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

Well then. That was an effective video.

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.

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.

@arbitrarywater: lotr is boring, this is awesome

Who cares about this not fitting in.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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

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

Actually looks okay.

This looks metal as fuck

Is it out this year or next?

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.

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

say whaaaaaat the game actually looks sick homies

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

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.

Jeez....that looked great!

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.

Mages? MAGES?!

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.

@spoonman671: mages is cooler word than wizard.

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.

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.

@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.

Now there's a game.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

No thanks.

I'll probably give it a whirl.

Even though the game shares a lot with ass creed, I have to say the persistent enemy stuff sounds really cool. Also, it has a stealth/crouch/duck mode, so its automatically better than ass creed (I kid, but still. Please add that into the next game ubisoft).

Holy shit, this is being written by the guy who was the lead writer/lead designer on Red Dead Redemption. My hopes for this just skyrocketed to hyped levels.

I totally agree. While the game looks fun, I think the LOTR license is just for a name boost? This game would seem much more at home in another universe.

For all it's fantastical qualities, middle earth always felt more low fantasy than this grimtough explosions everywhere guy.

You're dead to me.

Yeah, most of what was displayed did clash with what (little) I know of the LOTR universe, but it still looks like a game I could have fun with. I'd probably pick it up if it can at least deliver this stuff.

Well that looks pretty great, really excited about to see more about this.

That big guy wasn't very subtle when referencing his previous history with the main character, hopefully that's not indicative of the writing in the rest of the game.

I didn't expect it to look so much like Assassin's Creed, but I'm into it. The rest of the pitch about the gameplay systems didn't impress or intrigue me much, but the "core" of what they seem to be bulding upon seem solid enough that I'd be able to enjoy it regardless.

That was one of the cheesiest trailers I've ever seen and to top that they apparently made an incredibly generic and handholdy game.

I think this could work in canon if the "wraith" is just one of the ring wraiths screwing up with a ranger for shits and giggles...

This game has to suck pretty hard for me not to love it.

Tolkien is rolling over in his grave. None of this fits into the mythology of the books at all. It completely breaks every rule in the books. That said, it's hard not to think that the ideas are cool, even if they should have built their own lore to back it up, rather than try to shoehorn it into Middle Earth.

What's the difference between a mage and a wizard?