Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

[toroid]

God, when will these lets players learn that their inane voiceover isn't funny at all? Keep that shit to a minimum and only speak of valid observations, I didn't come here to hear your fucking voice, I came here to watch the game

Sorry. I should have made it more clear that I was posting a BroTeam video. He's not really a Let's Player, he's ... something else.


EDIT:

Spoiler

Just watched a stream of the end of the game. It consists of a short cinematic sequence and then a very brief QTE boss fight.

 

[balmorar]

?

LotR has a higher bodycount per minute than Doom.

The problem is not with the killing, in an action game you kill enemies of course. The problem is with the graphically brutal executions and torturing. I watched the films and read the books and I definitely don't remember anything brutal like this, the worst thing i remember was beheading but it was not graphically that disturbing. It's like Monolith originally was working on a game of thrones game but halfway through they were told they must make a lotr game instead and Monolith was happy to rape the lotr franchise.

 

[SuicideBunny]

tl;dr
game is shit, despite the rather interesting captain/veteran gimmick.

 

[Blaine]

I'll pick it up on sale for $5 in three years if someone creates a mod (or shader injector, etc.) that makes Mordor actually appear shadowed (and I don't mean shadows cast by bright sunlight shining on buildings and lush vegetation), as well as another mod to incline the difficulty.

 

[Delterius]

God, when will these lets players learn that their inane voiceover isn't funny at all? Keep that shit to a minimum and only speak of valid observations, I didn't come here to hear your fucking voice, I came here to watch the game

A more civilized age held 'Let's Play' for the 'retarded *friend* speaks over game' experience and 'Walkthrough' for 'just the game, bro'. Look for the latter as it sometimes bear fruit.

 

[SerratedBiz]

"you’ll see Mordor “in the days before it transforms into a blasted hellscape”" (I'm pretty convinced they're confusing Mordor with film-Isengard.)

Grimdark Gondor is engaged in constant battle to protect THE IMPERIUM OF MAN from DUR FORCES OF MORDOR who don't exist yet because Sauron is still skulking around Dol Guldur on the other side of the fucking continent.

Not sure if the first one is a direct quote from the developer (in which case it is wrong), but it has already been mentioned that there's a region within Mordor called Nurn which is described as being "more fertile" in Encyclopedia Arda.

Regarding the second bit, even though Sauron isn't there in physical form, he still has the Nazgul commandeering his armies and actively fighting against the weakened Gondorians before his return - see Minas Morgul.

 

[omega21]

https://archive.today/XpO7f

Kissing vs. killing: How Shadow of Mordor fails at explaining the difference

Looks like the game is already being used for clickbait bullshit by limpdicked and talentless writers.

Jesus H Christ, is this shit for fucking real

"That physical interaction drives how you feel about a game. Pressing Y in Halo wouldn’t just be awkward, it would actually feel different emotionally. If you’re a PC gamer you might disagree, but first-person shooters on consoles have massively eclipsed mouse and keyboard first-person shooters in terms of players, despite the dramatic loss of precision, and I think physical triggers are one of the major reasons. "




"It’s squandering the most powerful tools at our disposal. It’s even worse when a designer actually conflates the two contexts as Shadow of Mordor does, saying that a sneaky kiss and a stealth kill are the same, that one is training for the other. In doing so, it throws away any possibility of real emotional relation to your in-game-character’s wife."

 

[omega21]

God, when will these lets players learn that their inane voiceover isn't funny at all? Keep that shit to a minimum and only speak of valid observations, I didn't come here to hear your fucking voice, I came here to watch the game

A more civilized age held 'Let's Play' for the 'retarded *friend* speaks over game' experience and 'Walkthrough' for 'just the game, bro'. Look for the latter as it sometimes bear fruit.

Good point, I forgot the "walkthrough" term.

At least there are a few who upload "Let's Plays No Commentary", which I'd been searching for because I'm poor and I don't own any consoles beyond a 360 noscope. Looks like I've fallen to the retarding effect of interbutts culture.

 

[taxalot]

Why is codex so gung-ho on a game that came out twenty years ago ?

 

[Delterius]

Why is codex so gung-ho on a game that came out twenty years ago ?

Code Red! We have a Grimwah situation!

...

Nevermind, both games have been released.

 

[Turisas]

Shadow of Mordor, not Shadows of Mordor. Completely different.

 

[Azazel]

It directly and in multiple instances violates the (quite rigid) cosmology which JRR Tolkien crafted for Middle Earth.

The cosmology? So you're saying the wraith stuff breaks canon? If not, can you give a specific example (or two) of what you're talking about? (Enough generalizations about how it's an affront, it's shitty, it's bad, you don't like it, the estate should sue, dogs and cats living together, etc.)

I'm not saying you're wrong; I just want to pin it down. Thanks.

Yes, the wraith stuff that they've built the entire "lore" of this game around is completely impossible within the bounds of the extensive "laws" of the universe in Middle Earth as Tolkien wrote them. The man described everything about Middle Earth from the moment of its creation and how every facet of its magic and such operated, it's not at all ambiguous and there is no room in it to fuck around like this. Also, Mordor was a "blasted hellscape" for thousands of years before LOTR took place (With the exception of Nurn, but the game does not take place in Nurn.)

Like I said, it's fanfiction from people who either never read the books or felt no need to respect the setting.

 

[Zombra]

Yes, the wraith stuff that they've built the entire "lore" of this game around is completely impossible within the bounds of the extensive "laws" of the universe in Middle Earth as Tolkien wrote them. Also, Mordor was a "blasted hellscape" for thousands of years before LOTR took place.

Good info, thanks for the reply.

Like I said, it's fanfiction from people who either never read the books or felt no need to respect the setting.

Apparently so. It's interesting because they pay a lot of lip service to respecting the setting, and there are a lot of interviewers who say they are LOTR-heads and they're uniformily impressed with how good a job Monolith did. I guess it's not too surprising that they pay the lip service, because what else would they do? I'm just surprised that the reviews and so forth haven't called them on any of it if this is the case. Maybe the reviewers aren't as familiar with LOTR as some of them say they are.

 

[toroid]

At least there are a few who upload "Let's Plays No Commentary"

HAHA you like games

 

[Azazel]

Yes, the wraith stuff that they've built the entire "lore" of this game around is completely impossible within the bounds of the extensive "laws" of the universe in Middle Earth as Tolkien wrote them. Also, Mordor was a "blasted hellscape" for thousands of years before LOTR took place.

Good info, thanks for the reply.

Like I said, it's fanfiction from people who either never read the books or felt no need to respect the setting.

Apparently so. It's interesting because they pay a lot of lip service to respecting the setting, and there are a lot of interviewers who say they are LOTR-heads and they're uniformily impressed with how good a job Monolith did. I guess it's not too surprising that they pay the lip service, because what else would they do? I'm just surprised that the reviews and so forth haven't called them on any of it if this is the case. Maybe the reviewers aren't as familiar with LOTR as some of them say they are.

I'm assuming they're hoping that nobody high profile calls them out and brings down a lawsuit from Christopher Tolkien. Like I said waaaaaay back when this thread started: the terms of licensing for LOTR content is incredibly strict in terms of how they can use or expand upon the setting (not at all, for the most part) and the Tolkien Estate has been litigious over this in the past.

 

[abnaxus]

Yes, the wraith stuff that they've built the entire "lore" of this game around is completely impossible within the bounds of the extensive "laws" of the universe in Middle Earth as Tolkien wrote them.

Does the dude get killed and possessed by the wraith? That could work within the setting (there are after all the Barrow Wights and Dead Men of Dunharrow).

 

[Azazel]

Becoming a wraith or ghost entity in LOTR requires a very specific set of circumstances. Ringwraiths, the most notable example, are still living breathing men who exist in a limbo after being enslaved to the ring. Frodo, as wel all know, would have become one had the blade fragment which was pulling him into the limbo not been removed in Rivendell. The Barrow Wights were evil spirits conjured and sent by the leader of the Ring-Wraiths, the Witch King of Angmar, to animate the corpses in the Barrow Downs and generally cause trouble. The dead men of Dunharrow were not wraiths or wights, but spirits bound to their mountain by a curse laid by Isildur after they abandoned their oath to defend Gondor. They had no ability to interact with the physical world, and indeed did not manifest at all until Aragorn called them to fulfill their oath. Contrary to the film depiction, they simply scared the Corsairs off the boats and were then set free.

In the case of this game, the developers decided it would be a good idea to take fucking Celebrimbor, one of the most well known non-LOTR characters in the legendarium (He forged the rings of power for fucks sake), and shove his soul into their sad-sack Altair ripoff centuries after his death. Not only does his possession of Talion fly in the face of how wraiths work in LOTR (You can't just "possess" a creature, they aren't ghosts) it also contradicts how Elves and their own spirits function. When an elf dies, he is basically sent to Elf Valhalla and either reincarnated or allowed to spend the rest of eternity in Elf heaven (Valinor). They don't fucking sit around for a few hundred years in Middle Earth waiting for some dude to come along so they can go on an adventure, and certainly not if they are an elvish lord born during the first age before the sundering of the world. If he for some reason did not go to Valinor, however, with no physical binding to the world his spirit would simply have withered and "blown away" like Sarumans and Saurons did.

Now, all this being said: there is a weak argument to be made that if you very, very liberally interpreted the Doom of Mandos laid upon the house of Feanor after the Kinslaying, that Shadow of Mordor isn't entirely made up nonsense, but this would require leveraging content from the Silmarillion. As the existing LOTR license prohibits the use of any content not explicitly outlined in the trilogy or appendices, this would again open up Warner Brothers to a lawsuit from the Tolkien Estate which they would lose.

/loresperg

Nope, wait, not done. One more thing:

Talion:

Men do not get resurrected in LOTR. It does not happen. One man, ONE MAN, in the entire damn history of the world was brought back from death, and that was Beren. He was only brought back because the most beautiful woman to ever walk the earth followed him into the afterlife and sang a song of such grief and beauty that Mandos (the aforementioned god responsible for dealing with souls) was moved to pity for the first and only time and sent Beren back to Middle Earth.

Gandalf, despite being a demi-god one tier lower than Mandos and from the same cloth as Sauron, still required the explicit intervention of Illuvatar, who is Literally God in Middle Earth and created everything in it, to be resurrected.

So yeah, everything about this games story is a crock of shit and the writers should be fucking ashamed of their milquetoast mary sue bullshit.

 

[Echo Mirage]

And on the subject of Illuvatar. The unfinished tales (I believe it is) states that the all father has only directly intervened in the world twice. First at the breaking of the world to remove Arda forever beyond the reach of men. And secondly to send Gandalf back after he fell. Either as a reward for loyalty in his mission or to perhaps, rig the game in his favour.

So yes. The devs explanation for the wraith is bollocks and directly confilcts with the source material and it's appendages multiple times.

 

[Drakron]

Yep, only the human ringbearers became ringwrights since Dwarves were too resistance to the magic.

Plus I do question why the fuck would Sauron, the motherfucking manipulator would just kill Celebrimbor wife and child when the FUCKING REASON he attacked him was to get the location of the Rings, serious ... WHAT-THE-FUCK!

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm just surprised that the reviews and so forth haven't called them on any of it if this is the case. Maybe the reviewers aren't as familiar with LOTR as some of them say they are.

And why is this surprising to you, exactly?

 

[Zombra]

OK, here're some disorganized thoughts and observations after 5 hours or so with the game:

* Nemesis system is pretty fun but not as unbelievably great as I'd hoped. I haven't truly fallen in love with any of these uruks yet, and they feel more disposable than I hoped they would. I wish that they felt "heavier", I don't know, harder to kill or something. Maybe in the second phase of the game.

* In the early game at least, combat is indeed pretty easy.

* So far I haven't had a real "Nemesis". Been killed a couple times, immediately hunted the guys down and got revenge without trouble.
** One guy I just left for dead and he actually wasn't dead ... he came after me again. That was pretty cool ... but I just slugged him down again. If he keeps recurring ... he may have potential

* There are two major stages of the game. I'm hoping that the first stage is more or less a tutorial area and that difficulty ramps up in the second phase.

* Why are there 35 different kinds of healing plants?

* The world (or the first area at least) feels small. I realize that this is just a province or something, not the entire nation of Mordor ... but it still feels like I could run across the whole thing in a couple minutes.

* Fighting is still fun a la Batman. I want to get better at it, you know, in that good way where I want to play more and hone. Combat's at its best when there are a lot of enemies of different types. It's at its worst when there are a lot of enemies of the same type. I accepted an Execution mission where 30 guys with shields were standing around watching their boss kill a guy. The way to beat a guy with a shield is to jump over him and hit him in the back, and his attacks can't be countered, only dodged. Really dumb fight with so much jumping and rolling.

* It is indeed very easy to get into situations with 30+ guys all attacking you. This is definitely fun, but getting away is pretty easy and there's generally no real percentage in fighting it out.

* Camera placement is a little uncomfortable and obviously can't be tweaked. In 3rd person, I don't want my character to be so close to the center of the screen, or the auto-centering camera to be so obsessed with tilting downwards. Actually it feels a lot like GTA where the camera keeps panning down when driving so you can't see the road ahead of you. It's not that bad, but worth mentioning.

* Variety of Nemesis system characters is wonderful. The visuals, the names, the voices, and all the strengths and weaknesses ... really good. Never know what you're going to get.

* Why is this a LOTR game? Gollum is in it and rather than enhancing my imm**sion, he just reminds me that the rest of the game doesn't feel like what I know of LOTR at all. I'm pretty meh on the MQ.

* There is a ton of stuff to do though, and I want to do it all ... go on the little mission challenges to power up my weapons, fuck around with the power struggles everywhere, just everything. There is a definite "just one more mission" play 'til 3AM appeal here. It all feels urgent.

* Environment on the first map at least is bland and monotonous. It doesn't feel inappropriate to this type of setting (we've covered how it isn't canon), but a big wasteland with lots of crappy fortresses and slaves digging in mud isn't really inspiring to run around in.

* Stealth is fun, but the game is really fast paced ... it's hard to resist the urge to just run at my objective.

* It's very fun when you get several bosses and 50 guys chasing you. Scrambling around trying to find a healing herb when you're almost dead with guys shooting arrows at your back - good solid action.

* Mission design has one obnoxious flaw. Now, when you die just running around in the open world, the guy who kills you gets xp, time advances, and so forth; but when you accept a mission (or certain ones at least ... possibly just the MQ?), you enter a succeed/fail mode. If you die, run away, or fail the mission for whatever reason, you get the retry/abandon button, and retrying just starts the mission over without any of the normal consequences that make dying so interesting most of the time. I got killed by a boss on a mission, and he didn't level up or have a cool dialogue or anything, it just let me start over as if nothing had happened. Way to undercut one of the most interesting things about your game.

* There is no difficulty setting, which is weird. I would even be happy with a "5x hit points for enemies" no brainer setting. You can turn off all the little helper prompts and so forth, which I did immediately.

* I didn't actually connect who actor Troy Baker (Talion) was. My familiarity with his voice from Bioshock Infinite is annoying. VA in general is good.

OK, I better rest my eyes from looking at a computer screen for a little while ... then planning a couple more hours with the game before bed

 

[BlackAdderBG]

This is the first game I see actual hailstorm,kinda cool.

 

[Zombra]

* Nemesis system is pretty fun but not as unbelievably great as I'd hoped. I haven't truly fallen in love with any of these uruks yet, and they feel more disposable than I hoped they would. I wish that they felt "heavier", I don't know, harder to kill or something. Maybe in the second phase of the game.

This is changing. Still in phase one and some of these guys are getting up my ass. Enjoying it more as I get more familiar with how everything works.

* Why is this a LOTR game? Gollum is in it and rather than enhancing my imm**sion, he just reminds me that the rest of the game doesn't feel like what I know of LOTR at all. I'm pretty meh on the MQ.

Also getting less annoyed with the story as it wears on.

* Environment on the first map at least is bland and monotonous. It doesn't feel inappropriate to this type of setting, but a big wasteland with lots of crappy fortresses and slaves digging in mud isn't really inspiring to run around in.

Starting to feel more like home.

* Mission design has one obnoxious flaw. Now, when you die just running around in the open world, the guy who kills you gets xp, time advances, and so forth; but when you accept a mission (or certain ones at least ... possibly just the MQ?), you enter a succeed/fail mode. If you die, run away, or fail the mission for whatever reason, you get the retry/abandon button, and retrying just starts the mission over without any of the normal consequences that make dying so interesting most of the time. I got killed by a boss on a mission, and he didn't level up or have a cool dialogue or anything, it just let me start over as if nothing had happened. Way to undercut one of the most interesting things about your game.

Confirmed that this is only true of MQ missions. Phew! All the side stuff has full reactivity.

Bedtime.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

* I didn't actually connect who actor Troy Baker (Talion) was. My familiarity with his voice from Bioshock Infinite is annoying. VA in general is good.

"Wait a minute, that ring..."

 

[GrainWetski]

Messed around with the Nemesis system for a while(2 or so hours of nothing but taking over captains and forwarding time etc.) to see what the fuss is about. Talk about overrated. Like most things in AAA games. It adds to the game, but it's really nothing noteworthy.

If the AI wasn't braindead and blind, this game would be pretty good. Best Arkham style combat since.. Arkham, but it needs to be much harder.