We came out, what, Tuesday? It’s been about four days. I was sad when I lost one of the captains I’d been with for a long time.ĭe Plater: It’s been interesting to watch. Maybe you kill them once, and then they’re back as undead. You’re coming back to these characters, but they’re different. Some people are describing fighting battles in the same places against some of the same orcs as a grind. I’ve said that some of this game is quite a grind. GamesBeat: It’s an interesting perspective. It’s easier for us to get involved in that conversation and see what people are saying and embrace that. It’s also because social media and things like Twitter have evolved so much. Looking at reviews and seeing the scope of that-it’s so much bigger than the reaction on Shadow of Mordor at the same time. People have genuinely strong emotions about those stories because they’re personal stories. It’s dominating them, compelling them to join, shaming them, casting them out, killing them. It’s making people think and feel about their relationship to these orcs and the consequences of using the Ring. The other thing that’s been wonderful, maybe the most exciting thing, is seeing people writing stories about how emotionally affected they are by the nemesis system. It was worth putting in as much attention and as much focus and as many stories as possible. It’s removed any doubt or regret we could have had. There were some little details and surprises we put in the nemesis system, and sometimes, whether it was a writer or an artist-they’d say, “Is it really worth putting this in? Do we really believe anybody will ever see this?” And here we are three days later and people are discovering all sorts of stories and details. The thing that’s exciting is seeing people’s personal stories. GamesBeat: What’s the feedback been like this week?ĭe Plater: It’s been exhilarating. You work alongside people who are growing and learning and bonding and having kids. Shadow of Mordor, we were a lot more limited in scope, in our ability to be ambitious, compared to this game. Especially in terms of realizing the epic scale and trying to evoke some of the grandeur, to have something that meaningfully ties into the Lord of the Rings. In a lot of ways it’s the fulfillment of a lot of the ideas and goals we had at the inception of Shadow of Mordor. It’s so satisfying, after that six years, to have Shadow of War out. You get really close to the game and to the universe of Middle-Earth and to all the people you’re working with. We’ve been working on this for six years now. Michael de Plater: It’s been absolutely incredible so far. GamesBeat: What’s it been like, being the steward of the series? Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. (OK, only Tolkien nerds care about this stuff.) We talked with de Plater about the multiple endings, the challenge of living up to the Tolkien legacy, and how Monolith has stretched is creativity and built an adaptation of Middle-earth for modern gamers. He managed to save his cred on a question about Celebrimbor, but we got him on the anachronism of an Uruk appearing in the Second Age. We marshaled GamesBeat’s knowledge of Tolkien lore and asked de Plater a couple of tough questions. This interview has narrative spoilers - Ed. The story takes place in the 60 years between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He challenges Sauron, the Dark Lord, for the throne of Mordor. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Shadow of War carries on an original story where you play Talion, a Ranger who has become the Bright Lord. The second title in the series to be set in the fantasy world of J.R.R. Interactive Entertainment studio that created Shadow of War, as well as its predecessor, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. And now we’ve done a postmortem interview about making the massive open-world game with Michael de Plater, the creative director at Monolith Productions, the Warner Bros.
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