Ex-Warner Bros. Exec Reveals the Real Reason Shadow of Mordor's Much-Loved Nemesis System Was Created

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is remembered for galore reasons, but possibly champion of each for its Nemesis system, an unthinkable mechanic for generating memorable Orc encounters. According to a erstwhile executive, the Nemesis strategy came astir from trying to lick a antithetic problem: secondhand sales.

In a caller video, Laura Fryer — erstwhile vice president of WB Games who oversaw the publisher's Seattle studios astatine the clip — talked astir her clip with Monolith. While discussing the mode trend-chasing affects the industry, Fryer mentioned that chasing trends is what "literally led to the Nemesis system."

At the time, utilized crippled income were a hot-button topic. Companies similar Electronic Arts and Ubisoft were taking measures specified arsenic selling play passes to counteract an progressive utilized crippled market. Fryer said a income drop-off for Rocksteady's Arkham Asylum was attributed, by analytics, to a mentation that radical would play the game, past instrumentality the disc to a retailer.

"This was large for gamers, due to the fact that they could bargain the crippled and past merchantability it backmost to a institution similar GameStop and bargain thing else," Fryer said. "It was large for GameStop, due to the fact that past they sold that utilized crippled for a discount and they pocketed the money. For crippled developers, though, it was a disaster, due to the fact that they weren't getting paid for each game. They were lone getting paid for the archetypal transcript sold. They mislaid millions of dollars."

This is wherever the Nemesis system, according to Fryer, came about. Faced with secondhand crippled income and imaginable losses, however does a workplace promote players to clasp onto their game? Memorable experiences, it seems.

"With Shadow, we faced the aforesaid problem," Fryer said. "How bash we make a single-player crippled that is truthful compelling, that radical support the disc successful their room forever? We knew Monolith's crippled motor wasn't yet susceptible of having a afloat unfastened satellite similar a GTA, and this squad wasn't funny successful going the multiplayer route. But we inactive had to lick for the constraint. And this reasoning is what led to the Nemesis system, arguably 1 of the astir originative and coolest crippled features successful caller memory."

Solving for this constraint would, arsenic it turns out, pb to an incredibly memorable strategy of named Orc rivals, who would retrieve your actions and erstwhile encounters, processing stories retired of the enactment combat. It's often the best-remembered portion of Monolith's Lord of the Rings duology, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, Shadow of War.

Yet with the abrupt closure of Monolith Productions and cancellation of its Wonder Woman project, that peculiar occurrence seems doomed to beingness successful the vault. Though the Nemesis strategy was owed to beryllium implemented successful the Wonder Woman game, Warner Bros. inactive owns the patent for the system, which stands with an expiration day successful 2036.

It's fascinating to perceive much astir however the Nemesis strategy came together, adjacent if it means further lamenting the information that it volition stitchery particulate for the forseeable future.

Eric is simply a freelance writer for IGN.