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

And with good reason. If this does what Monolith says it'll do, it could be awesome.

Jan. 24 2014

Posted by: Alex

182 Comments

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colourful_hippie

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

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deactivated-5fc86d541ecee

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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.

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Toxin066

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Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

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MooseyMcMan

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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.

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Clonedzero

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Edited By Clonedzero

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.

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MeatSim

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Edited By MeatSim

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.

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Redhorn

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Edited By Redhorn

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]!

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Bicycle_Repairman

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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.

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aidros

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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

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juice8367

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This could be so amazing....

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ianyarborough

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

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Feller13

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Edited By Feller13

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

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Scotto

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As a Lord of the Rings fan, I'm not too enthused by this. The main character suffers from the same problem as Starkiller from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - he's bland, he doesn't fit into the storyline, and he's too powerful. From what I've seen, this Talyan guy is matched only by Sauron and the wizards in terms of his supernatural power.

This seems like an attempt to shoehorn an Assassin's Creed style gameplay concept into Lord of the Rings. I feel like Middle-earth is better suited to an open-world RPG or maybe a Dark Souls style action game with more tactical and deliberate combat, as opposed to crazy sword ballet.

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.

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swaney

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Those cloak and hair physics look great.

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Scotto

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@moregrammarplz said:

@geirr said:

Re-skinned Assassin's Creed with Old Spice-like narrator, alright then.

@moregrammarplz said:

@slashdance said:
@moregrammarplz said:

The main character suffers from the same problem as Starkiller from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - he's bland, he doesn't fit into the storyline, and he's too powerful.

You can tell that by watching this video?

Did you miss the part where he uses his wraith powers to pound the ground, creating a shockwave of ghost energy that knocks the enemies over?

That's magic, son.

Magic in the Middle Earth universe?! Incredulous!

C-. You've mastered the structure of a sarcastic comment but you haven't done a very good job of researching the subject to make sure you aren't making an ass of yourself.

There are three wizards in Middle-earth at the time when this game takes place. Unless this guy is Radagast in disguise, he cannot use magic.

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.

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.

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EmperorMeow

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

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Scotto

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Edited By Scotto

@geirr said:

Re-skinned Assassin's Creed with Old Spice-like narrator, alright then.

@moregrammarplz said:

@slashdance said:
@moregrammarplz said:

The main character suffers from the same problem as Starkiller from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - he's bland, he doesn't fit into the storyline, and he's too powerful.

You can tell that by watching this video?

Did you miss the part where he uses his wraith powers to pound the ground, creating a shockwave of ghost energy that knocks the enemies over?

That's magic, son.

Magic in the Middle Earth universe?! Incredulous!

C-. You've mastered the structure of a sarcastic comment but you haven't done a very good job of researching the subject to make sure you aren't making an ass of yourself.

There are three wizards in Middle-earth at the time when this game takes place. Unless this guy is Radagast in disguise, he cannot use magic.

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.

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MarvinPontiac

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

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beepmachine

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@clonedzero said:

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

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.

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bombedyermom

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schlorgan

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Make another Condemned!!

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The_Nubster

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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.

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Vigil80

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Edited By Vigil80

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.

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OriginalHB504

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

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bunnymud

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Edited By bunnymud

Welp, I'm sold

P.S. Join the Conversation

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defaultprophet

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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.

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Coreus

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

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Traegan

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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.

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Ronald

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Edited By Ronald

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.

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Atwa

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Edited By Atwa

@sweep said:

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

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.

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JesterPC238

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Edited By JesterPC238

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.

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RudeCubes

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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.

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qUaK3R

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Pre - Alpha code they say? :D

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Evilsbane

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Edited By Evilsbane

Wall-climbing = ACII (possibly literally)

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.

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scrappypixels

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This looks so good!

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magicwalnuts

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Edited By magicwalnuts

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.

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development

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Edited By development

@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.

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hippie_genocide

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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.

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Tennmuerti

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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.

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Deusoma

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Edited By Deusoma

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?

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jarowdowsky

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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.

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Robopengy

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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)

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Captain_Insano

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

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deactivated-5ecfb31b61925

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

I hear ya! Me too, this looks brilliant!

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hermes

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

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Protonguy

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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.

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hermes

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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.

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deactivated-5cc8838532af0

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Putting some hope into this.