Murdering My Way Through Mordor

My friend loaned me Lord of the Rings: The Shadow of Mordor, so I got to take that for a test run.

The plot involves a Ranger whose family is slaughtered and is himself used as a blood sacrifice by one of Sauron's lackeys. The Ranger, only mostly dead, finds himself bonded with the ghost of a long-dead elf who also wants to stop Sauron. The two set about trying to bring the bring fiery eye to its incorporeal knees.

A lot of the missions involve Tallion discovering some new power he has as a result of this fusion. There are a couple of subplots - one about a dwarf hunter, one involving Gollum, another about a young woman trying to defend her mother's kingdom. All of them seem to revolve around people wanting Tallion to hang out with them, and him preferring to go off and brood alone. This guy would be a great addition to that hypothetical team of angry protagonists I made.

The game is filled out with a lot of time-consuming optional quests. You can search for particular herbs, or kill a certain number of particular animals. You can rescue slaves, or undertake challenges geared towards your various weapons that "build your legend". They aren't necessary, although they help you earn experience and money to purchase more upgrades. I grabbed herbs as I came across them, but was never paying attention to which ones I was specifically meant to be looking for they. They all restore your health. The weapon challenges didn't interest me, and there's only so many times I can rescue some trio of slaves tied to posts (who look exactly like every other trio I've rescued) before I had enough of that. I thought, foolishly, I might be nearing the end of them when one slave I rescued mentioned word of my deeds was spreading and all the slaves believed they'd be saved. I figured I was going to wind up with an army of humans to go with my army of Orcs. As it turned out, I was only halfway through those rescue missions.

Combat is similar to Batman: Arkham Asylum with the critical use of the Counter button, the leaping around from one enemy to the next. Tallion even has his own version of the Detective Mode Batman had in his ability to enter the Wraith World and see through Celebrimbor's eyes. Which lets him pick out Captains from regular soldiers, and distinguish which soldiers are likely to provide good intel on the commanders. You can climb almost all walls and rock ledges, sneak around on rooftops and across beams, and either snipe from there with a bow, or drop down on the enemy from above.

The meat of the game is dealing with the Captains, and beyond them the Warchiefs, of Sauron's Army. Initially, you hunt them down to kill them. There are certain missions involved with those, as well as things called Power Struggles. Those take a few different forms, but it boils down to another chance for you to run in and kill another Captain or two. Though it can get out of hand. I jumped into the middle of a fight between two Captains, and while trying to fend off them and their followers, a third Captain either heard the disturbance or just wandered in. If Tallion is killed or runs away, the surviving Captains gain more power for having defeated the Gravewalker. Which means a promotion, but the only effective difference I noticed was if they reach Warchief status, then they have from 1 to 5 Captains as Bodyguards, who can be a pain in the ass to get past.

The Captains and Warchiefs have various things they fear, or are vulnerable to, or invulnerable to. The only way to learn what those are is to collect intel, mostly achieved by finding footsoldiers and using the elf's powers to interrogate them. If you can avoid killing them while you're fighting them and their buddies. I accidentally killed the one I was after a few times, because by that point I was trying to fight 10 guys at once, and I couldn't be picky about which person trying to kill me I attacked.

You can still attack Captains without knowing their weaknesses. It's just a little embarrassing when you try to leap down on them from above for a surprise kill, only to have them casually pull you off their back and toss you away because they're invulnerable to stealth kills. When it works though, it's great because most other enemies will be terrified if they see you kill their leader. If you aren't up for a big fight, that quick kill will get everyone else to back up and you can run like hell. Or climb a wall, ride off on a Caragor, whatever.

Once I killed a Warchief that way, and the game showed his surviving Bodyguard immediately took his place. No problem, the guy is right there, I'll just kill him now as well. I turned to face him. . . and he was hightailing it down a ladder in terror. I expected better from a guy with the title "the Executioner". Anyway, I chased after him and killed him a minute later.

I've read stories online about people who had that one Captain that kept getting the best of them somehow. I didn't really experience that. There was one Captain early that killed me a couple of times. You couldn't stealth kill him, he was very good at countering attacks, had poisoned weapons, and I wasn't adapting. I needed to let him attack, then exploit the opening, but he'd hit me, I'd lose the rhythm, and it would go downhill. But I never got particularly steamed about it. I avoided him for a while, until I had a better grasp on the game, and had unlocked a few more abilities. Every time I went after him and failed, he gained prestige, and I didn't feel like helping him any further.

The problem I had early was not understanding what I needed to be doing. I thought I needed to destroy Sauron's army, so I would attack any random group of Orcs I came across. Inevitably I'd chase the last one, kill him, and when I jogged back to where I'd been, there were already five more Orcs tromping in. Eventually I realized it's like Grand Theft Auto, where there are always going to be more members of a particular gang. You can kill as many of them in drive-bys as you want, there'll always be more. Once I grasped that, I avoided fighting the rank and file as much as possible. All it seemed to do was wear me down, and run the risk of being picked by off randomly because of bad luck or slow reflexes. And then you've given some random jerk the chance for a promotion at your expense.


The game boils down to dealing with the leaders, and the fact the ones you kill will eventually be replaced. It's disheartening to have killed 5 Captains, then be killed yourself, and watch not only the guy who killed you get a promotion, but all those others gaps you created in the command structure be filled in one fell swoop.

What it did for me was streamline the game. I focused almost exclusively on killing Captains. I wasn't playing Missions or jumping into Power Struggles constantly. I still spent most of my time running around the area. But even just running around grabbing artifacts to pick up backstory, you find Captains. Especially if you end up near a Stronghold. There's usually at least three in those. I was always on the lookout for those opportunities even when I was just roaming. If there was a Captain nearby or along the way, then I stopped to deal with him first.

I can't waste time looking for herbs or killing rats, because while I'm doing that, the game is replacing the Warchief's Bodyguard that I just killed. Better to keep the pressure on. I know it's futile, since the game will fill those spots sooner or later*, even if I don't get killed, but it felt like the right approach, given the plot.

That isn't a complaint. I've said repeatedly I wanted to play this game to sneak around and kill Orcs. The game gave me all the chances I could have asked for. It's just unusual the game is set up in such a way that it doesn't encourage me to mess around with all the little completionist quests games like these throw in as filler. When I played Red Dead Redemption, I spent a fair amount of time doing the herb gathering and hunting challenges, or just riding my horse. When I played The Saboteur, I went after every freeplay target there was. Not just all the pieces of Nazi infrastructure, but finding postcards and climbing monuments for a nice view.

Those games were set up so there was ultimately one guy you were after. You might have to kill or capture other guys along the way, but the guys in question weren't going anywhere, and the path to them wasn't going to be any easier or harder based on whether you focused strictly on advancing the story or wasted a lot of time riding around the countryside. There was no incentive to rush. Shadow of Mordor sets it up so that, if you kill or turn some of your Target's protection, you should attack now, before he gets reinforcements. Waiting is only going to make things more difficult.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I had picked up the Brand power sooner, where I could have been turning Captains to my cause earlier. I was doing so much free-roaming killing, there didn't seem to be a need to try and turn Bodyguards to get at the Warchiefs. Just kill them and grab the Warchief.

Having beaten the story mode, I should probably take advantage of the opportunity to continue wreaking havoc in the world to use the Brand more. Set the different Warchiefs against each other.

* And in the bigger picture, Tallion and Celebrimbor obviously did not succeed in defeating or destroying Sauron, since, you know, the hobbits still had to go chuck the damn Ring in a volcano.