Shadow of Mordor: 9 Years Later

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The Nemesis System is one of the greatest things in gaming, and having it only in Shadow games is crazy.

The nemesis system being locked away from us is the biggest crime.

If I may? I was a senior environment artist on Shadow of Mordor, and Shadow of War. The intent was not to follow the movies or books, but to dig into the Silmarillion, and other aspects of the Tolkien universe. Truth? Michael DePlatter was lead design, which is why it plays like Assassin's Creed. Philip Straub, the art director on it, had a few things to say about it. I asked him about it, in a post-mortem. I quipped. "It's like you're running through a fantasy painting!" His reply, was, "That was the intent." "Ah!"

"Mordor goes hard, and it goes nowhere else" The best descriptor of this game by far

The Nemesis system was great! I remember in Shadow of War there was an orc that had Iron Will I wanted to dominate. So I attempted to humiliate him to get rid of it. On our next encounter he still had Iron Will. So I humiliated him again. Eventually this went on long enough that he eventually became proud of it and started wearing hand prints all over his armor as a badge of honor. I had legitimately gained a rival in this orc.

My nemesis ended up being a random crossbow orc that got a lucky shot on me while I was running at low health, and that dude haunted me always lurking in the shadows popping out whenever it was inconvenient to finish me off and make himself even more powerful at one point I think he even one shot me. When I finally killed him, I was overjoyed when he came back to life I ran away in terror lmao

The stealth for me was such a huge part of my enjoyment of the game. While I was learning how to play and didn’t have all of the unlocks I used stealth a lot more. To me, it made sense that as Talion learned his powers even died a few times he would grow less patient and move away from sneaking around. Stealth would become less of a factor in the same way that later in the game I was usually walking or running straight at enemies and hacking them down with ease. Great build up to the power fantasy imo

I fondly remember fighting 50 orks at once in an arena in a desperate melee where I had to pull out all the stops to win, and after a few attempts I won, that’s when I knew I loved this game

Shadow of Mordor was way too good at making killing orcs satisfying. Killing orcs never got truly boring - it got dull and tedious, but once you get stabbing and head chopping, you never really want it to end. You want the waves to keep coming, even to the point of ignoring captains so you can keep killing the smaller guys. I remember scouting the very biggest fortresses because they guaranteed the biggest combos.

In your talk about the Nemesis system, I remembered my nº1 Nemesis in this game, and it was in my first run. A tough son of an orc that had no weaknesses, almost all resistances, a metal shield and a poisoned weapon, who hated me too so he was always a pain in the ass to fight, that returned from the grave at least 3 or 4 times, stronger, to the point that the only way to damage him was to play around and using basic attacks because averything else he blocked. This fucker made my life hell playing this game, and I do not remember the name because it was years ago but I will always remember his head covered in red fabric with ropes, his metal armor and shield and his green lance. In the final fight I almost got to a choke point so tought I almost dropped the game, but I finally killed him and now my Talion lives knowing he is king and top of the chain in SoM.

My favorite story with the Nemesis system was in Shadow of War not in Shadow of Mordor, but I still felt like I should share it here. I played partway through the game on release but gave up on it due to the lootboxes that they infested the game with. But after they removed them all I decided to give the game another shot. There was this powerful legendary orc named Hoglig the Machine and he lived up to his name. It took me several tries to take him down and when I finally did I decided to convert him, I needed a powerful ally to control the region after all. I had planned to make him the overlord when I finally take the castle and for now I put him as my personal bodyguard in case I needed aid. Eventually I got into a tough fight where I was trying to take out a captain and got ambushed by another. So I finally called in Hoglig to mess them up and teach them a lesson, instead he saw the moment of weakness as an opportunity to betray me and he took me down but not before I took out the other 2 captains that were in that fight. So I planned my revenge and killed him and I thought that was the end of it. An interesting story about gaining a powerful ally only to be betrayed by him and work to enact my revenge. But many hours later I was playing a story mission where I have to take out a necromancer, he brings back dead orcs as mindless husks of their former selves and who did I see among the ranks of his mindless army but Hoglig the Machine himself. Despite it not being required for the mission I couldn't let that stand. Hoglig had his personality stripped from him and his corpse was now being puppeted around and forced to follow some necromancer's whims. I vowed to put him to rest, because despite his betrayal he had earned my respect and I wouldn't let myself finish the mission without completeing my real task. It was a tough mission, but I put Hoglig down and got my revenge on the necromancer. I'll never forget that moment of seeing Hoglig as a mindless zombie staring blankly at me and the rage I felt towards the necromancer who caused it.

The fact that I still remember my nemesis from the first game: Ronk the Judge, still astounds me. What an amazing game.

The Nemesis System is truly one of the greatest inventions in gaming history...... Hopefully its more used in future games

As someone who's put 200+ hours into shadow of war, pretty much every negative listed in the video in was fixed in SOW. Truly the GOAT developers

I still remember my ultimate nemesis. Ugluk Swordmaster, who was immune to literally everything, except the AOE groundslam ability. So, I had to painstakingly gain a combo from nearby orcs and drain his immense health bar slam by slam. When I finally did so, and branded him, he became my number 1 Warchief and top enforcer. It was, truthfully, the most satisfying thing in the game. He then returned as my bodyguard in Shadow of War, and proceeded to betray me in the late game, gaining Iron Will so I couldn’t brand him. I shamed him, in an attempt to remove his Iron Will, but after the second shame, which drained his power immensely, it dawned on me that further shame him threatened to drive him insane, and remove his power to the point he wouldn’t be a threat. The thought of a long, arduous quest to restore his power was distressing to me, and I decided Ugluk deserved to die the death of a champion. I gave him a death threat to raise his power, and killed him. It was a story spanning over 3 years, and it was entirely unscripted.

This game made the world feel ALIVE for me. I will never forget the time I got killed 2 times by the same orc. I went back to his camp later and guess what? Now he was the commander of it and he even taunted me "come, i will kill you again again!". It was priceless.

I remember more about Tears of Grace's Shadow of Mordor series than I do of my own playthrough, wheras Shadow of War has left me with plenty of memories of my own gameplay.

Shadow of mordor was a key game of my childhood. Even though it was incredibly glitchy on the xbox 360, I still completed it and enjoyed the game as much as I could. A few years later, I got the Xbox One, which I played Mordor on for a second time and then played Shadow of War when it came out. I love this series and always wait for the day they return to it, if they ever do

It's one of my favorite games ever, and I highly recommend disabling the enemy threat indicators on stealth and when they attack, it adds so much to the experience having to pay more attention.