199 Shadow of More-Dor

Articles abound online about last year’s incredible action game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. Most of them shower it with praise for its groundbreaking “nemesis” system, and rightfully so. It can’t be understated the impact this system will have on the game industry from a design perspective.

Although this specific system feels like it was designed for the Middle Earth setting (oh wait.. I guess it was…), I can imagine it’s concepts being applied in a myriad of other ways. Some initial ideas:

• Vendetta Chess; a game where dominated chess pieces come back from the grave even stronger and more strategically deadly
• In a Dragon Age type game, to manage family ties, alliances, and rivalries
• A brain training app that places the games your worst at as “War Chiefs” and other games you’re good at become rivals and battle one another to determine which becomes more challenging
• A sports game drafting system
• Persona-style relationship system, showing your NPC’s ties with each other. As you interact more or less with different groups, others notice and show interest, regress, abandon you, or form rivalries.
• A space game like No Man’s Sky or Mass Effect where full colonies and planetary races create rivalries and war dynamically amongst themselves.
• Some sort of new family-dynamic system in The Sims 5
• A first-person war simulation game; any enemy soldiers your Country doesn’t eliminate during battle go on to rise through the ranks, remember battles, and learn your war tactics to use against you

[ Today I Was Playing: Shadow of Mordor and The Order: 1886 ]

#game-mechanic-system, #game-review-critique