices may feel more organic, and kudos to the devs for that, but there is a predetermined flowchart to your encounters with your foes.

@evilsbane: They're the same animations. Put yourself in the dev's shoes: if you're building a climbing system from the ground-up (a really hard thing to do) you aren't going to make it look like the status quo; you're going to put your own spin on it or make it look unique in some way. Definitely the same animations and the same code in that climbing stuff.

I'm pretty certain that this is just a really basic mock-up they threw together, using ACII's code to fill in the gaps to demonstrate what *could be* similar to a climbing system they put in the final product. If it really is "pre-alpha," like they say, then all of what they showed is subject to change, the game itself is unplayable in any real form, and all they tried to show was their "vision," but got caught with their pants down.

The story stuff looks interesting, but that's about it. I've played this game about 3-4 times already and it was Batman/AC. Wish Monolith was free to make an original ip again, this just seems boring.

This looks so good!

This makes complete sense because as soon as he starting climbing something I just saw Nothing but AC, those animations are either really good copies or its just those animations.

Pre - Alpha code they say? :D

This could be REALLY neat but lord knows it's gonna have some super-jank for the level of ambition they've got going for it.