Wew lads. I have returned after more than an year and I decided to come back with a blog about my thoughts on a upcoming sequel to a game I loved 3 years ago... Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. In case you don't know I reviewed the game with my friend scorpion2501 when it came out and you can check it out here.

First we will go over the facts and then I will post what I am hoping for this game in particular.

What has been revealed so far.

- The plot picks up immediately afer first game ended with the ranger Talion and his undead elf buddy Celebrimbor deciding to forge a new Ring of Power to beat Sauron. And the two now aim to raise an army to defeat the Dark Lord Sauron, even if they risk getting corrupted and becoming just as bad as Sauron themselves.

- In the first game you were limited to two locations only, Udun and Sea of Nurnen. You can now visit up to 6 locations with Osgiliath, Minas Morgul, Cirith Ungol, Gorgoroth, Nurnem and Seregost.

- You are able to control huge armies of your own right and use them to take control of a certain region by assaulting an enemy stronghold and defeating the local overlord.

- In addition to Caragors and Graugs, Fire drakes (dragons in young form) are available to ride.

- Your branded orcs have a more dynamic relationship with you, being able to form bonds of friendship and loyalty and actually help you out in crucial moments. Likewise, if you abandon or lose any of them, they might get resurrected by Sauron and awarded with a fraction of his power that prevents you from ever branding them again.

- The combat has been slightly altered but gained a few tweaks, while the usual Arkham Batman series gameplay is still the same, Talion is able to perform better executions, fire arrows in mid-air and among other things that were enabled by his own ring of power.

What I expect of the game?

Plotwise, I really don't expect much. I enjoyed the first game, lore-breaking aside, but I was genuinely disappointed by the ending and many plot threads being left hanging without conclusion. Also the fact that Sauron, the game's final boss got cut and sold separately on DLC pissed me off to no end since in the actual game you only get a stupid QTE segment, which is absolutely inexcusable for game design. All I want is a decent ending... I am not really excited for a sprawling storyline or anything like that, since open-world games tend to be more lighter on narrative by their very nature.

One aspect that really got me excited is being able to lead your own orc/uruk army which is a culmination of what the Nemesis System could lead up in the first game, but you only saw a glimpse of it during the climax. Now what really got my skepticism on alert is how your orc minions will assist in you a fight. The gameplay vid was very impressive in showing them in action, but it didn't actually show how the player had any input in directing them or how to active them to help you in a particular boss fight. You should always be wary of gameplay vids that look too cinematic, specially if made by the developers, because in this day and age after games like No Man Sky, it doesn't hurt being skeptical of every thing you see, specially from studios that you trust.

Though my wish for enemy variety has been granted with the introduction of olog-hai trolls and magic-wielding orcs, I am still hoping to see Easterlings and Haradrim as part of the Nemesis system, given that we have a black guy featured in the story and his identity hasn't been unveiled at the time of writing on whether or not he will be an ally or an enemy, its possible that the men of Harad will make an appearance. The Witch-King of Angmar and at least one Balrog have been confirmed so far, but its unlikely they will be regular enemies and will only be limited to story-bits.

Another one is the ability to ride dragons, since this is one idea that will never stop be not awesome. I was particularly frustrated with later games like the one that inspired my username giving the ability to ride dragons, but it wasn't as exciting as it should have been. I do hope being able to ride dragons is manageable, though given how small the maps can be, there won't be much flying around the maps.

One last bit is that I hope there will be actual meaningful content in this open world. The last game had some nice sidequests that gave you some awesome upgrades, though it largely made the relatively easy combat even easier, there were things that made no sense like some ancient relics that provided some lore background and a mural in Elvish that you could unlock by finding little bits around the world that had no real purpose or meaningful reward, it was tackled there to keep the player busy. I am fine with the maps being small as long as there is meaningful content. While the developers have promised unique stories for every single player, that is actually a fancy way of saying randomly generated content that doesn't affect the plot in a meaningful way like say, Dragon Age or Mass Effect (and even those are loose examples).

What should leave you wary?

It should come to not surprise that I am very wary of pre-order culture or any exclusives or collector editions that are announced before the game is even released. Watch_Dogs was particularly brutal about that announcing 5 collector editions, leaving consumers with no idea which one contained the most content. Now what really worries me about Shadow of War is that before its proper announcement, the game already has 4 DLC (two labelled as Nemesis DLC, the other two as Story ones, the latter likely to be extra missions similar to Shadow of Mordor's The Bright Lord DLC). You are right to be afraid/angry to see already-made content locked behind a paywall.

I am planning on getting this game on PC, but I am not very sure if I should given how poorly optimized AAA games tend to be released on PC at least during launch. Even if Shadow of Mordor did have an alright release on PC, you can never trust the precedents anymore. While the price for consoles have dropped in the last 4 years, I am very hesitant to buy a new one with the lack of backwards compability.

That is all my thoughts for now. Are you excited for Shadow of War? What platform you are getting?