![]() ![]() The Nemesis system lets you shape a unique gameplay experience based on the actions you take within the world, and it creates this feeling of being in a living, breathing world with emergent qualities. If you let too much time pass (say, if you die) then these events can happen on their own, and you watch a screen that shows how the power hierarchy shifts as time has passed.Īll this stuff going on means two people playing side-by-side can have vastly different experiences, with completely different stories to tell about their time with the game. They go on beast hunts, hold executions, recruit more followers, host feasts, duel one another, and so on - if you know that these events are going on, you can crash them to not only kill the captain, but also disrupt Sauron's army further. Captains spawn and randomly patrol the world map, so you never know when you'll run into one (unless you're specifically hunting one, and even then, there might be others around that you didn't anticipate), and they can even have random events that occur outside of your presence. If a captain kills you, he'll increase in power, possibly gaining new attributes and even moving up the ranks of Sauron's army if you defeat him (without decapitating him), he may recover and come back later with scars and a memory of your last encounter if he runs away and escapes, he might come back with new attributes that he learned during the fight. It's pretty clear that there's no point to the open world when you can go into a cave that uruks have human slaves excavating, liberate the slaves by killing every uruk in sight, turn a corner, then turn back into the main section of the cave and find that it's been instantly repopulated with new uruks and new slaves, because you liberating those slaves did absolutely nothing. You simply run past everything, only stopping to investigate pre-marked points of interest. ![]() There's no point in exploring, and no reason to pay attention to your surroundings or learn the layout of the maps, because when you're "exploring" you're just watching the mini-maps and following waypoints to any icons that show up. There's no sense of structure or purpose to the world itself - it's just a shallow backdrop for spreading the mission points apart. So really, all you do in the open-world sandbox is search for random collectibles, encounter random uruk patrols (which you'll eventually ignore because it's so pointless fighting random uruks), and run to the next mission starting point. Anything worth doing in this world happens inside a mission, which moves you from the main map to a separate, instanced version of it which only exists for the purpose and duration of that mission. You can find random artifacts (with audio logs for fleshing out some of the side-characters, who get zero characterization through the actual story missions), random plants (part of a series of 'survival challenges' where you have to find X number of specific plants), random animals/monsters (part of a series of 'hunting challenges' where you have to find and kill X number of specific animals/monsters), and random elven glyphs, all of which are in the game purely for the sake of achievements and padding the game length with extra arbitrary tasks. It's an open-world sandbox type of structure with two wide-open maps to explore (you unlock the second one halfway through the main missions), but very little of what you do in the open world actually matters. The world itself may be the most disappointing thing about Shadow of Mordor. Neither of these are very engaging options for getting the story because they're both so completely detached from the gameplay and the world you actually inhabit. ![]() If you want any more backstory for your family or the other goings on in and around Mordor, you have to hunt down collectible artifacts in the environment (which are basically just audiologs from a few characters) or sit at the loading screen three or four times longer than necessary to hear audiolog flashbacks of your family. "This is all pointless," I thought after a few hours, even while doing main missions that look into your wraith-companion's history. something? And avenge my family in the process, somehow?" At which point I just started running around the map collecting random items, doing random challenges, and killing random uruks for seemingly no narrative purpose whatsoever. And I was just sitting there like "Ok, so, I'm a dead man caught in limbo who wants to not be dead? Or, who wants to be dead? So I have to do. After the intro cutscenes, the game just drops you right into the open world, free to go off and do whatever you want. On the more immediate side of things, it's not really clear what you're actually trying to do or what's actually going on. ![]()
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