I really like Shadow of Mordor. It gives personality and purpose to evolutions of great game mechanics and systems. It progresses games.

And it's really fucked up. Outside of the usual white male power fantasy family fridged to motivate revenge narrative thing, the essential contradiction of humanizing Uruks, giving them emotions and back stories and motivations and personalities, so that killing them is more interesting--that contradication is disturbing at its core. I haven't started enslaving them yet, but that's probably worse.

But this is a good thing for the industry. Violence in games is usually out of context and anti-humanistic. It's the military philosophy of the dehumanized combatant--in order to kill something, killing must be justified. Positive justifications include seeing killing as defense, seeing it as serving the common good, seeing it as necessary. Negative justifications include making enemies inhuman monsters, even when they are human. Putting them in the same uniform, associating them with utter evil, covering their faces in helmets and rags--all of this is used, and has been used for millennia, to make killing an enemy easier.

Shadow of Mordor refuses this easy tack. What its designers have done, perhaps accidentally, is made each enemy a recognizable agent. When I kill them, sometimes I feel accomplishment, having overcome some jerk who has openly mocked me as he murdered me before. Sometimes I feel more empty, especially when I'd never seen this dude before and now he's dead. And sometimes I feel confused, because didn't I just kill you?

It's an important system. And of course we're seeing it first (or at least in its first pop-cultural incarnation; I know Dwarf Fortress exists) as a way to make killing and enslaving more interesting.

That's fucked up, but I'm glad it's happening. Here's the moment, as many developers and users on here have said, here's the moment to steal something and make it matter. Give players a greater playspace for social skill development by turning the Nemesis system into the Friendship system (or something way cooler sounding).

I like this game. I'm glad it exists. Now I want the next gen to be about making AI like this into something that builds rather than just destroys. I'm excited.

(Other cool totally stolen but better shit in this game: batman combat with a slow-mo range attack that makes the flow feel far more manageable (and great perks), assassin's creed dive from high places with no stupid hay required cuz wraiths, skyrim rotating objects with hidden spoken stories and character dialogue associated with each making collectibles feel meaningful, weapon-specific skill tests to improve those weapons, finally an awareness mechanic where escape feels hard enough to be challenging but not so frustrating that death feels like a better alternative to running, a combo-based running mechanic so you don't need a car to traverse in cool ways, a huge awareness radius in wraith mode so seeing enemies through walls is eminently tactical, and probably more. It's a good game)

Interesting take though maybe a little overthought; would certainly like to see a Spec Ops: The Line + Shadow of Mordor meshup in the future though.

for the love of god someone make a game of throne nemesis system game.

I really hope this game represents the first step in advancing AI systems for the current generation. It's something we've needed for a while and I'm glad to see somebody take a chance and get it right.

It still blows my mind that more devs haven't realized this is where games should be going. Video games all look pretty great. We have a whole mess of transistors in those consoles. We're sort of done with that.

AI is the next frontier, and I can only hope we get even just a little more advancement there than, "Wow! Look at the reflections on that car in this average serialized racing game!!".

The dream for me in terms of technical feats in videogaming has always been to blow up a massive skyscraper with incredibly detailed and dynamic destruction mechanics, where every floor has furniture and lamps and shit on the desks. Just topple that shit in the middle of the a perfectly rendered city and keep it at a manageable framerate.

Battlefield 4 had you taking down a skyscraper but that was a canned animation.

I do wish video games could find an elegant way around YOU JUST STABBED HIM IN THE FUCKING FACE AND RAKED IT ALL THE WAY DOWN TO HIS DICK ... now he's at 70% health!

For sure, modern military combat mixed with humanizing enemies (Spec Ops more went for monsterizing the player) could be powerful. If it gives players an understanding of the horrors of war, great!

This is correct.

Right? Make me care about the computer people rather than focusing on making their follicles nicer. Feels like games have been aiming at AI that is more responsive in combat, but not AI that is more believable as a responsive agent. This is heading in the right direction.

Technologically, deeply impressive. Humanistically, I couldn't give a shit. I mean, that sort of comprehensive physics rendering could be used in much more interesting, non terroristic ways, yes?

Huh, realistic combat response to horrific violence is an interesting thought. Weird how Mordor makes Orcs feel like people but makes death feel far less real and permanent.

Not only is it cool for the enemy's to have character those traits Directly relate to them being weaker or stronger making all that stuff very meaningful.