Curiously lacking Lord of the Rings in its title, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a release which takes tried and tested ideas then puts its own spin on them.
With a story, which is already making fans of the lore froth at the mouth, the player steps into the shoes of Talion. A ranger tasked with assisting the garrison of the Black Gate at the time of its fall, he is saved from death when a botched ritual fuses him with the wraith of an elf lord of the Second Age. Out for revenge in the name of his dead family, Talion walks a very dark and dangerous path through the wastes of Mordor.
This is one I really hoped would be good, and so far everything I've seen on it makes me think I'll enjoy it a lot, I've just got one major question about it, does the story diverge from the Lord of the Rings story (as in the choices you make have actual impact) or does it find an excuse to happen alongside it?
ReplyDeleteThe story takes place a good few decades before Lord of the Rings, and any crossovers it has largely come from one or two characters showing up. Beyond that it's really its own entity, which is both a positive and a negative depending upon where you stand. As the review states, the developers really played fast and loose with certain points of the established lore. It won't bother you if you're mostly familiar with the franchise via the films, Hobbit or main trilogy, but Tolkien's other works do directly contradict a few key main events.
DeleteThat doesn't bother me so much, even his own work kind of contradicts itself depending on which book you want to talk about, and from what I've seen Tolkien was one of those people who wasn't as concerned with keeping everything straight as he was telling a good story, so long as it only tries to be its own thing (and maybe that's why it isn't called Lord of the Rings) I'm perfectly fine with thinking of it as a slightly separate universe.
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