Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor Sequel Announcement

A title nobody asked for was announced a few days ago after being leaked a few days before that.  It’s called Shad­ow of War, accord­ing to the rumor mill.  It’s a true sequel to Shad­ow of Mor­dor; same main char­ac­ter and every­thing.  Tal­ion and Cele­brim­bor are doing the invade Mor­dor thing again, with greater ambi­tions; stop Sauron.

Before I go ahead and start hyp­ing this game up, I want to remind every­one how bor­ing Shad­ow of Mor­dor was.  It was neat for a few hours and then was end­less rehash­es of Assas­s­in’s Creed style mob fights.

That being said, the pres­i­dent of Warn­er Bros, David Had­dad, says the sequel reach­es “new heights”.  “Mono­lith Pro­duc­tions con­tin­ues to inno­vate by intro­duc­ing deep­er, more per­son­al­ized game­play e expe­ri­ences, cou­pled with authen­tic storytelling.”

Michael de Plater of Mono­lith Pro­duc­tions, the devel­op­er behind the title, said “we mas­sive­ly expand­ed every dimen­sion of the game, includ­ing the world, the sto­ry, the RPG sys­tems, the core game­play and of course the per­son­al play­er sto­ries of the Neme­sis System.”

The Neme­sis Sys­tem, the immer­sive ene­my gen­er­a­tion sys­tem which was the main fea­ture of the orig­i­nal game, is being expand­ed to include a new Fol­low­er sys­tem, adding a new lay­er of depth to the expe­ri­ence.  Neme­sis Fortress­es are also being introduced.

In every way it seems that Mono­lith is grow­ing their orig­i­nal vision for Mid­dle Earth, bring­ing in icon­ic char­ac­ters and expand­ing their engine to new heights.  We’ll be wait­ing until August for Shad­ow of War to release, so in the mean­time check out the trail­er below.

Bot­tom Line:  It sounds like Mono­lith heard fans and dis­senters alike.  If this game deliv­ers on these promis­es it could be the homage to Lord of the Rings fans deserved the first time around.