Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Open World RPG, XB/PS/PC) was just announced. It is the cover story of the actual gameinformer issue and by the looks of it it seems to be very ambitious and an interesting take on the Middle Earth universe. Most of the screens in this issue were artworks but there were also a couple of in game screens which look pretty good for such an ambitious project.

Here are some infos quoted from Neogaf:

-Every enemy has a name, rank and memory. If you don't kill them in an encounter for whatever reason they will remember you later on and change their tactics, not only getting stronger in level but learning new immunities. Enemy dialogue changes because of your previous encounters as well.

-Enemies have their own jobs to do and their AI allows them to do certain things on their own. For example an Orc you have to kill may be dueling another at one point or he may be doing whatever his higher ranking officer assigned him to do. It all progresses in real time with or without your interference.

-If an enemy kills you in battle you don't "die" in the traditional sense. You do eventually respawn but time in the world passed (they didn't say how long). During this time the enemy that killed you was likely promoted because of him killing you or he could have been killed somehow (like losing one of the duels I mentioned above).

-If your objective is to kill a high ranking warlord you can do it in several ways. One way would be chipping away at everyone under his rank and either killing them or making them become "agents" for you which will enable you to launch ambushes on their base or possibly even assassinate the warlord by making his 2nd in command your agent. However it's not guaranteed, the 2nd in command can fail and be killed but he may have partial success as well which takes a chunk of the warlord's health away to make your battle easier.

-The combat seems like it takes cues from the Batman games. They mentioned there was a rhythm to it and you get to keep a combo multiplier going.

-It's fully open world so it has all of the stuff you'd expect. XP, skills, sidequests, random events (hell the whole game is basically a random event with that nemesis system and the AI working on their own even when enemies aren't on screen).

-You get to use normal melee combat, stealth with a dagger or ranged with a bow. How you level those up depends on what you took the target out with. A stealth kill will get you a special rune to use on stealth skills, direct combat will get you a melee rune and so on.

This really sounds like the most interesting Game in this IP for me. Open world. Batman like combat, consequences, enemies are not only cannon fodder but have names and maybe some history and so on. Also playing as a Ranger class also sounds very cool since I always like these kind of meele/ranged classes in D&D as well. Can not wait till we get more info or even a trailer at the next video games awards?

If you have an abo for gameinformer you really should check it out it is an interesting read.

That sounds pretty interesting. I'm always up for giving a new LotR game a shot, the last one Guardians of Middle Earth was pretty fun for a while. Hopefully they can pull this stuff off

m.. mu.. multiplayer?

You know what upsets me? Why can't we have decent games in the Harry Potter universe? Lord of the Rings keeps getting all these games, and some of them are totally solid. They don't stick rigidly to the canon and aren't treated as shitty licensing deals. But Harry Potter games are treated like garbage and haven't existed outside of the movies except for terrible Kinect and handheld games. There's no reason we couldn't get some sort of awesome Persona-esque action/RPG out of that universe, and no one's even trying.

Big ambitious RPG from a mid-tier developer that has never worked with the genre before... I wouldn't get my hopes up too much.

Dude amen. I wasn't familiar with Persona before the ER of 4 but while I was watching it that was all I could think about. That would be a great game.

Sorry to get OT.

Who is the dev?

@artisanbreads: Monolith

Ah I see... well I think they are better than middling. they made some very good games. I don't know if the old talent is still at that studio though.

Tons of potential on this one. I really hope it live up to at least some of these concept.

I LOVE SIMPLE JACK! ONE OF ALL-TIME FAVORITE MOVIES! I HAVE ON VHS!

The enemies with memories idea sounds pretty cool. Definitely looking forward to seeing more about this game.

@marokai: Harry Potters world is not near as fleshed out as LotR. There is a lot more to work with in that world then the Potter world.

Lol. Can't wait for Alex's review.

I really like Monolith, and LotR is quite alright. I'll be paying attention.

Sounds like some cool ideas. Also sounds like something I'd rather play in an original world rather than The Lord of the Rings, but I'm sure that would be harder to sell.

You just made me so happy ;_; I agree

I will give any Lord of the Rings game a shot, and this one actually sounds pretty cool. Super ambitious, but I'm cautiously excited.

Doesn't EA hold the Harry Potter license? There's your answer.

I've always thought something along the lines of Bully with an original character would be great in that universe, but they'd be way too afraid to ever let you play as anyone other than Harry Potter.

That sounds pretty cool, gonna keep reserved on hype until it gets closer to release. This level of ambition for a license game makes it seem like the ideas could very easily be dumbed down or the game could die due to Publisher meddling or the developer overshooting.

Hopefully WB gives Monolith a chance, and we get the next Arkham Asylum.

Yes, this sounds awesome. I'm a bit skeptical though... I haven't really enjoyed a Lord Of The Rings/Tolkien-lore game since the PS2-era. I'm looking forward to hearing more though!

Update: Ok, this looks pretty cool. Assassins Creed meets The Witcher? Very interesting gameplay and ideas.

Hopefully there's hobbit murdering to be had.

My only worry is that it feels a bit too robotic or that it's super repetitive and there's not much else to do.

Lets hope that's not the case. I'm certainly down for people rethinking mission in open world games to try to make them feel more organic and reactive.

I hope it's not over exaggerating to say that's one of the best looking games I've ever seen. If the final product can deliver on these promises, this could be a revelation.

I quite enjoyed that War in the North RPG. Actually there have been quite a few good LOTR games, as far as movie(book?) games go. None of them amazing but all well made and fun. So it could actually be ok.

EDIT: All though it does look a little too much like Assassins Creed.

I'm just curious why this is a Lord of the Rings game?

It seems like people have been writing a lot of Lotr games without considering context in the fiction itself. It seems like if they're casting off some of the more restricting aspects of the fiction, why not spin it more as an original IP? From that gameplay walkthrough there isn't anything in it specific to Lord of the Rings.

Thats not to say it doesn't look interesting, it does. It just looks like something that has no business being a Lord of the Rings game.

@ll_exile_ll: There actually was one or two games somewhere in the middle of the Potter franchise that were almost like that, still played as Harry, and they had to follow the books/movies, but worth checking out for the 5-10 bucks they'd cost you nowadays.

@lyisa: I was thinking the same thing, I love the concept and the idea of an AI that operates in a big interacting learning web of character, but I have no idea why this is a LotR game, I mean why didn't they make this Prey 2? Basically anything works, you can be a bounty hunter, a cop, an old west sheriff. hell even in the LotR universe this would work much better if you set it somewhere else in the timeline rather than essentially right at the start of the trilogy, in Mordor... it just doesn't sit right.

That being said it still looks like it has a lot of potential.

I am excited about this, but a little wary.

The leaps in AI programming they are talking about could be huge for future games... Providing the Nemesis system is more than clever scripted moments.

Also, I totally understand why the developers would go cross-gen with this game, but with the AI memory and such, I can't help but feel that leaps in technology would be better suited to Xbox One or PS4. "Next-gen" hardware for a "next-gen" concept.

I really hope this turns out well despite my worries. Looks very promising.

Applying the Persona 3 formula to the Harry Potter universe sounds really interesting, actually. I'd definitely play that as long as it didn't take place during Harry's time (I'm really, really tired of those characters).

I am going to say the same thing I am sure many others have said and thats a good bit of that gameplay looked familiar. The climbing animations the ropes crossing between building etc. You know there is nothing wrong with borrowing things from other games, I just really hope that it plays off in the end with a great game that Lord of the Ring fans can enjoy.

Let's be sensible. The "whatever reason they get away" is probably built into the game where your first encounter with a goblin captain will end with them slipping away unless you are extremely quick. The game means for the player to encounter these high level enemies more than once, so if you were allowed to kill them the first time around it would take most of the side story action out of the story.

The game looks fantastic, but it does suffer from what most representations of Tolkien's worlds suffers from - the society of Goblins and Orcs makes little sense. What I mean is, you see Orcs in Tolkiens books often acting so antisocially to each other that you wonder who they could live, eat, find shelter, make weapons, or even have hierarchy. The game seems to show villages of Orcs, but they are not going about any day to day business...or so it seems. The lack of description of that in the books is understandable because the books mostly describe armies on the move, a simplified mono-culture of Orc-dom. But this game is supposed to fill in the blanks, but they seem to be doing a timid job of it. Teh game is early and we have no seen everything, but I SAY if they don't explain how Orc culture works and show functional ememies in a funtionla society the game will be boring. You won't be in a living world, you will just be in a shooting gallery of things to knock down.

For better or worse the game actually has to 'humanize' the view of the enemy for the game too make any sense. In a game like Assassins Creed you character can pass among his enemies, but how does that work in this game? Seeing that game in action my questions wasn't "Why are their ropes between building" but rather "Why does NOBODY see a human man ten feet over their heads in the open?" There has to be a logic to the game, but this game doesn't have that logic yet, and seemingly never will unless the game explains why a human can walk freely among Orcs.

Man, I just saw this for the first time. It looks fantastic. A mix of Assassin's Creed, Batman, and Dishonored.

Hmm... they have been around since 1997 and made games like F.E.A.R. I think this is their first major title for WB Games ever since making them their publisher, so the pressure is up. I have been disappointed by almost all LOTR games, such as War in the North which was just a generic Smash Em up with some LOTR pasted on it to sell it.

I hope this is still out for last-gen.