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From: Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2024?
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2024 22:03:51 +0200
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On 4/2/2024 3:10 PM, candycanearter07 wrote:
> Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote at 19:03 this Monday (GMT):

>>
>> I have been playing and finished Shadows of War.
>> This game actually was pretty good despite (or maybe because) it played
>> a bit fast and lose with the Tolkien legendarium.
>> The true star of the show was of course the Nemesis system, which
>> allowed the randomly generated orcs you meet to have some actual
>> personality and history with you. I think most of the game's huge size
>> (over 100gb which is kinda insane) might have been made up of assets to
>> create this huge variety of characters. Even after playing 90 hours on
>> this game I still was encountering variations that I hadn't met, or at
>> least not recognized before.
>>
>> The ending was a bit weak, the DLC promised some more thorough ending,
>> but in the end it also was quite a letdown. It ended with a cliffhanger
>> that didn't really feel like it had the impact they wanted from it.
>> (Sauron is defeated and the Bright Lord escapes).
> 
> It's wild to me that DLC can just retroactively "fix" a game's ending.
> IMO, the only game that did it well was the first Phoenix Wright.
> 
Well, in this case the storyline was progressed. The main story was 
about Talion fighting against Sauron between the Hobbit and The Lord of 
the Rings (hampering Sauron's efforts in the time the ring was in the 
Shire). You can play part of that in the epilogue of the main game, as 
you have to fight a series of increasingly difficult sieges of your 
fortresses (originally that was over 20 of them, this has been updated 
to just 5 in the current version). Then you get a cut scene where it 
lays out that the main character succumbed to the ring he was wearing 
after all, finally getting killed when Sauron falls at the end of LOTR.

The DLC goes into that process a bit more, showing his corruption by the 
ring from the position of another person (the Elvish assassin Eltariel). 
She also is in Mordor when Sauron falls and the Bright Lord 
(Celebrimbor) escapes.
I am conflicted if this actually was better or not. It does show a bit 
more of the progress of the corruption in a way that was not possible to 
show in the main game without changing the status quo too much (after 
all you were supposed to keep playing and doing further sieges and 
defenses).

>> This was nominally the game Middle-Earth 2, even if you'd be hard
>> pressed to remember that main title. Unfortunately it doesn't look like
>> we are getting a part 3.
>> I did hear WB games is working on a Wonder Woman game implementing the
>> Nemesis system from this game, which... I dunno. it doesn't sound quite
>> right. Might be good if they put some work into it.
> 
>