![]() ![]() But in Shadow of Mordor, the more you poke the game, the more idiosyncratic and expansive it feels. In other games that play the "emergent gameplay" card, it's relatively easy to find the repetition seams or behavior loops. My favorite thing about the system is just how flexible it is, even when you try to break it. Having logged dozens of hours in Shadow, I can vouch for De Plater's claims. The whole system relies on the fact that your enemies can level up, they can have growth, they can challenge you, and it can be really difficult and evolve." "It’s not trying to make systems interact with a branching narrative, which becomes explosively complicated and impossible. where it is very much about the systems first," De Plater says. "Our system’s much more like a sports game. They could be good with a weapon (inflicting greater damage), or good at blocking vaults (nullifying your jump-over-them maneuver), or a fast runner (making them almost impossible to catch if they flee mid-battle), or can heal rapidly (requiring you to employ a stealth kill), or can't be taken out with stealth kills at all.Ĭharging into battle without mapping that stuff out, no matter how adept you are at Arkham-style combat, is suicide. Each is a panoply of unique motives, weaknesses and strengths. But Arkham's combat is about power-leveling Batman, whereas Monolith's vamp gets fractal by pulling the bad guys into that mix.Įnemies in Shadow of Mordor are clusters of random abilities. Put it this way: I'm not sure I've ever felt this hostile and obsessive toward a bunch of glorified computer algorithms.Ĭutting across all of this is a familiar, seasoned counter- and combo-driven combat system ripped unapologetically from Warner's recent Batman games.ĭe Plater owns it: "From the controls standpoint, absolutely starting point was Arkham," he says. When I saw the orc who'd just killed me leveling up and huzzahing in the game's army overview, I couldn't wait to come off the ropes and hunt the gloating bastard down. It sounds superficial, but for me it was a tipping point that triggered a cascade of psychological responses. The orcs are unfazed by your undead-ness, and take special pleasure in pointing out how many times they'll re-kill you. If you're defeated by one, you'll really get raked over the coals at a followup clash. If you flee from battling an enemy captain, you'll hear about your "cowardice" the next time the two of you tango. "He tells Sam it’s only that they hate us more than each other that we can’t leave them to completely destroy themselves."Įvery encounter is personal: How you behave in battle endures, like a scarlet letter hung round your neck. ![]() "They start off fighting over Frodo’s mithril shirt, and that quickly erupts into mutual slaughter, and later Frodo speaks to the point that that’s the spirit of Mordor," says De Plater. That's the one where Samwise commandeers a fort by turning the orcs against themselves. Monolith's starting point for this thriving society of oppressed and manipulated bestial brooders and backstabbers was the Cirith Ungol scene in The Return of the King, De Plater says. Play poorly (die repeatedly) or negligently (ignore or fail to stop power struggle events), and you're basically cultivating a garden of demigod-like foes. ![]() Allow these "power struggle" events to play out unchallenged, and the world gets a lot less friendly. At any given moment, the map is awash in threats. Orcs can go on hunts, be ambushed by other orcs, stage executions of human prisoners, hold feasts for their followers, run recruiting drives to bolster their ranks, and so on. It's a little like union bumping: Your enemies challenge each other to level up as time passes, or they level up if they whup you in battle. The game's platoons of orcish plebes, subordinate to powerful captains who guard incredibly resilient mini-boss warchiefs, all care as much about deposing each other and clambering up the game's hierarchical ladders as flushing you out.Īnd the ladders are there for anyone murderous enough to scramble up them: Plebes can become captains, and captains can rise to warchiefs, each a gathering threat to you the game does nothing to mitigate. It's a system Machiavelli and Heisenberg would understand, a cauldron of roiling relationships prone to entropic spasms. But its hundreds of marauding inhabitants aren't just looping drones: They're pyramid climbers whose aspirations and grievances and strengths and weaknesses evolve with or without your involvement. With its area-unlocking towers and collection checklists, it's probably nearest the Assassin's Creed series. Shadow of Mordor offers that same sense of fastidiously fabricated sprawl. ![]()
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