Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Interview

TSA has interviewed Kevin Stephen, Studio Head of Monolith Productions about the Shadow of Mordor sequel Shadow of War:

Kevin Stephen On Nemeses, Fortresses And Naming Middle-earth: Shadow Of War

More-dor.

After the success of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, a sequel was never really in doubt, and Monolith and Warner Bros. have now revealed what they’ve been working on for the past few years. This is Shadow of Mordor taken much, much further, with a Nemesis system that now affects how the world evolves, raising your own army, and so much more.

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TSA: Obviously, one of the biggest things in Shadow of Mordor was the Nemesis system, and I think a lot of people saw this as something that would influence where other open world games, a little like how Arkham Asylum’s combat proliferated. We haven’t really seen that happen, though, why do you think that is? Is it time? Complexity?

Kevin: My theory is just that it’s really hard to do.

Well, I have a few theories. I think the key one is that it’s hard. It took us a long time to build the system and we were very focussed on it. […] I also think that the fact that time always moves forward in our game means that if somebody goes, “OK, we’re going to do this,” and starts thinking about what they need to make it work, it’s a bit more complex than some people think and how your game systems really need to support it.

That’s probably the key reason, but I also think that designers don’t like to copy other designers, so there’s some ego involved too. Even if they want to do it, there might be people pushing back and saying they can do their own thing.

But I don’t know. I don’t have insight and a game could be announced tomorrow that has something like the Nemesis system – they wouldn’t call it that, I’m sure. It would be great to see other games do something similar.

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Thanks Farflame!