Middle-earth: Shadow of War has a new trailer – and quite a lot is hapenning

The game may have been moved from August 22 to October 2017, but the trailers are ready for E3 week. The story trailer that came out today focuses on the story and world-building, with probably every major character playing their part.

Shadow of Mordor took the somewhat tired open-world formula and reinvigorated it with its Nemesis system, which allowed for the player to die and the enemy who killed him go up in ranks. You could also have played political games in the internal power struggles among the Orcs. This meant that you could charge directly taking down Orc warchiefs one by one before they gain more power (or as soon as they did) or help one of your “protegees” with the cunning use of assassinations and setups.

Shadow of War seems to be building on this system in a major way and it will be interesting to see just how it will work. The main idea seems to be that Talion and Celebrimbor are gathering an army to fight the Dark Lord Sauron himself. Previous videos depicted mass battles outside of Minas Ithil, for example. The dynamic duo have also forged a ring of power of their own. In your face, Sauron!

Monolith Productions have decided to play very loose when it comes to the source material, which can be a double-edged sword. They have certainly taken the liberty of mixing the lore of the books and the films, with a little bit of their own flavor. Judging by the trailer, we have the two interconnected heroes from the first game, Dark Lord Sauron, Ringwraiths, a new ring of power, a strange woman weilding magic, a huge tree-woman, some giant spiders and a Balrog. If stirred right, this could be quite a delectable broth in the end!

Luckily, developers took an extra couple of months to polish the game.