Yeah so I just finished Shadow of Mordor as we speak. Credits rolling before me and all. And I gotta say, that was a weird ending. The two last boss fights were extremely weak. I mean, I had built this super insane strong character, literally having all possible skill, ability and weapon upgrades, and I couldn't even use any of that on the two best villains of the game.

To me, the Tower of Sauron was criminally underused. That character was actually cool and menacing, and if you read his lore page in the codex thingy, that was pretty nasty actually. I'd love to see a insane boss fight with that character. The Hand of Sauron being a easy boss fight is understandable, given that I'm pretty sure he was meant to be a hella weak form of Sauron.

Anyway, the ending is not what I thought. I was certain Talion would die, because how the hell do they keep him alive? Sequels are the obvious answer, and I guess at some point they will have to kill him off. Or maybe not, actually. Remember how we literally hear nothing about the goings on way out east during the LOTR books and films? Yeah, they could just toss him in there. And they still have like 60 years before the events of LOTR to do what they want basically.

Finally, I was super excited to see the two blue Istari get mentioned several times. Considering they're AWOL during the events of both the books and the movies, I hope they somehow manage to incorporate them into the next game. The appendices (or Unfinished Tales? Can't remember) say that they were never seen or heard from after being sent to the distant east, so again that makes the distant east a strong contender for the next game. Let's hope they do that.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on a possible sequel?

EDIT:

As I'm reading about the Blue Wizards, I stumbled across this interesting piece of writing from JRR Tolkien himself.

"I think that they went as emissaries to distant regions, east and south, .... Missionaries to enemy occupied lands as it were. What success they had I do not know; but I fear that they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were founders or beginners of secret cults and "magic" traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron."

Wikipedia further states:

However, some of these changed in a text written in the last year or two of Tolkien's life (published in The Peoples of Middle-earth of 1996). They are said to have arrived not in the Third Age, but in the Second, around the year 1600, the time of the forging of the One Ring. Their mission was to travel to the east and weaken the forces ofSauron. And it is here said that the Wizards far from failed; rather, they had a pivotal role in the victories of the West at the end of both the Second and the Third Ages. At the same time, Tolkien considered the possibility that Glorfindel arrived back in Middle-earth along with the Blue Wizards. On this later, more positive interpretation, the Blue Wizards may have been as successful as Gandalf, just located in a different theatre beyond the borders of the map in The Lord of the Rings.^[6]

Then there's this quote by Tolken:

Their task was to circumvent Sauron: to bring help to the few tribes of Men that had rebelled from Melkor-worship, to stir up rebellion ... and after his first fall to search out his hiding (in which they failed) and to cause [?dissension and disarray] among the dark East ... They must have had very great influence on the history of the Second Age and Third Age in weakening and disarraying the forces of East ... who would both in the Second Age and Third Age otherwise have ... outnumbered the West.

I'd say that fits just about fucking perfectly into this new series. Monolith, please use this opportunity.

Strictly in terms of seeing further evolution and development of the gameplay, I'm hyped for a sequel. The ending is certainly a bit weird, but I don't really hold the Tolkien mythology near and dear so I'm fine with whatever direction the plot goes in.

Side note: It's AWOL not A-wall - it stands for "absent without leave".

I'm almost certain that the rights to the Blue Wizards are locked up in the Unfinished Tales/Silmarillion rights that are locked away tight from anyone. They can be mentioned because they were mentioned in the Lord of the Rings, but apart from that, they aren't open for interpretation.

I was hyped to fight the black hand and was pretty disappointed with the end game in general. If there is one word to describe SOM end game it's "Rushed".

Those boss fights man, what were they thinking. Play hide and seek with supposedly the strongest member of the whole army and then beat him with a quick time event.

"So uhhh..how about that DLC then?"

After all i did to get to the end it felt kinda unsatisfactory, and those last two fights were weird and easy.

Really liked everything i did before i got there though, and im planning on getting that DLC too.

@asilentprotagonist: End game in new releases, huh? No, I won't do a Destiny joke. I like it for some weird reason.

@chaser324:

Definitely felt rushed at the end there but I cant say I'm too bummed out by it. Damn near every other aspect of the game hugely impressed me, got more than my money's worth for sure. Hell, I'll probably start a second playthrough pretty soon.

The main missions in this game were such a drag, I was honestly just glad I was through with it, even though the four second boss fight was hilarious.

Aside from the nemesis system and and combat, this game really didn't have much going for it.

what about the fight with the 5 captains v your 5 war chiefs? I thought that was the real final boss battle where you have to use all your combats and your chiefs.

the trick fight with the tower was definitely disappointing but the big rumble with everyone made up for it imho

@gerrid: Except that it isn't just your Warchiefs, it's all the captains you've branded so I had about 20 dudes and I just sat around occasionally firing arrows.

I thought the story was dull unfortunately. Really the only thing that I enjoyed about it is the stealth/combat, which is pretty much Assassin's Creed and Arkham put together. I like the soundtrack for the most part, though it could have used a bit more variety; the visuals were nice enough, but nothing amazing. I wish the setting was done better, because as it is, like the story, it was kind of dull with not enough detail to really get me into it, even considering it is quite small. Overall I like the game despite what I say, because the gameplay is fun enough, but it wasn't special to me in any one way. If you think about it, or at least to me it kind of is, it is also kind of repetitive, with the strong aspects not being good enough to me to say it doesn't matter.

The ending was kind of a huge bummer for me. The Tower's design was the coolest thing in that game, and i was pumped to fight him. But then it just turned into a "stealth this guy 3 times and then press b really fast" boss fight. And the black hand? what was that, just an interactive cutscene? I still love this game, and am currently just dicking around with the Nemesis system and trying to 100% the game. Just sorta wish it finished stronger.

It was really weird. Stealth and QTE's were not what I was expecting.

I got a question for everyone by the way. The whole "Fight your nemesis" thing in the next to final mission, what was that about? Is that like the guy you've come to blow with the most times over the course of the game and survived? Cause he meant nothing to me. I think I might have seen that name, but I'm not sure. I controlled every single captain and warcheif in the second area, so it could just be some random dude from Udun I hadn't seen in hours.

It's whoever has killed you the most that you haven't permanently dealt with yet. For me it was a dude who killed me like 15+ times and had no weaknesses so I just let my army of captains destroy him.

@corevi: Huh, that's cool, I guess. Wish it would have been a more meaningful encounter for me though. Ah well.

@dudeglove It's part of the final mission. Right at the beginning you fight a captain and then you fight the Talons of the Black Hand.

I don't give a poo about LOTR so I had no clue about anything going on in the game besides Talion and Celebrimbor looking for those evil dudes to kill. So I pretty much didn't care for the story at all. I had my fun chopping orcs heads off but when I got to the ending cutscene, all I could think was "This is a “we'll make a sequel if it sells well” ass ending" and I wouldn't mind a sequel. I think. Actually, I already got the platinum trophy for the game so I guess it's safe to say I'd definitely play a sequel

@legion_: I was really bummed out about mine. The nemesis I got was just some random Orc, whereas there was an actual orc out there that I consistently couldn't beat and ran away from 5+ times, but I guess since he never killed me he didn't count as my ultimate nemesis? Shame, that could have been an awesome moment.

I thought the ending was disappointing, but all in all I didn't care much for the story, even going so far as to skipping the cutscenes in the middle of the game...

But it was the gameplay in the end that really disappointed me, those two "boss" fights were easy and underwhelming.

Also the fight your nemesis was really weird for me, since it was a guy I'm pretty sure I never encountered before (most likely because I made to sure to kill everyone I crossed paths with), and he had a low power level so I just beat him with the sword a few times and then killed him with an execution move.

The end game as a whole was pretty simple, once you'd unlocked a few abilities most fights were simple - the ability to stun when you jump over someone, execute twice and lower the threshold needed for executions <-- no fight was difficult once I had those.

I can see that easily going wrong for some people and being awesome for others. For me it was some dude I had completely forgotten about and was surprised to see because I thought he was dead, so it was cool. It's easy for that to totally be weird depending on the play style of the player though. I think that was a cool idea but it could've been executed better.

I thought the ending sucked. First of all I thought we were going to fight Sauron, which would have been badass, and I was hoping it would tie into the building of his eye tower thing. Nope, just fought some robed dude on a roof and then looked into the distance saying you need to craft a new ring? Bah. I'm all for sequels but I was kind of hoping they were going to pick somewhere besides Mordor for the next one.

As a massive Tolkien nerd, I was totally fine with most of what they did throughout the story (I did get REAL sick of them having random characters regurgitate lines straight from the films) up until the last couple of missions. The whole bit where Celebrimbor assists Sauron with making the One Ring and then claims it for his own, leading an attack on Mordor was a bit much.

I kind of wish that they had played around with the concept of Sauron as Annatar a bit more, though. I did like how they incorporated massive armored Sauron from the films as just another form that he could easily take, like Annatar. Makes that bit of weirdness from the films fit into the established Tolkien lore a bit more.

I liked the ending. The only other non-warchief boss fight in the game was just a bigger and slower version of Bane from the Arkham games, so i'm glad they didnt decide to end the game with a tedious battle. Instead incorporating your allies against a bunch of beefed up warchiefs was a much better way to go. The actual last cutscene was dumb but so was the rest of the story in general, I expected Talion to die so that was surprising at least.

I almost shit my drawers during the run-up to the fight with the Tower. It wasn't as set-piecey as the 5v5 fight leading up the the Black Hand, but I was actually scared of my Nemesis. He could kill me in one hit earlier in the game, and he could kill me in one during our final fight, too. It was a tense battle. He took out a couple of my war chiefs no problem, too.

Nazkuga the Thunderer, god damn you.

The Tower was a super disappointing non fight. Then you quick time event the kind of but not really Sauron, because reasons?

That wasn't an ending, that was a shart.

If it wasn't for Destiny this would take the cake for the worst ending of the year for me. In an otherwise pretty damn good game.

What just happened? Man...I can't even remember the last time I was this disappointed by an ending. I would have almost rather just faced an enhanced version of my Nemesis or something like that. Four QTE prompts? Really? For fucks sake.

I was able to grab the final fight thanks to Nvidia Shadowplay.

Dude, I wish I had a good Nemesis for the end of the game. Turns out most of the problems I had while facing him out in the world were due to other captains or warchiefs showing up, or due to the fact that he was sitting in the middle of a stronghold and surrounded by uruks. He was a pushover out in an open field.

This was still one of the best games I have played in some time, and may still be in the running for my favorite game of 2014, but man. Monolith really blew that ending. That being said, the ending just echoes how I felt about the story of Mordor overall - I didn't care about it, and the rest of the game was so great that it almost excuses the poor story. I do want to keep playing it, I'm just not sure if I want to keep going and try to get some more epic runes, or start over. I would have given up the story mode altogether if it means having an actual, challenging boss fight at the end.

I also saved the recordings of my Nemesis fight at the end as well as the Five Chiefs fight, I may add those to this topic tomorrow if anyone cares to see that stuff.

Lol at that ending. I was expecting another mission, then credits :P

Nice try boys. I ain't buying ur DLC unless you get inspired by Sleeping Dogs combat rather then AC's.

Shadow of Mordor's combat is way closer to Sleeping Dogs combat than AC, you realise that? One button to punch, one to counter, and you can interrupt your attacks with counters just like in Sleeping Dogs. There's even rudimentary environmental kills by throwing dudes off ledges and into fires.

Not exactly what I was expecting from one of the writers on Red Dead Redemption. I'm sure there were many obstacles behind the scenes.

I had two bow runes that sort of destroyed the 5 warchief fight for me, one that increased the duration of the Bow Super thing by 10 seconds and another that added an AoE to Flame arrow, so I just killed all of the fodder orcs and 3 out of the 5 warchiefs before getting off the Caragor. The Tower fight was a bummer and I was hoping the last boss would really make me use all of the skills I had acquired instead of a few QTEs. Definitely the worst part of the game by far.

Yeah but sleeping dogs was about using combos (you learn a bunch as you play), that yo mix match depending on enemy types (knockdown combo doesn't work on heavy enemies)

Mordor is:

1. Spam Shadow Strike/Daggers until 5x combo

2. Spam Execute/Brand depending on situation.

Works with very few exceptions (Captain immune to finishers, in which case use Wrath Blast/get behind him)

I just want DLC that lets Talion go back and rid Mordor of its true menace: Torvin.

That entire finale made the whole game feel like a waste of time. Quick Time Events and a convenient set up for a sequel in place of an ending because fuckconsistentcharacterizationamirite.

The last two boss fights were pretty underwhelming but the whole game is so quality I didn't really care. Also, forging a new ring is crazy stuff.

It felt like they just stopped making the game. I got no closure from that ending or pleasure from killing the last two bosses. Whatever, game was still pretty awesome. It's a shame that the story is the weakest point in such a lore rich world

I didn't care much about the story so I wasn't affected that much by the poor ending, I was more bummed out by the terrible boss fight with the Tower. That guy deserved such a better boss fight

Shadows of Mordor's Ending in One Sentence: "Time to become the Jedi God and kill all the Sith."

Has Sauron ever actually won a fight against anyone? He is completely shit.

I have no idea what they can do with a Talion sequel that wouldn't just be the same game over again. I'd be far more interested if they made you a baddie wraith dude and had you go to Rohan & Gondor to fuck things up there, but that seems unlikely.

Just beat it myself, solid game but if this is the game of the year it will have been a weak year.

I also just beat the game yesterday. I'll be the one who says that I'm glad the boss fights weren't long and drawn out battle arenas. Leveling up Talion was, to me, only for the Uruk captains and I hate when boss battles are made arbitrarily difficult/long. This game's story was mostly uninteresting, with no time spent on the characters anyway, so I felt no need for revenge or extreme violence against them. Getting them over quickly was great. QTE's suck in general, but it kept me from getting angry at characters I didn't care about.

I do agree that the Tower was wasted potential, but also, he was like any other character, and not fleshed out. His area was awesome though, reminded me of Doom maps, or death metal album covers haha.

The "nemesis" fight turned out pretty cool for me. I got to fight my favorite punching bag, Flak Warmonger, whose head was wrapped up in a burlap sack from all the scars I'd given him over the course of the game. He looked like Scarecrow from Batman.

I kicked his ass one last time, for old times' sake.

I had no idea Sauron has some kinda elf alias at some point, I actually looked into the wiki cus I was like "wow this game took a lot of liberties" but no they really didnt. As for the boss stuff, bosses are almost the opposite of how they used to be. They're not meant to impede your progress, just to alter the gameplay slightly, because devs don't want a boss fight to prevent someone from finishing the game. And in a game where everything else seemed to be onpoint, the idea that boss fights had so many QTEs is a little distressing. like its not 2005 anymore. If you just want to show a real dramatic cutscene of Sauron instead of button prompts acting like its a proper boss fight (it isn't) just show the cutscene. There was something of a boss encounter right before that, they didn't need the QTE stuff.

I think Warchiefs were meant to act as proper boss encounters but having them roll in with, idk, a troll or something crazy woulda helped for sure.

Kinda feel like the big "this can never be canon because" issue is at this point you have the greatest smith ever possessing a human form as well as his magic hammer, and he's going to make _____ to counter the one ring? No? He won't make anything because nothing exists in the LOTR mythology about additional rings made by Celebrimbor after Sauron made his? Even though its the obvious thing for this particular spirit to do having returned to physical form. Eh.

The last two bosses were such a disappointment. I loved the game. Just 100%'ed it tonight. I'm only a few trophies away from a platinum. I'm considering it since I've never gotten one before (almost never even look at the trophies/achievements).

At first I thought The Tower was going to be a good, tough fight. Started off interesting... then it was over. I really liked the game as a whole, though. I hope to see another Middle-Earth game from these guys, with or without Talion.

That said, after completing everything in the game, I'm kinda done. The DLC doesn't seem like it's worth the price they're asking unless there is some seriously beefy, game-changing content coming (which I doubt). Anyone try the Trials of Power or whatever it's called? I would love something to keep me in that world, but $30 is a lot for a few missions or whatever they offer.

Yeh those boss fights were pretty disappointing, especially as I thought the first boss fight halfway through the game was actually pretty fun and challenging.

Overall it was passable though, it's really too bad the story in this game is sort of only half competent - it's a pretty great game but some better story could push it over to amazing given how streamlined and fun the combat is.

I was kind of disappointed with the collectables and weapon missions not really paying out much, one thing i have appreciated in the AC series in recent years is the little weapon rewards and stuff you get for finishing the side stuff. Not enough games do this well, it's really as easy as handing out a freaking reskinned weapon or something. Cheapskates.

I'm definitely looking forward to a sequel, but I hope they can put in the time to step it up in the story department and adding some more depth to what they have already created.

I was pretty disappointed with the game overall. However, regarding the ending: I thought it was lackluster. It had a, admittedly, small build up to the last boss and then revealed him in such a shallow way.

As far as the rest of the game. I found it repetitive, boring, and finally disappointing. I was immediately interested due to the nemesis system, but then discovered it was basically a means to an end - to get you to perform more of the same ol' combat. It surprises me now that it got such great reviews, and I feel like a sucker.