So I just finished Shadow of Mordor today. The mechanics were hands down the best in the genre (assassin's creed/batman open world games). The combat made you feel incredibly powerful while punishing you for being cocky, the traversing of the world was almost never annoying, the stealth was incredibly diverse and introduced incredibly useful mechanics (like attracting and branding), even though the uruks could hear no more than in a 5 feet radius for some reason. Oh, and the nemesis system, holy shit!

With that said I wanted your guys opinions on the story, especially the ending.

The Good
What actually surprised me in Talion's character development is that at the end of the game he has evolved from a vengeance seeking ranger to an almost all-powerful warrior with a God complex. Throughout the whole game the player shares Talion absolute loathing of inferior 'filth' such as orks or Gollum. However, this feeling of superiority culminates at the end of the game, when Talion actually feels like he should become all-powerful and craft a new ring in order to purge middle earth from that which he loathes.

This opens interesting possibilities for a sequel. The game perfectly translates how Talion feels the need to purify the world from filth. Of course, the filth is orks, so we share his hatred. However, how much would it take for him to use him power to surpress those who oppose him, be it uruk or human? We never see Talion being able to feel humility, it is very easy to see how he could spiral out of control, especially while he has been spending a lot of time being possessed by the creator of the one ring (who himself had been lured by its power).

I also did greatly enjoy the story of Celebrimbor and how he is not afraid to use his rather dark powers to achieve that which he seeks. I liked seeing a Tolkien elf who isn't simply a walking shiny example of prettyness and virtue. And he's tasted the ring's power once, what's to stop him from doing it again?

Also, Ratbag was pretty cool.

The Bad
The rest.

I mean, aside from the great main characters, their back stories and development, the rest was pretty much forgettable at best. The white haired chick and her mother were boring. The dwarf was okay at best (I would've liked it if he died while saving Talion and killing the white graug which would imo be great closure for him and his past). Gollum felt okay, but the just abandoned him after a third of the game, only to give him a scene right before the end.

The ending shenanigans were weird and unclear. I don't even know who the robed dude. Was he, like, Sauron's alternate form? Or just some random captain of his? If he was Sauron then could he really have been controlled by Celebrimbor? Also, what happened to Celebrimbor afterwards? Did he get the rest he had wanted or did he just remaing a cursed soul? It kinda had to have been the first, since otherwise it would mean that Celebrimbor would never have had the incetive to kill the black hand right?

These random unclear pieces were annoying since I was really interested in the story - well, in the main characters' story that is.

The Ugly
Gollum

Thoughts?

I liked the set up a whole lot, but the story was the weakest part of the game for me.

Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but when I fought The Tower I didn't even know it was a dude. I thought I'd be infilitrating an actual tower. Towards the end, I didn't feel like I was too familiar with the antagonists and my endgame missions. I spent so much time messing around that the story just took a backseat, so maybe it's my fault for getting distracted but the story mission design wasn't great and I wasn't in a hurry to get on them.

Still, some cool characters. Your hunting buddy was great, especially.

One of my favorites of the year, but the lack of a better consistent narrative keeps it from being my #1.

I loved Mordor but I can barely remember the story, it was practically irrelevant. Then again I don't even like LOTR and probably would have liked the game more if it didn't try to shoehorn that lore in.

the canon limits a high-potential concept. As long as they have to convolute a reason for you to be doing this in the LOTR universe, the idea behind nemesis wont be able to get fully explored. Maybe Assassin's Creed answers this game with their own attempt at the system and do something more with it.

There barely is a story and the characters are paper thin. It's a game focused on innovative mechanics with a dumb, basic plot thrown in for some motivation. Also, it doesn't really have an ending.

Excellent voice work, but the rest of the narrative was a waste.

Nolan had what, two lines of dialogue?

I liked the bit where this orc had a fireplace on his head and then I stabbed him to death.

I thought the story was serviceable, but utterly forgettable. Individual plot points were okay, but there was almost no plot. The plot is 1) want revenge for your family 2) build an army 3) use said army to deal with whatever the big bad dude was. The plot is just paper-thin.

I also had almost no clue who the hell the Tower was when I fought him. At some point I realised "oh yeah wasn't he one of the main guy's lackeys from the beginning? Thought I killed him already or something."

the story is essentially what you make of it in the game,which is actually great because no 2 people have the same story. More than once I just wonder if LOTR as a license needed to even be here.

When the loading screens tell you more about your main character than the main story, then you fucked up somewhere in the proses.

I really didn't care about the story at all. Talion was a pretty bland guy, and they didn't give the son or wife enough time so I could care about their death. Just saying "Your wife got killed" doesn't instantly make me emphasize with the character, I need a bit more to actually care. If I'm even supposed to care.
Not that the story was bad, it was just bland. Nothing offensively bad but nothing interesting either.
Probably a big part why I can't remember anything really is cause all the story missions (except the last ones) are pretty much "Do that stuff you were doing anyway" just with a few restrictions. That made all the missions blend together with the rest of the game resulting in nothing really memorable. Like when "the girl" suddenly got kidnapped off screen. Was I supposed to care?
It was like "Oh no, they got her. Get her back" and then you went and got her back. The end.
And in the end you fought some Cenobite you've never seen or heard from before finishing the game via Quick Time Event. Ehh...

In the end the story was barley enough to make me finish the game, thankfully the gameplay was fun so it kinda didn't matter.

People played this game for the story? Frankly the developers could have ripped it out completely and it would have become a better game for me. Sometimes I feel that having no story is better than forcing a shitty useless one on the players, especially since it is only there because some gamers feel like they are necessary.

To me it was a throw away story. I never did read the books and did hear that the story comes from that. I guess if you read them and were into that lore more than it would be better, but the mechanics and gameplay way overshadow any story that is in there. Also I feel the way they told the story was bad as well.

Obviously, most don't know, and won't care, but most of Tolkien's stories about the elves of Middle Earth are stories about their pride, arrogance, and ultimately self destruction.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Came back to this today after getting excited for Shadow of Wardor. I'd left off just before entering the second locale, after killing Hellraiser reject #3, if I recall correctly.

The story's pretty bad! Torven is alright, but everyone else is definitely "paper thin." All except Celebrimbor, who's genuinely a thrill to watch yell at stuff. His backstory's pretty rough too, and his quest for vengeance is much more effectively conveyed than the Talion family's introductory sliceathon.

Talion's story is straightforward nothingnes, but the whole thing viewed as the start of some silly Celebrimbor fan-fiction makes it more enjoyable than it has any right to be (but not much). Hopefully the next game doesn't bother trying to colour within the lines of the source material and instead go full ham with Totally-Not-Justice.

The real meat of this thing is the gameplay. And through that gameplay, the various orcs you come across also shine brighter than the primary cast. I also gotta say I really didn't like Troy Baker's performance here. Besides the character being written intermittently as Broody McBroodyface, straight-laced loving husband, and a generically charming roguish ranger, besides all that being occasionally jarring and adverse to following the character's mindset, Troy Baker's accent didn't sound right.

There was also a breathlessness to his performance that was really offputting. Granted that specific attribute isn't always limited to Talion. It just reads as super melodramatic, but in a very non-self-aware way. All that coupled with characters having some wholly unearned interactions (that whole rescue of Lithariel is absurd), and being defined in some very hollow and perfunctory ways, I came away from it thinking it was a generally pretty bad story.

But man hunting uruk is as fun as ever. Looking forward to the sequel.