Added: 19.02.2015 14:00 | 13 views | 0 comments

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to fight Middle-earth's greatest evil, the Dark Lord Sauron,

"[The Bright Lord] has enabled us to go into Mordor at a time when Sauron’s power was at its height," he explained. "In Shadow of Mordor he’s just returned. It's all pretty much in chaos, Orcs are running around rioting, it’s very untamed. We were able to go back and forge the Orcs into this more disciplined and elite war machine."

Monolith Productions has rebalanced the Nemesis system to provide a more challenging endgame. Orcs are more heavily armored, tougher to beat, and with more evenly distributed strengths and weaknesses. Battles are also larger and tense, and Orcs will mercilessly pile into fights against you in droves. They are more disciplined. meaning they are harder to manipulate and won't betray each other under any circumstances. So instead of hunting Warchiefs from the bottom of the system up, players will have to go after them with all their Bodyguards in tow. They will actively be hunting you, upping the probability of ambushes. And with Warchiefs now scaled up to level 25, the combat situation can become harrowing quickly and the Nemesis system harder to manipulate.

But Celebrimbor has received his own set of improvements. Monolith has developed an entire new set of combat animations for him; he's more agile and moves more quickly. Celebrimbor will take less punishment and have access to more powerful ability combinations. These have been rebalanced to suit the fighting style of an Elven warrior. The domination ability is also more powerful: For example, if you're surrounded by a horde of Orcs, you can dominate them all at once instead of having to target them individually. Runes can reach level 30, granting more powerful weapon upgrades. There are no more Ranger skills and you can't use flowers to heal; instead you must sacrifice Orc followers and drain their health to survive. The bow and arrow use has also been tweaked, removing slow-motion and adding a more shooter-like feel, according to de Plater.

And the grand finale, of course is a final fight against Sauron as Celebrimbor.

"We really wanted to create the most epic, momentous final boss fight that we possibly could," de Plater said. "We wanted to create a crafted boss fight that players get through the Nemesis system, to make up for the final boss fight against the Black Hand, which wasn’t so momentous. This is our attempt to revisit that and have another try and do the best we possibly can at creating an epic finale."

Added: 19.02.2015 14:00 | 11 views | 0 comments

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to fight Middle-earth's greatest evil, the Dark Lord Sauron,

"[The Bright Lord] has enabled us to go into Mordor at a time when Sauron’s power was at its height," he explained. "In Shadow of Mordor he’s just returned. It's all pretty much in chaos, Orcs are running around rioting, it’s very untamed. We were able to go back and forge the Orcs into this more disciplined and elite war machine."

Monolith Productions has rebalanced the Nemesis system to provide a more challenging endgame. Orcs are more heavily armored, tougher to beat, and with more evenly distributed strengths and weaknesses. Battles are also larger and tense, and Orcs will mercilessly pile into fights against you in droves. They are more disciplined. meaning they are harder to manipulate and won't betray each other under any circumstances. So instead of hunting Warchiefs from the bottom of the system up, players will have to go after them with all their Bodyguards in tow. They will actively be hunting you, upping the probability of ambushes. And with Warchiefs now scaled up to level 25, the combat situation can become harrowing quickly and the Nemesis system harder to manipulate.

But Celebrimbor has received his own set of improvements. Monolith has developed an entire new set of combat animations for him; he's more agile and moves more quickly. Celebrimbor will take less punishment and have access to more powerful ability combinations. These have been rebalanced to suit the fighting style of an Elven warrior. The domination ability is also more powerful: For example, if you're surrounded by a horde of Orcs, you can dominate them all at once instead of having to target them individually. Runes can reach level 30, granting more powerful weapon upgrades. There are no more Ranger skills and you can't use flowers to heal; instead you must sacrifice Orc followers and drain their health to survive. The bow and arrow use has also been tweaked, removing slow-motion and adding a more shooter-like feel, according to de Plater.

And the grand finale, of course is a final fight against Sauron as Celebrimbor.

"We really wanted to create the most epic, momentous final boss fight that we possibly could," de Plater said. "We wanted to create a crafted boss fight that players get through the Nemesis system, to make up for the final boss fight against the Black Hand, which wasn’t so momentous. This is our attempt to revisit that and have another try and do the best we possibly can at creating an epic finale."