Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s most famous work, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a game that fails to harness its own potential. While its main story is hopeless, being shallow, repetitive, and contrived, when it comes to gameplay, it actually presents a great new idea even if it keeps sabotaging it at every turn.

Shadow of Mordor’s story takes place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, when Sauron regains control of Mordor, expelling the men of Gondor from the region. The protagonist is Talion, a ranger who was guarding the gates of Mordor when Sauron’s forces stormed the place, murdering him along with his family. Talion, however, is resurrected when the spirit of a mysterious elf possesses his body and raises him up from the dead.

Talion’s journey is marked by his desire for revenge. He wants to kill his tormentors – Sauron’s Hand, Tower, and Hammer – and then finally depart to be with his family. However, he’s also compelled to help the elven spirit discover his own identity – yes, the spirit suffers from amnesia – and save the remaining rangers who resist Sauron in the region.

Shadow of Mordor is extremely effective in capturing player attention during its first hours, as it combines tutorials with character development. One of the first missions, for example, demonstrates the affection Talion feels for his wife while teaching us the basic stealth commands by setting as the goal “Stealth kiss your wife.” Similarly, combat mechanics are presented while the protagonist trains his son. This means that, when the fateful massacre happens, we’re able to share the protagonist’s pain and understand the scope of his hatred.

The same cannot be said about the elf accompanying Talion, though. The game’s second act no longer develops the ranger but focuses only on revealing the spirit’s past through various flashbacks. Talion’s story, then, is set aside for an extremely similar one, as the elf is also seeking revenge.

The plot surrounding the elf is built to serve as a link with The Lord of the Rings, as it involves the creation of the Rings of Power while making a parallel between the journey of the mysterious character and that of the protagonist. The problem is that the narrative seems much more interested in the elf than in the guardian. Talion is abandoned for much of the game: after the introduction, the narrative is content with just placing him killing random orcs and making him more powerful without exploring any aspect of his personality. We discover absolutely nothing new about the ranger throughout the game, and Talion himself is not faced with any conflict that tests his beliefs and motivations: orcs have killed his family and so Talion, in turn, kills orcs. It’s that simple.

The story of the elven spirit is far from being more complex, however. First, it’s presented through an absurd and contrived structure: the spirit’s memories are “triggered” by specific objects found in certain missions – and these memories are obviously recovered in chronological order and fragmented into the exact number of existing objects. Second, the whole mystery surrounding the elf’s identity is quickly deduced by any fan of Tolkien’s work, which makes the suspense around it tiresome – and it doesn’t help that the game’s marketing campaign has revealed the name of the elf, ignoring that such information is kept hidden for various missions. However, even those who enter the story without any prior knowledge will find problems in it: as it closely resembles Talion’s journey, but is told later, the elf’s backstory is just redundant. It doesn’t create any kind of conflict with the protagonist or something of the sort. Evil beings ruined the elf’s life and now evil beings ruined Talion’s life. It’s that simple.

But Shadow of Mordor‘s narrative problems don’t stop here. The wizard Saruman, for example, makes a brief appearance at the small climax of one of the missions but, after its completion, he’s no longer mentioned. This makes his appearance feel unearned to fans of the source material, and random and meaningless to those who don’t know the character beforehand. Meanwhile, the warrior Lithariel, who emerges as a strong female character at the beginning, eventually succumbs to the damsel in distress trope, being even carried on the lap by Talion at some point.

The game also commits a major crime during its climax, when it makes the final battle a rough sequence of quick-time events and even betrays what had been established so far for the protagonist, making Talion give up one of the most fundamental parts of his plan just to leave a door open for a direct sequel.

Moving to the gameplay, Shadow of Mordor’s great gimmick is a system called “Nemesis” that makes it possible to study the orcs’ chain of command, observing the peculiarities of each captain and general. This system gives the game’s enemies some identity, as now they have their own names and unique weaknesses and attributes. It’s also possible to identify if they are fighting over the same territory or protecting each other.

The greatest strength of the Nemesis system is that it turns the game’s universe dynamic, making the characters interact with each other regardless of the player’s actions: orcs go to war and kill each other, modifying the power chain, even if Talion chooses to do nothing. It also contextualizes an eventual defeat in battle, as the orcs remember that they killed Talion and are even promoted by the feat. In other words, it creates small stories surrounding the orcs that help make them more memorable foes.

The main problem is that we’re hardly encouraged to interact with this system. In isolation, it’s excellent: we must interrogate certain enemies to find out information about some captains – whether they are vulnerable to fire or afraid of wild creatures, for example – and then hunt down these orcs, using the newfound knowledge of their weaknesses to win the fight. In practice, however, this system is sabotaged by the game’s combat.

Shadow of Mordor borrows the main mechanics of the Arkham series, that is, a system of counterattacks, combos, and finishing moves that make the protagonist a force to be reckoned with in battle. In the Arkham games, these combat mechanics served to show Batman’s superiority in melee combat: through invincible counterattacks, the goal in that game is to defeat as many enemies as possible, taking as little damage as possible, so as not to interrupt the ever-growing combo. Applying this system to Shadow of Mordor is a disaster because it makes Talion equally invincible. And if we don’t take damage easily, why would we bother to look for an orc’s weakness? If we can just keep using counterattacks to avoid damage and there’s nothing in place to prevent us from abusing this core mechanic, the chances of Talion dying and we discovering that the game reacts to that event are not even high. Most enemies in the game fall to counterattacks, after all, and the very rare ones that are immune to them can be dealt with in a very simple manner by using stealth mechanics.

Regarding stealth, Shadow of Mordor also copies the Arkham series and Assassin’s Creed, presenting its own version of the “Eagle Vision”, recontextualizing around the powers of the elven spirit. With it, Talion can observe the colorful silhouette of the enemies behind structures and, after approaching them, just knock them down with the push of a button. In fact, Shadow of Mordor borrows a lot from the Ubisoft rulebook: there is a huge map filled with useless collectibles; there are a lot of minor side quests to distract us from the main quest; the map is divided into quadrants that can be unlocked after climbing specific towers; and so on.

With a disappointing story and problematic gameplay, Shadow of Mordor will most likely be remembered only for introducing a system that other games will make much better use. That is, if they don’t patent the system and keep it locked away forever until they go bankrupt. But this will never happen, right, we’re in the good timeline.

March 26, 2025.

Review originally published in Portuguese on February 09, 2016.