Two games that I wish had this Nemesis mechanic to keep players glued for hours and hours of procedurally generated storylines after the main story finished are: 1. Ghost Recon Wildlands - imagine having those cartels also betray each other for a drug turf power play. Or, El Suenio being replaced or betrayed by that annoyingly DJ guy for overlord😂😂 2. The other game is Mount And Blade: Bannerlord II. There are so many potential relationships between leaders that can exploit this mechanic
The gameplay of both games, Shadow of Mordor & Shadow of War is still only an Assassin's Creed copycat. And, they didn't even implement voice & cutscenes for the ``female skins´´ we can play! Also: Mission content is repetitive as beep. 🤔
@@Akekala I would have loved to see this system, or similar, in Starfield. Especially going NG+. New main quests that feel different each new game. Generating new baddies and stories driven by what the player has done.
Imagine if a mafia or gang-related games use this kind of system for the hierarchy. So you climb up from the bottom, intimidate other members or enemy and eventually became the boss.
Also if i remember correctly when i played it, the Godfather game from 2006 PS2 got hierarchy mechanic where you rank up from Outsiders to Don of New York. It's so fun taking over the other gang turf and progress trought the ranks.
I can also imagine a superhero game where villains and heroes have a hierarchy. And as a new metahuman, you rise and fall as you build your own legend.
Early on in the game I let a slave orc kill me just to see what would happen. He became a captain. I thought this was cool. The story took me away from this area for a really long time. When I came back he was overlord. I felt weirdly proud of him. It was the one fort I never took.
I had similar but more hands on. I let the dumbest, weakest looking orc in a camp kill me and then tried to see how far I could get him up the ranks without making him my follower and by having as little personal interaction as possible. In the end he ended up part of a big fight a one of my bodyguards killed him. I proceeded to "aggressively demote" said bodyguard.
Broke an Immortal orc once and he got stuck in a loop. I shamed him so much he wanted to die but couldn’t. Then he developed a “fear of the Gravewalker”, so he would show up randomly, beg me to kill him then realize he is supposed to be scared of me and run away.
I had one orc that I shamed so much he became deranged and kept saying "Mix it up, you mix it up". He was level 85 and I shamed him until he was level 1.
Holy crap this is the most liked comment I’ve ever got. Since you guys liked it show much I’ll tell you guys how my immortal orc finally stayed dead. One time when he was running away I summoned a Drake and it so happened to spawn directly in the path he was running. Of course he had a deadly weakness to fire with his level being so low. The drake burned him to a crisp and for whatever reason (maybe because it wasn’t me that killed him that time? I don’t know. ) that was the death that stuck.
@@austinjnr2775 let's hope they make something new with this. And they perfect it for a sequel to the Hogwarts Legacy games because they owe us a story after kidnapping our Main Character to do as they wanted.
@@Quincy_Morris Why? You saying people would rather use boring ideas than good ideas? If people can patent their good ideas, then there's less incentives to make those ideas better or to actually use those ideas.
I once accidentally created an invincible, mutilated, undying nemesis by losing to him 5 times consecutively, finally killing him. Then having him come back. Eventually I killed him again without fleeing. He came back again, this time unable to talk. When I finally killed him again, he was impervious to EVERYTHING, resisted decapitation, and was angrier and less sane after each death. Before I killed him the last time, he was a nearly invincible demon who hunted me, and when he would encounter me would just scream and charge! Then he came back again… Instead of killing him I eventually made him my most powerful ally. At the end of the game he killed more enemies than the other captains.
@@rezlogan4787 I had "Horza - The machine" in my playthrough. FIRST time, he killed me, became a captain, and I went after him, then he came back to life as "The Machine" with mechanical limbs and that sort of thing. Ended up being killed 6 times, after ALL THAT, Zog still revived him. Now I'm trying to find a way that I can revive him myself and add him to my army
@@AnEggShellWhite True, I just wanted to remark that this isn't going to last forever, is just a matter of time. The industry isn't going to die after all.
Dude, I got a Olog once hat legit came back 5 fucking times, maybe even more I don't even know 4 of those times where by my hand, and that included the execution finisher where ya cut off a couple of limbs and his head, and I went "Surely he's dead now" And nope, he came back After that I recruited him, and then he came back after being killed by some other captain At that point I just went "Fuck it, he'snever gonna die"
I loved that game. But I stopped playing after I finished the story, I had some "orc story" but I got tired after a lot of hours and I decided to stop leveling and just finish the main story. I still remember that piece of sh*t lvl 72, I had to conquer everything on the area to kill him. The first times I died were so stupid but he became so hard after that. And the betrayals were fun.... I killed all of them >:( ......
@@flaviocampos3581 I once deleveled a captain like 5 times because I didn't want to kill him after he betrayed me, and he had the iron will perk after all those times, even after the fith when I drove him mad. Decided to keep him around as a meme as he was super underleveled compared to the rest so I said "Fuck it, I'll let him live" Toatally didn't come back to bite me in the ass later...
Small chance to cheat death? In Mordor, I killed a orc named "... the Unkillable" over 7 times and he kept coming back until his face and body were covered with metal plates, scars and others. He really lived up to his name
He didn’t just cheat death, he became unkillable. I believe it can only happen once in a save so it’s extremely rare and it just makes cheating death more common on only that one orc.
SOW had one of my favorite gameplay moments to this date. I raided a fortress and the Orc Warchief taunted me with my "spy" held hostage and executed him in front of our army. Only I never put a spy in his fortress. He killed his own captain and made the takeover easier for ME. It was fantastic. The nemesis system rules
I think the real treasure was pressing R2+triangle to brutalize an orc and cackle maniacally as their brothers/friends run in horror, terrified from seeing their friend get stabbed in the neck 43 times.
Ar-Karo’s story sounds compelling, a rise in power, from a simple trooper, to a powerful captain, to an undying monster, to a faithful companion, to an immortal overlord
Reminds me of that video about the opposite, an orc who starts off as a level 60 member of talion's army but his attempt to save his brother leads him to lose everything, even his mind Someone in the comments did a whole 3 paragraph breakdown of it
The nemesis system is so good that I still remember the name of my rival from the first game and he even showed up in the second game because I played both on PC and it used my save file info. Shout out to Nuruk the Painted and his one shot poison throwing spears. You were the best rival I could ever hope for ✊
@@creativename5573 Yup.. Had a super annoying poison archer kill me over and over and become 4x my level, and every time I killed him he came back, eventually becoming "The Machine".
I still remember in my original playthrough of Shadow of Mordor, there was this uruk called Zunn Blackheart that would always come and fight me. Zunn and I would exchange battles, sometimes of me killing him and other times the other way around. Zunn would ambush me in the wild, and his body parts being replaced with more machines as the days gone by and of me killing him multiple times. Eventually at the end of the story before I fight the Hand, Zunn fought me for the one last time and I finally cut his head off. What a glorious system, this
Lovely. You reminded me 'Telling Stories with Systems" video, in which Mark told us how great epic narrative can emerge from games that don't have a plot at all, like Civilization.
@@victormorales2172 I’m planning to give it a playthrough soon after watching this video! Just really caught up with life at the moment due to Covid. I played Shadow of war back in 2015 so it’s been a while and I’m quite excited for it.
Exactly the same thing happened to me! They made me think I killed my greatest enemy off, and then BOOM, there he is with an orc spec ops squad, right before the boss fight. Still one of my most memorable moments ever.
I love the nemesis system. One time i was attacking my nemesis, aka my punching bag, and about t shame him for the fifth time. BUT, then a captain ambushed me to tell me he was betraying me. And then 3 other captains showed up immediately after him to say they were betraying me too. I died by them, and then spend a few hours hunting them down one by one and shaming them down to humiliating obscurity, who all either die by accident or instant mortality weaknesses. Love it.
I had a single betrayal so far, and when it happened i just shamed him repeatedly. I shamed him so much he broke and could only repeat a single phrase, "Angry" his name became the deranged and went from level 6, to level 58, jesus christ man.
It'd be interesting to see someone make another push in this direction using text-to-speech, the resources needed are much less and for "monster" voices they usually work fine since you can filter it until it sounds right.
It's even more impressive considering that the game is fully dubbed to other languages, with quality voice acting too. I'm playing sow in spanish for latin america, and it was a pleasant surprise to hear some of the most talented voices from the dubbing industry around here.
You forgot to include that in the opening parts of the game there was a mission where you had to face your nemesis from the first shadow of war game. Meaning that in order to progress the story you had to kill your biggest rival one last time. The fact that it remembers your rival from the last game and FORCES YOU to put that story to rest in order to complete the game is insane. The nemesis system is truly special.
When I bought the game I started to play and then he appeared in the Arena. Barfa a orc grunt that killed me in shadow of mordor and becomed Captain at the very start of the game, literally the first hour, I tried to get reveange he killed me again. Then I killed him but he returned, i killed him again as he burnt alive but he returned and kept ambushing during others orcs missions as i killed them, at this point he would always flee when things are not going well and he was fast as fuck, same as me as i also would have escaped in 1vs4 situations.Then i left for the other region to continue the story, when I got back he slowly climbed in the hierarchy and becomed a warchief bodyguard. I killed his chief and he tried to avange him but failed and fled. Then in the final mission he was there at the last battle where I killed him chopping his head off. Or so I thought as he returned once more, level 20 immune to everything in shadow of war the Arena mission, during the story..my reaction was "BARFA!!! You again!!?" He was all stiched up. I never had another nemesi like him, he was like a brother, an abusive brother but still a brother.
It sucks that the Nemesis System has only been used in one franchise and nothing else. Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War are some of the best action games I’ve ever played, and at least 1/3 of why is because of the Nemesis System. The closest thing we’ve seen when it comes to replication of this system was the bounty hunter system in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which was just a lazy husk of what the Nemesis System actually was, and Watch Dogs Legion, which was more of a “playable character” system. Here’s hoping Monolith’s next game continues the Nemesis System cause the system is fantastic.
@@dazzle9712 i don't think it's any close to compare, kuva lich literally won't affect anything in the game except if you choose to fight him yourself.
Kind of. You can spoil someone new to the game by telling him what surprises the orcs have in store for him. So for instance, someone would never expect a breakdancing orc, but now that he is told about one appearing in general, he will not be as surprised to see it himself.
@@eothorn3217 sadly no. But, there's a title called "The friendly" and he's just a bud everytime you encounter him he goes "Hey man, how about we just talk it out?" "Yo, you're pretty cool, can we like, not fight and stuff?". Your priority must be to recruit him and keep him safe.
Let's add to the fact that Overlords can get anxious to a spy in his ranks to the point he will kill a captain or warchief thinking he's a spy. The dialogue of one of your orc will be along the lines of "We didn't put any spy there. He just killed one of his defenders."
I don't get it right why, in these weeks, everytime I play an online feud, I always find Captains with the Iron Will trait. It's really annoying! I can't recruit any of them anymore, and the only thing I usually do is to shame them.😡
The bad point is when they cheat death and betray you they all got the "Iron Will" trait... and if you lvl them doen they may lose some resistances along the way ... i usually just kill them when they came back
I wish you talked more about the deranged trait. There’s a sliding scale that pushes the orc afflicted to go more and more crazy. It’s really cool and a bit haunting
I had a very tragic storyline similar to GMT's "Stitch", except my Olog betrayed me, gained the ability to nullify being turned, and was eventually driven mad. His high Player Interaction score caused him to be repeatedly brought back to life, to be a huge nuisance to me in whatever late game encounter I was doing. He gradually lost his mind through his brushes with death until eventually he was a gibbering mad blob capable of only one thought: kill the gravewalker. I had taken this proud being, broken it's will, forced it to fight for me in arena matches, placed it in charge of my most powerful fortress; of course he rebelled against my iron hand! Twice broken, he was doomed to wander the lands as an exile; his once noble spirit destroyed and his keen mind shattered, his only thought revenge against the human who had made him into this wretched thing. He was finally slain during his ambush on my ambush - by his replacement bodyguard, some recent recruit hastily pressed into my service that despite his stats, would never reach the glory of his predecessor. As a player, I was so frustrated to have this happen! I made this guy into the power that he is, and now he's my immortal surprise nemesis? He was so cool, and funny, and now I just dreaded seeing him scream "ARGABLAGADAAA!!" and extend a simple encounter into a ten minute slog. Defeating him would only mean hearing him scream at me again 30 minutes later. It felt like the game giving me a huge middle finger. His story, though, was so powerful and tragic that it's stuck with me for years! It was a real, "wait, am I the baddie?" moment where I realized that Talion was just Sauron in a different form. 😲
The Nemesis System in a Batman game with the “Nemeses” being crime lords of various gangs would be incredible. Imagine starting with Carmine Falcone, Penguin, Black Mask, and others as “Overlords” and as the game evolves, cool new procedurally generated Batman villains and gangsters rise through the ranks.
I remember doing the arena mission in shadow of war for my first time. I defeated all the other captains and then HE walked in, Grublik the Immovable. Responsible for dozens of my deaths, has killed my favorite captains on several occasions and has caused me to rage quit Shadow of Mordor entirely. So when he walked into the arena with his spear and shield I, no joke, turned off the game for a day because I knew what was bound to pursue. The next day after hours of trial and error I was finally able to defeat him only for him to cheat death and remain in my game until the final mission against sarron and his army. And this is the reason I love the nemesis system. It can create situations like that and can leave an impact on peoples playthroughs.
There was this one cunt that i couldnt beat killed me like 40 times so instead i recruited him because i was tired of dealing with him after i recruited him i got a trophy named "If you can't beat them" lowkey my most humiliating moment in gaming afterwards i banished him and made him turn insane and killed him he cheated death... kuga the machine
@@K4inan no you don’t understand. I played on this one save. For a WHILE. I swear the game learned. This one guy had everything I hated to fight against. Also I may be very bad at the game but I’m pretty sure being bad at the game makes the game better.
I knew a orc once. First name Tärz. I thought I'd kill him but Instead he killed me. I found his new place and shamed him. He ambushed me later on and I accidentally killed him with poison. He cheated death and become Tärz the poisoned, I proceeded to shame him when he became deranged. I decided I'd tracked him down and shame him again, when I started searching he ambushed me now babbling like an idiot, that was when I he died of poisoning again. I was bummed as I wanted to shame him. Cut to half hour later and he ambushes me again when in the heat of battle I used his mortal weakness against him and stealth killed him. I thought for sure he was dead and joking thought "if he comes back I'll recruit him and make him my overlord." Wouldn't you believe it he comes back and I do exactly that. What a spectacular game. The amount of awesome stories you get makes the price tag worth it.
I’d love an orc to be really obsessed with being your nemesis, but he’s super forgettable and he gets really offended when you don’t remember who he is. Konroc the forgettable
I think there's actually an orc like this. He's not called the Forgettable, but his whole schtick is "How come you don't remember me? I killed you! I literally ended your life once!"
I have an orc like this in my playthrough. He killed me once and that became his whole personality. He comes back to fight me just about every day and is always killed immediately.
The video has been out for a while and I am not sure if anyone will see it, but I just wanted to leave the story of Pushkrimp the "Many Titles" here: Upon entering the fourth zone of the game for the first time I was ambushed by an epic level Uruk named "Pushkrimp the Sickly". His body was swollen and green which gave him a unique look so after beating him with relative ease (he was an archer and not that strong for an epic orc) I shamed him to a lower level so that I could recruit him later. Before I even got to do that he fulfilled a mission, which involved killing some Caragor and became "Pushkrimp the Beast Slayer" complete with a nice animal hat that covered his deformed head. I was quite impressed by his quick recovery from being shamed and recruited him for good. Together we killed and recruited quite a few Captains until I decided that it was time to go after one of the Warchiefs. I obviously wanted to take Pushkrimp, my best follower, with me and sent him to infiltrate. The time for the challenge came and we faced the Warchief and his two bodyguards. Things started out well with Pushkrimp quickly taking care of the first bodyguard, a rather imposing Olog, and executing him with his crossbow. However, when the other two enemies were almost down a third orc (that's another story but the guy is a real bastard, believe me) ambushed me and put me in the ground with his "No Chance" Trait. That stung a bit, but the feast held by the Warchief offered me a chance for revenge. When I finally had him cornered Pushkrimp showed up out of nowhere, and betrayed me at the worst moment, calling out my weakness. In his mind, he had already surpassed me when I died in front of him and now he was his own Uruk again. With some trouble, I managed to fight back until Pushkrimp made an escape. After taking care of the Warchief I started to hunt him down. He had been my best guy and I wanted him back. However, as it turned out his betrayal had given him an iron will, which I had to break first. After numerous encounters, in some of which I had to fail the finishing moves to keep him alive, I got my Pushkrimp back, although he was "The Shamed" now. The orc hunt continued for a time with him at my side and it felt just like before. Unfortunately, the good times came to a brutal halt, when I engaged multiple captains in an ambush. The fighting got really chaotic and at some point, Pushkrimp must have gotten killed. I only realized it when looking at the army screen after the battle and it was quite a shock. I had wanted to make him Overlord at some point to reward him for his help, but now he had just died in a manner that was not spectacular at all, hell, I had not even seen it. Luckily it was not my last meeting with Pushkrimp. When I was about to take down another Warchief he showed up on his Caragor, cheating death and betraying me at the same time, because I had abandoned him on the battlefield and now he wanted revenge. His newly revived self was quite over-leveled and we had our most hard-fought fight yet. In the end, I still succeeded and decided to shame him, because I wanted him back in my ranks. That proved to be a bit much and poor Pushkrimp broke, turning into "the Ruined". For now, I am debating what to do with him: I would really like to make him Overlord, although he won't care anymore. At the same time, I would like to see what kind of nemesis he can become for me if I leave him to continue his hunt. And then there is the option of finally delivering his scarred body and soul the mercy he deserves. He always had a point when he betrayed me after all. Only, I am not sure if I can even kill him at this point...
I almost had the same experience with Pushkrimp (yea, i meet with an orc with the same name). He was also swollen, but in my game he carried a giant spear and a shield. I play this game that; if i found a cool looking orc then i command him to my side, but Pushrimp was neither cool nor interesting at first so i just killed him without any struggle. Obviously he then came back for revenge and he looked even more disgusting, but it was my first playthrough in Shadow of War, and this was my first connection with an orc so i decided to keep him with me. He was my number one bodyguard, we killed many uruks, gologs, caragors together. I had a lot of fun with him by always prioritizing to keep him alive which gave an extra challenge for the game... until one day he betrayed me, and i was so angry with him that i humiliated him to something like lvl4. After that he couldn't talk, only babling in himself - i took his mind and drove him crazy. I could not decide what to do with him so i just ignored him for sometime. After Pushkrimp betrayal and madness i focused on the main story of conquering the first fort. Unfortunately Pushkrimp died in that first battle... but i feel that after my massive humilliation towards him, death was the best option that he could have had.
I’ve gotten so many amazing stories from this game I have around 182 hours I believe from me just killing captains and conquering everything in Mordor. I now almost have all regions completely controlled with all slots filled with friendly captains that all have amazing stories and character developments. I remember my friend and I playing this game for hours on end during sleepovers as we’d do the craziest of shit and meet the funniest of captains and have just an all around fun time. I must say that one of my most old and favorite of captains in this game that I have is Amûg the Head Lopper. I’ve had this captain since the very start of my playthrough and I do not regret it. I’ve taken this guy all over Mordor to help take all of the fortresses and help slay all overlords and warchiefs, he was my right hand as we’d saved each other more times than I can count. Now after his long adventure he’s had, I’ve set him as overlord of Cirith Ungol of the Terror citadel, he’s earned it for sure.
Heres my story: My nemisis was "luga of the flies" He was a assassin in a early story mission, and i dropped a fly nest on him and killed him, he came back as "luga of the flies" (He was called something else before, but l don't remember it), with his face and shoulder being F-ed up and "hivey" (11:50). i then killed him 2 more times, cutting off his arms and legs (each time giveing me a legendary item) (he came back with a 3 pronged metal hand after one of these dismemberments (2:10 for example)). by the 4th time i encountered him, l decided l NEEDED to make him mine, so the next 2 times he ambushed me, l ran (5 encounters in all during the minis ithil arc/C1). Time passed, and eventualy, he became overlord of the area next to minus mogul. And i'm happy to say, he still is, though under my control. Edit: I think it might have been him!: 1:00 (though, i think the level is a bit too high)
My story starts with a little orc captain in shadow of mordor called "Mogg rock crusher" I decided to do some exploring after doing a handful of missions at the start of the game, and i found Mogg. I co uldnt brand him cause it was early game, so i killed him. He came back of course, and i killed him again. I think around this point i did the prompt and moved him to shadow of war, but anyway, i kept playing. I killed him again, and again, and again, until he was messed up, barely living, and i killed him for good. Or so i thought. I played Shadow of war, and during the arena mission, who would show up but Mogg rock crusher, looking like he did when i must of accidentally moved him to shadow of war or something. So i killed him to progress, a nd later he came back as mogg the hook. I lost to him, and he got killed by the mysterious savior tribute guy. Then i did the mission with the necromancer orc, and i was sad to see mogg among the undead, meaning it would be impossible to recruit him. To this day, he was the orc i had the longest feud with, and is pretty much the face of this series for me.
The game was always fun, people just deprived themselves of the experience for the longest time because of the arguably ridiculous overreaction to the market back when the game came out.
@@chrismarple How? You could buy Orc's and chest with items (nothing that you cant have with regular playing), but there wasn't option ''buy this and win the game''.. And it is solo player game, so who cares about microtransaction.
One of the coolest orc encounters I had was this one orc bodyguard I was hunting down. I revealed a handful of information on him then behind me I heard, “Ranger! Find anything interesting??” Then I proceeded to turn him into my own spy
Honestly, Shadow of War is a brilliant game, not just the Nemesis system. The combat is fantastic with how much variety and power its willing to give you, the artdirection is superb and only adds on the style of the movies, and the story is suprisingly emotional at times. The ending is one of the few that ever managed to make me shed a tear.
I kinda wanted to dominate Sauron and take over Mordor but hey the ending we got opens a potential sequel where we can play as Nazgul Talion and dominate humans instead of Orcs in the pursuit of the One Ring, that would be AWESOME!
Shadow of war managed to redeem the story of the series. Throughout the first game I couldnt help but feel like they were spitting on the themes of the lord of the rings e.g. Power corrupting. They turned it around with the sequel and it actually fits into the world now
I love playing through the game, it's really fun, but I wish there was more endgame content than just orcs and forts. Like when you unlock all your cool necromancy powers you don't get to do anything with them because there's no quests, no people to talk to, no new things other than fortress defence, no nothing. Really fun to replay, but nothing to do but replay
@@przemysawzanko6700 lol... AI voice acting is already there...can mimick an actors voice with only a few lines of dialogue. (But the more the better). Combine that with an advanced text generation AI that uses context to create dialogue (an advanced chatbot) And boom... It just hasn't been used on games yet I think. Since these are technically new technologies from research areas
It's already there but the only good company in it has a pretty aggressive and shitty business model, and the open source alternative is old and underwhelming.
Personally, I think both AI voice acting and procedurally generated text aren't technologically anywhere near close enough for something like this, but the technology is advancing fast.
I would fucking love a similar system to this in a Pokemon game where trainers can become actual rivals rather than the often poorly written, non-engaging rivals currently used in the mainline Pokemon games! Fantastic video btw!
@@PaperEater_ You could work it differently. The patent is for their system specifically, with the promotions and cheating death and the like. But let's say the bug trainer you beat at the start when your starter crit all of his bugs returns to get revenge after your second gym badge, with a better team. After you beat him, he storms off in a huff, vowing to get revenge. Later on, while your defeating team whatever, and your about to defeat their head, he steps out, now high ranking member, with a much stronger team. It could work even better if you lose, let's say after the second battle, so he wont appear at the end. You can do alot without infringing on the patent
@@PaperEater_ a patent doesn't mean you aren't allowed to use it. It would have to be settled on a case by case basis but it just means they want you to pay up for the work they did, which is not unreasonable. Also, as Data Flaherty said, patents are very specific and as long as you don't want the exact same thing as what's in the Middle-earth games, you'd have no problem being inspired by their system
10:52 Even though this was a pre-written and pre-recorded line, you only experienced it as a result of a procedural generation system. And yet it gave me chills like it was a major story moment, because of the connection you conveyed through your telling of your playthrough.
Finally got the answer to: "why isn't the nemesis system in more games?" and kinda sad and disappointed about the answer. I hope somehow, someway other game devs find a way around this patent and maybe even make something better or WB let the patent expired. It honestly feels like they stump alil bit of growth in the gaming community. But, I guess we'll have to see.
its so shitty for a developer as beloved (and one of my personal favorite studios) to just say like "hey this is a great idea... no one else can use it". its not quite like but almost like Infinity Ward saying "hey call of duty 1 is a fantastic game... no one else can ever make first person shooters anymore, because we patented it". Its a rehash of PUBG suing Fortnite, just because they share an immense similarity doesnt mean there aren't key differences in style and substance.
@@quinnmarchese6313 Namco Bandai patented minigames in loading screens, though the patent ran out around 2015ish. Just nobody's really bothered to do any of them in modern titles, since loading is now either front-ended as a one-and-done when you boot up, or is hidden in increasingly clever ways.
It's not as bad you think. Another studio could always purchase use it and sell it as well. But, I do agree that this is shutting out a very cool feature that could be used in unique ways for future titles outside the lotr universe
It is entirely designed to stumt growth. That is the entire purpose of copyright, at least when employed by corporations. Fuck copyright. All it does is stifle creativity.
"First, it's important that you can actually remember and distinguish between these different orcs" I reinstalled Shadow of War after going over a year without playing it and my save had been stored on the cloud so it was still available. I was very surprised at how many of the orcs in that save I remembered, even when revisiting starting locations.
I'll never forget the orc that gave me the most trouble. Luuga the Wrestler. And the fact that I can remember his name without fail means the Nemesis System is something we need to see more of.
i've always wanted to try this game, & 18:30 has convinced me to buy it. I am a HUGE fan of compelling procedural stories. I can't wait to play it, get inspired, & get sued for trying to innovate making some inspired indie game 🙃
One of my best experience’s in the game was in the early game before I got the ring of power. I kill some no name orc captain with fire and he becomes “the flame of war” (strong and badass as hell). He proceeds to kick my ass multiple times and becomes overlord. When I finally get the ring of power within the story he is now the overlord of one of the toughest fortresses in the game. So through the entire campaign I have this rival I am set on fighting. Three forts later I fight through his captain’s and war lords, Infiltrate spies into his fortress only to finally face him in a epic duel and defeat him! One of the best gaming experience’s I’ve ever had.
I remember being absolute blown away by shadow of war and being convinced that system would show up in loads of games after that. what you've said about trademarking makes alot of sense and is incredibly frustrating
I gotta say, it was pretty brilliant how, in a video discussing the way the nemesis system creates stories, you use the stories created to make ongoing stories in the video and keep viewers engaged. Halfway through, I was like "damn that Maku, I gotta see how he takes him down now," and then it hit me
I had an obsessive Ork who fell in love with my dead body and he kept escaping or coming back from the dead so I recruited him and he’d fight alongside of me constantly complimenting me and mentioning how he loves me but wants to kill me
I think the epilogue is terribly underrated. Spoilers below: The fact that the story there goes on pretty much infinitely, which you could technically say, until Talion joins the Nazgul, is pretty cool imo. The endless amounts of sieges you can play gives it such a real feeling.
This reminds me, I had a nemesis named Krosh the Machine. The man always came back, he came back five times before I cut off his head and he was dead for good. Then in a later mission, a necromancer revives all your dead nemesises as weak zombies and when I ran into Krosh, instead of the usual zombie gargling, he just. Stared, while the music got more and more intense.
Yeeeah, this happened to me too. The orc that got made into "the Machine" kept coming back again and again, even after chopping his head off, and when I thought I managed to kill him, that necromancer brought him back. NIGHTMARE SHIT.
The personality of the orcs is probably my favorite part of this system. I love the dichotomy between those orcs that bring a smile to your face with their ridiculous antics, who you can't help but feel proud of when they kill other orcs and ascend the hierarchy, and the orcs who have you swearing up a storm every time they appear or even are referenced, acting as an aggravating stain on the world that you just can't seem to be rid of. It's great.
I love how the orcs leading your army comment on it too, like, they look at you and say things like "wait, we didn't have a spy, did we?" "that stupid paranoid just killed one of his own!"
@@RodWaffle I went to kill a Warlord once and he killed one of his own orcs thinking it was an spy. I died, retried it and he killed another one, my spy still alive. When I finally beat him down, my spy said "The shrakh was so paranoid he killed all his allies and trusted me, what an idiot".
The game really does build a relationship between you and the orcs. When an orc first betrayed me, I shamed him over and over into oblivion out of anger. When my Architect died, I nearly cried. Still miss that bearded old olog wearing a Tudor flat cap.
You encountered this in a video. I did in my (grave)walkthrough. This was the most unnerving moment in the whole game when I realized I’m fighting an orc I already beheaded!
I've beheaded orcs before and they've come back without any kind of stitching or reinforcement. I either got a bug or this was an oversight in the game mechanics.
Update: In this video I revealed that Monolith and Warner Bros have a patent for the Nemesis System. It turns out that the patent in question had not yet been accepted. However! As for February 5th, that patent has now been approved and goes into effect on February 23rd. www.ign.com/articles/wb-games-nemesis-system-patent-was-approved-this-week-after-multiple-attempts Patents are unfortunately still somewhat common in game design (Mass Effect's dialogue ring, Eternal Darkness's sanity meter, and The Medium's dual world system have all been patented, or had patents applied for). This is despite the fact that game design is heavily based on inspiration and iteration (see, for example, how the Mordor games use gameplay elements inspired by Assassin's Creed and Arkham Asylum). The exact details of how this patent can be enforced (or licensed) is impossible to know without getting legal advice - so if you wish to develop something similar I'd heavily recommend talking to an IP lawyer before getting too into the weeds. And that's the chilling effect of patents: while giant game publishers will be able to get this advice, it may be impossible for smaller studios - leading them to steer clear of making anything similar to avoid legal action. Anyway - thanks for watching, and for sharing your Mordor stories in the comments below.
It really is unfortunate. With corporations controlling the flow of innovation through financial domination and seeking to stop game design innovation before it happens like spraying for weeds... I only hope that we lean more toward a future of sharing ideas and uplifting each other instead of jealously guarding our pearls, which glimmer so much less in the darkness of locked chests. Tabletop games have seen such a boom in this regard, precisely because they don't seek to gate off ideas from others when they know we push the fields of play and human connection further through collaboration than capitalism. Thank you as always for your wonderful work! Game on 🎮💚
If WB Games (or Ubisoft) patented freeflow combat we would never have gotten Ghost of Tsushima, or Spiderman PS4. This is by any metric bad for the industry. The timing of this choice is interesting, as it's directly after the launch of Watch Dogs Legion, and the reveal of Gotham Knights, and this very video. I think the purpose here is twofold: 1. Prevent Ubisoft from using the system from Legion in any other games such as Assassin's Creed, as it was likely planned to be implemented in all their open world games which already share so many mechanics and systems. 2. Utilize the Nemesis System in their own games, namely Gotham Knights (unlikely), Suicide Squad, or the as-of-yet unannounced WB Montréal game (most likely). It's definitely bad for the industry, but I'll be a marginally less salty about it if we get a DC Superheroes game where you actually cause your own supervillain vendettas and stuff🤩
I had absolutely no idea about the nemesis system. I always wanted to play Shadow of Mordor. After watching this, I think it climbed a lot of steps in my wishlist.
Up until this day, I never knew there was an interaction in which the orc breaks your sword and you lose it!!! This is such a cool detail, quite a marvel. Like this video! Keep it up, I'm loving these!
Even better, if you get revenge, you get your sword back, 5 levels higher (can even crack the max level that way) and with upgraded rarity. Basically the most powerful weapons of the game can be created by getting it back after being broken
my favorite part about the nemesis system is the fact that anyone can become a captain, so some insignificant uruk soldier you bump into on your travels somehow kills you, becomes a captain and can become it's own story
Something like this happened, some random uruk killed me, became known as mogg cannibal, he kills me gets promoted and stuff, I kill him and cut off an arm, he comes back as mogg the machine now with a prosthetic and some wacky other things, after that we have some other things, he kills me a bunch, becomes damn near unstoppable for my level, I kill him again cutting him in half, the third time I sent in a graug, a bodyguard, and another uruk to attack him, I kill him for the last time barely winning and he was very cool
@@bigloser5104 I find it super cool that the nemesis system can make memorable little stories and rivalries from basically nothing, it's why even after completing the story twice, I keep coming back to this game because there are still so many unique experiences that can be had.
The assasin you kill in the early game story came back, and since I started on gravewalker difficulty he was my bane, and caused an infinite loop in the mission where you defend the courtyard. I had to lower the difficulty to kill him
I never played these games, but all I heard was "Yeah, the Nemesis system is pretty cool." I would've never thought that it's actually this deep, dynamic and well executed. The amount of voice-overs that must've been made for this is just incredible. It seem very underappreciated.
There are around 300+ different personalities, all of them with 40 unique voicelines + generic voicelines shared by orcs interpreted by the same voice actor, so... Yeah, it took A LOT of effort that was underappreciated because of controversy :c
I have met an ork on the very beggining in Minas Ithil. He was enraged by everything which made him hard to kill, hard to posess and he killed me a few times, and vice versa. He kept coming back until I finally got him into my ranks, upgraded him, made him a bodyguard. But the nemesis relation must go on, so he betrayed me, I killed him, and he is yet to be seen again Come back Tuka the survivor I miss you
I killed such an ork at the beginning of my first playthrough. He was revived by Zog the eternal and immediately killed everyone he could reach, including Zog.
I had two Nemesis Orcs that were blood brothers that kept saving each other and kicking my butt so I recruited both of them and ended up making them both really strong teammates of mine and they were my best friends because they saved me alot, miss those guys, I’ll always remember you Bûr and Gûrshu
I think Xcom is a great "Mirror" to the Nemesis system where you grow stories with soldiers you level and appreciate them only to see them get one shot by a Sectopod that you swear was not behind that wall one turn ago. Rip Karen "Bee" Araragi - you will be missed.
or for a low health gatekeeper to fly up next to your best gunslinger and fire and miss. just for your gunslinger (who's also low health) to return fire, killing the gatekeeper which promptly blows up, also killing your gunslinger... then again, not as bad as Tobias Batch
War of the chosen even introduced the Chosen, who were clearly influenced by the nemesis system in how they could evolve over the campaign and all their taunting conditional dialogue.
Is there a place where one could find a list of patented gameplay mechanics? I've heard of a few, but only from scattered sources. It would be nice to have a list of them, if only to know what mechanics to legally avoid.
My understanding is that mechanics cannot be legally patented. There are a few things that have gotten through with loopholes, such as the loading screen games that were categorized as a technology (although that patent is no longer active).
@@ariezon Not necessarily. In these voodoo games for example, that single mechanic is the whole game, and if the mecanic is quite specific, the dev should at least have the option to protect his/her work (Not to defend voodo btw, that company is as bad as ea)
@@Eggscargot Lawyers exploit the patent system in various ways, allowing them to get patents that really shouldn't have been allowed. Once it is awarded, it can pretty much only be contested in court, and most people/companies aren't going to bother fighting to get it overturned. Particularly if you have plenty of lawyers to defend your patent, and the money to make a case drag out for years... It it easier and safer for others to just cut a deal, or outright avoid even approaching anything that potentially infringes upon even the absurdly vague and intentionally broad overview. Which is a big part of how IMO patents stifle innovation and progress.
One of my favorites from this system was in TearofGrace's videos with the Uruk, Prak Jaws. That guy was an absolute menace and the cherry on top was the game constantly bringing him back all the till the base game's finale. XD
I can't imagine how a patent for this would hold up under even flimsy scrutiny. It's just a series of dice roll tables. Sure, the end result can be really neat, but that's the power of procedural randomness!
At best it’s a power structure which the player has input while the game has an idea of its own the player can alter this idea by say killing an orc or recruiting them then the game adapts to that change in the story , quite impressive imo considering how unique some of the orcs are
I think the problem is that even if you're in the right, you probably have to spend a significant amount of money and time to convince the court of that. It doesn't have to hold up, it just has to convince others that it's not worth it.
Loved hearing about the villains generated in your adventures and it makes me really curious to try the games. Thanks for the video and what I can only imagine was a ton of time spent delving into the system!
The actual gameplay is pretty awful TBH. Their main way of changing/growing the orcs is making them increasingly invincible. In the first game it's fine because they gain resistances slowly over the game. Maybe a warchief will have invincibility to some type of attack and resistance to some other. In the second game that's every random captain, and instead higher lvl enemies are just invincible to every attack type but one. It sucks all the fun out of the game frankly. No creativity, no skill, just do what it tells you to.
@@compassionatecurmudgeon7025 Maybe stop it with the misinformation? The orcs in the second game function the same, they gain strengths and lose weaknesses as they level up and Talion also gains abilities that allows him to more easily take advantage of weaknesses that the orcs still have. And on that topic, the system is set up so orc captains will have a minimum of three weaknesses even at maximum level - and that is without taking into consideration the things that captains will never be able to adapt or be invulnerable to such as the spectral glaive - there is never a point where a captain will only have one weakness, it is quite literally hard coded that way. Invincibilities also only last as long as captains are not dazed or afraid of anything since their fear overrides their strengths. Maybe your experience comes from fighting hacked online orc captains?
@@MyDreamCrusher I mean they function the same, except start higher level and have more strengths and less weaknesses from the word go. Yes, there are technically multiple weaknesses, they're often environmental weaknesses that aren't an immediate or practical option. It still feels deeply artificial and restrictive. Perhaps it wouldn't have killed the game for me on its own, but the plot also left me completely cold and I completely didn't care which generic orc was the leader of a faction that doesn't move or do anything that would depend on the nature of its leadership. To put a finer point on it: Those invincibility attributes force you to take a slower pace and think, which doesn't help when stopping to think makes you see all the seams in the narrative and gameplay. It broke the magic and left me just seeing everything as hours of wasted time rather than challenges to overcome. The nemesis system is a neat trick, but it doesn't actually *do* anything. The impacts that it has on the game world are minor and unpredictable, as such it offers no new choices to the player. It does autogenerate the equivalent of flavor text for the generic bosses. Sure they added fancy graphics, but there are plenty of more intricate and impressive interactions in gaming. Heck, dwarf fortress generates a history before each game that creates major historical figures, sees empires rise and fall, betrayals, environmental disasters etc. and then also generates structures, people, and towns in accordance with that history. My experience was sitting unmoved as the game acts like a crackhead fisherman with no arms arms and no legs, throwing plot hooks out time and time again sloppily by mouth and with no strength. None of them ever get close. Eventually I just feel sorry for the metaphorical game paraplegic wiggling on the dock. 'You're not enjoying this either are you buddy?' *muffled affirmation noises* 'Remember the hobbits buddy?' *calmer affirmation noise* 'Think about the hobbits...' *muffled* 'hobbitses?' 'Yea' *BANG*
The epilogue actually offers a lot of interesting things with the nemesis system, you can consider it a test of how much you interacted with your own followers because they will for once matter. Additionally sieges are some of the most brutal experiences out there and can lead to the presence of new nemesis orcs and the death of beloved followers at the hands of potential new ones. While I dont like how the orcs never react to your new *theme* its made up for when considering just how deep it is in other places. TLDR epilogue is worth it.
Ar-Karo's story arc could be an entire book by an author, with him as the main character, and Talion as both his rival and his savior that allowed him to rise to such power.
Some of the best parts of it are the things that can go completely forgotten or unmentioned, from captains you walked out on that way later when you re-enter their zone will reference how time has passed and you're both more then you used to be. how in secret many captains are willing (or desperate to prove themselves) to be challenged by you. i even had interactions where i got scolded by one captain for going after another. along the lines of "Hey you should have paid attention to me!" and above all, Captain's loyalty. it is a painfully difficult thing to get. and you can lose it in an instant. but its beyond satisfying to tag along with your mates. fighting off all Mordor has to offer and promote one of them to be a warchief only for them to suddenly jump out and save you when your about to get killed. genuine emotion comes from that. the highs and lows.
My favourite olog, whom I considered my hand, and took a while to get and who I really wanted for a bit. I used him to fight in pits for loot and while I overlooked my citadel which he helped fight for, he betrayed me and I fled. I shamed him and to my dismay, he became a maniac. I had to kill him.
@@videoms1271 Aw that sucks bud, been there and had to do alot of experimenting with the nemesis system before i got to understand their loyalty, and even then it can just be a bugger of a suprise when they do turn their coat again. can you try finding an older save or do you have him in your garrison too? that way you could try again.
Shadow of Mordor brought me one of my most memorable rivals, “Mozu the Mountain”. No matter how many times I killed him, he wouldn’t stop returning, eventually he quite literally was a metal mountain with how many scars I put on him. He was “the machine” but twice as armored. It wasn’t just me destroyed him over and over again, he was killing me regularly as well. I sent 3 captains and myself just to kill him. Then, I stopped playing Mordor and switched to War. A year or two later I came back to Mordor to finish the game. On one of the final missions, he returned. After all of these years, I saw my worst nightmare once again. But after playing Shadow of War, my skill has greatly improved. I easily put him down one, final, time…
@Psycho restart the game have a good time trying new ones, see if you can point the game in the right direction by Purposely dying to an orc or Something along those lines to get The story to build. That's what I did When my stories got boring.
I haven't played the shadow series in a long time( i should probably finish it one day) but nothing will ever beat my first play through where I killed an orc who was afraid of bees with bees and have that same orc show up 5 hours later covered in bee stings looking for my head. Magnificent
I’m curious what parts of the nemesis system are actually patented and what other types of dynamic video game story telling are still completely available to other developers. There’s no way that something as general as “characters remember your actions and the story adapts to your play” is even patentable. EDIT: I have learned that the patent has not yet been granted, simply applied for. It's been 5 years. So who knows the legality of trying to patent this stuff.
You might be surprised. The entire collectable card game mechanics of Magic was patented (under "Trading Card Game Method of Play"), and while I believe that patent ended in 2017, WotC claimed (though it's questionable if it was a defensible position) that they basically "owned" the rights to making any kind of CCG at all for those 20 years. Of course, there does happen to be instances where a patent can be struck down in court even after it's been given, but it's a gamble to challenge a patent too.
This seems to be the patent in question: patents.justia.com/patent/20160279522 But I'm having a hard time figuring out what it actually protects. Its not very clear. The summary description is too vague and the detailed description is way too detailed (it starts off talking about how a processor connected to a screen can change parameters for an NPC.. uh duh.. and later even goes so far as to list all the things the orcs can be afraid of and other traits they can have. So, yeah, I can't figure out what its actually protecting specifically.
@@guywithknife When reading patents, the part that matters is the claims list. Ignore the rest. Secondly, the whole point of saying "by a processor" is to indicate that "this isn't a software patent, as such, it's really a fancy hardware patent" lolz. It's the loophole which allows software patents, which are not allowed in US or EU law (as such), but have been accepted by the truck load by pretending they are actually "a state this particular hardware is in". So if I created a game with these exact mechanisms, but didn't use a processor (I dunno how, magic I guess) then this patent wouldn't apply.
@@doctormo the patent in question here doesn’t seem to have a clear claims list. It has a very very detailed “detailed description”, which is what confused me here. Unless that’s Thor the full patent? There seem to be drawing missing and the descriptions appear to be describing the drawings? Maybe? So perhaps there’s a full copy with claims elsewhere?
Unfortunately they've been trying at it for years now and kept getting rejected. But it seems they finally found one judge who agreed to pass it. I wonder how....😑
@@spiritorange8325 copyrighting game systems is a prick move since it would be like if call of duty or halo copyrighted the fps genre or more accurately if titanfall or mirrors edge copyrighted advance movement the nemesis system could spawn an entire sub-genre for the rather stale button mashers like batman and mordor if they were allowed to grow but that claim is going to hamper alot of studios
Not really. A patent is really promising as it means there could be potentially a new addition to the series or a spin off or side game featuring the system. There are also ways in practice to get round it. Many games have copied the system and there have been no court battles yet. Regardless, the games are still in their eyes after all this time.
Unpopular opinion: the endgame of SoW was the best part. Throughout most of the game, your abilities are locked behind plot missions, and the narrative is driving you in directions that distract you from your nemeses. Once it gets into that final chapter of "keep taking over strongholds until you're blue in the face," you are finally free to use all the tools the game has to offer and just explore the nemesis system to the fullest. This is where I could forget about the mediocre "main story" and focus on the best part of the game; these personal stories that are only possible in the nemesis system. People complained that the last chapter was a slog designed to force you into microtransactions. In my opinion, using microtransactions to bypass this section is robbing you of the best part of the game. Just like how the auction house ruined Diablo 3, since buying the best items meant there was no longer any reward to strive for, buying better orcs meant you no longer got the reward of subjugating them yourself. Imagine if Minecraft didn't let you craft half of the items or stray more than 200 chunks from spawn until after you defeated the Ender Dragon. Wouldn't you consider the "main quest" a slog and the epilogue the meat of the game?
The Shadow War missions were pretty great as they were essentially the culmination of all the game had to offer, the biggest problem was that many people perceived completing all 10 stages (at launch) as being necessary in order to "beat" the game and not as the endgame content that the developers confirmed them to be. Had Monolith just labeled "Act IV" as "Endgame" then I think the whole debacle about the game being artificially lengthened wouldn't have happened. Also, I think that most of the people that complained about the whole "Act IV being designed to force you into purchasing microtransactions" didn't actually get to play that part of the game, and if they did then I think they didn't really understand how the system was designed. The fact that almost all of the attacking orcs in those stages can be recruited and added to your army was done on purpose, the developers intended you to turn Sauron's forces against him just like you've been doing during most of the main story mission. If you instead decided to just kill them because your followers were already good enough to help, because you didn't need the extra help or just because you wanted loot then you would get an insane amount of armor and weapons. During the SWs, these were your only choices and you had to do them if you wanted to progress through the stages yet they gave you the same exact resources that you would get from the loot boxes...so why would you ever think about purchasing more (or any) loot boxes for this act? I wasn't only a waste of time but, since if all of the slots on the captain army board in an area were full then any good orcs you would have recruited during the SWs would despawn at the end and you'd lose them forever. Instead of doing all of this you could have spent that time just playing the mission, like you were intended to do. And that's just from a gameplay point of view, what you said about skipping out on all the interesting Nemesis system interactions by purchasing already dominated orcs is also very true, and it made the prospect of engaging with the microtransaction system even worse.
I liked the ending as it was one of the only real areas you got to test your AI Uruks skills out against another in a siege mission. I still do regular AI siege missions but since I control the entire map its less interesting and i'm maxed out now. There's a lot of replay ability in it. I personally NEVER felt the need to use loot crates but I enjoyed using them because the Mithril ones were free and required no out of game money to open as opposed to the gold ones.
Endgame sucked because the fight you have been waiting for 2 games and several years to be in you aren't even a part of. You get to play as generic elf lady
I had a Nemeses Orc that, first time we met, had the trope of being made out of poison. Killed him and then went on. Next THREE times he ambushed me, looked more torn apart each time and stated the beauty of death and poison. Left the area thinking he was dead and when i came back to take the Stronghold, he rose up to be Overlord. In the final battle he defeated me and i was saved by another Orc i recruited. That was the Story that could fill an entire Game. Absolutely stunning what they made with such a (technically) simple idea. Of course, the Orc who saved me was promoted to the new Overlord.
It wouldn’t. Imagine Nintendo patented the first platformer, and no platformers existed except Mario games. Patenting gameplay mechanics should be illegal.
The industry would quickly die. Devs without said patents would be too afraid of being sued into bankruptcy and switch careers to a more stable industry
You can have interactions with followers, you just need to make sure you fight alongside them and not let them do all the work, show them why your in charge and you'll notice a change in their behavior.
You can walk around the fortress to see them drinking and singing with the troops, sharing anecdotes, mock-fighting each other, bullying slaves, etc. you can even call in your bodyguard and if you just walk alongside him he'll start talking to you
When you recognise the absolute potential of the Nemesis System being implented into different games....but are constantly dissapointed by fads like Battle Royale & mobile gaming & microtransactions overshadowing it. WHY WON'T DEVS & PUBLISHERS SEE THE POTENTIAL OF THE NEMESIS SYSTEM?! Edit: *Video mentions Monolith have a patent for Nemesis System* .....Oh. That makes sense, but still; I'd still enjoy seeing it implemented in other game genres, stories and themes, to explore the seemingly endless possibilities of the "faceless/nameless grunts" actually having a purpose past something to shoot/kill/defeat, and have some character to them.
And there’s a sanity meter patent from Eternal Datkness and here we have games like Amnesia who use their own version of it. I say screw patent law, long live inspired plagiarism.
Idk, the system is certainly neat but in my playthrough I just demolished every orc on our first encounter and thus didn't get to witness any real narrative. The closest it ever came was sometimes an orc would cheat death just to give me the chance to decapitate him a second time. My big "nemesis" in the story was some orc I didn't even recognize.
@@Clownbelt-u2s I came to know that there were patent for game system because of this. It is ridiculous. And i agree with you screw patent law, long live inspired plagiarism.
@@creativecredence850 This is a weakness of the nemesis system, If you are very good or are in late game things can get boring. But we can hope that the system will grow more because of advancement in gaming industry and it will get more perfected
I think you pretty much nailed this down, aside from a small thing. An easy to miss small thing. Betrayals tend to only happen with mistreated or ignored uraks. Have an urak you have passes over for promotion repeatedly, though they saved your life? Could betray you. Abuse an urak to test out some new skill? He remembers. Give an urak a demotion? That's gonna cost you. It's subtle, and doesn't always happen in an expected way, or right away. Another big one is blood brothers. I have, at times, had an absolutely amazing ork. He typically has an absolutely sloppy blood brother. Recruit at your own risk, as if you kill his blood brother he could turn right around on you. The saviors? They tend to be the orks on your side who you have done the most for. This is less fleshed out than the betrayal system, and pretty much any ork can act as a savior. It seems to me as more of sort a fodder for the betrayal system, if anything. You can sort of predict and head off, or aggravate, betrayals to some degree. Kill a blood brother, then immediately promote the recruited one. This levels out a bit of the loss, and can forestall that betrayal. Kill a blood brother, give a demotion and cause an ork to miss out on a chance to get stronger, be it by neglect or by choice... Hope you sleep with a knife under your pillow.
A good way to get rid of the meh blood brother would be to recruit both brothers then send the meh one to the fight pits over and over until he died by someone else's hand
I always send my loyal captains to kill my captain blood brother or call my bodyguard let my bodyguard damage the blood brother and recruit him. Always work tho if your captain that you send to kill the blood brother then successfully kills him... The captain that you send will have a rivalry to the captain that have a blood brother that died... Its awesome specially if your captain patrol around your fort then they meet each other they will fight LOL
I forgot to add yes Sending your captain to kill One of your captain blood brother they will not betray you unless you interfere or hurt the blood brother
One of my favorite stories is when I was playing, there was this one general that just kept killing me. Eventually I would beat him and decapitate him. I was finally so relieved to have gotten rid of him. Until I was clearing out an area, then there was an encounter, I read the name, saw his face and was horrified. I quickly thought, HOW ARE YOU ALIVE I DECAPITATED YOU. He then replies with like they sewed his head back on or something. A gaming story I'll never forget.
I was so motivated to try to add a system like this into my game, only to find out they put a patent on it. AAA disgusts me sometimes. It’s such a broad system. That is not ok.
Just do it. I think the patent has been in pending status for six years, and other AAA studios are already releasing lite versions of it. Plus, if it ever were granted and enforced, a big studio sued would easily invalidate those shit-tier claims in court before you even show up on the radar of WB's lawyers. Gameplay lawsuits are unheard of anyway, except for big deals like the battle royale genre. Seriously, it's impossible to build trivial things like a generic online shop without violating over a dozen patents. Just don't worry unless the holder is known to enforce it, or you'll never release anything. (Also, death to the assholes who stopped ventilator production in the EU during the pandemic because the devices used metaphorical tabs for the UI. That's literally the whole patent: tabs for the UI of medical equipment.)
@@samcook6250 That sounds neat, actually. I'm guessing each faction would have some sort of hero units that can get promoted over the course of a campaign. I'd say the cool thing about doing it on an RTS is that even your own heroes can be made part of the system.
Same here. But I am also worried that it might be to big a workload for an indie game. Though I was also inspired somewhat by One Piece. Since its a western game I thought it be fun to generate outlaws like mii fighters and give them titles. When a low level gang member escapes or kills you they would have a chance to get a title like Zane the swift legs and their bounty would rise. Their bout could get higher over time and they would become more infamous with more wanted posters and npcs talking about them
I remember the first time an Orc saved my life, I was so thankful I made him overlord, and buffed him slightly, as I was already deciding whether or not I should keep my current. It was such an incredible relief.
it's sad that the only thing remembered about shadow of war is the lootboxes even though, they're gone. replayed it last year and had so much fun with the nemesis system
@@ToxicBastard I blame Kotaku and Polygon's reviews of the game, they were the ones who initially suggested that the endgame of SoW took "tens of hours to complete" (if you are that bad just play on a different difficulty setting, but in reality they probably didn't even know the game had those) and that the loot boxes somehow allowed you to "skip the grind" which was not even remotely true. Jim and tons of other reviewers just ran with these headlines because it fit their narrative.
@@TheMasterMind144 exactly, the sieges were awesome but hard, especially if you had shit orcs and forgot to upgrade stuff, so obviously it's going to be hard for a game journalist who plays like a child. Whenever a journo complains something is too hard I make a mental note that it's probably not a game my mum could play, because that's all it means; like Yahtzee criticised Overlord 2 for its spider temple puzzle (something I beat as a child) I have to wonder: does being a journalist make games ten times harder or something?
I really want more living systems like this. Another dream I always had playing Elder Scrolls: Bandits actually go out and make decisions, if they pillage and win, they take their spoils, whether it was gear or goods/money to be traded with sleazy merchants, they actually use that gear and maybe start to snowball. Eventually, they start recruiting more and their faction controls a lot of the land. Though, with certain scalability factors taken into account, not everyone is gonna become a bandit and they can only reproduce and supply food to a certain extent, the nation, guilds and freelancers trying to get rid of bandits also adjust their response appropriately, to keep threats they recognize in check. If Bandits become so unified it's boring, then internal conflict arises and they split up again, some camps going independent altogether. They'd then also actually pose problems to the player, the world state could even get partially ''ruined'' if you let them get powerful enough to come together to clear a small village or take out somewhat vital npc's, which would take away trading options etc. for the player. Ideally we'd then also have a town population system, and responses from the nation at large to take the town back if still occupied, and then rebuild and repopulate, with new traders/craftsment etc. and their own traits as well as how those traits fare in the environment. All of that happening in real time, though things can be simplified into numeric simulations when away from the player, as long as it's accurate enough and takes significant and precitable enough factors into account. For example, the chance they'd find a bear on their route to a small town, and how much of a number that would reasonably do on them in their state, little things like that. Taking factors we have a hand in into account is also important, if we helped a faction set up shop, that's a much bigger issue than a bear, this would be very satisfying to interact with. If it's a game with a lot of differences in kind rather than differences in values, it's gonna become hard to meaningfully quantify a lot of factors though, but I don't think these bandits have to be all that complicated and mostly just fluctuate in stats, with a few special resources like ranged weapons, stealth and a few kinds of utilitarian magic, as long as one side of the equation is simple, the interactions shouldn't be too hard to predict with an acceptable margin of error. Different patrols and arising conflicts etc. simulated all around the world, until you get close enough and it transitions into a true in-game event, or alternatively, somehow reach the levels of performance required to fully run it all without abstraction... Incredibly ambitious and I've definitely learned not to expect things like this to work anytime soon (No Man's Sky/early Starbound/supposed Skyrim prototypes etc.), but I hope one day it becomes feasible. When Skyrim came around, a lot of word was going around about a dynamic civil war, I thought they'd finally start making small steps towards systems like this, seemed like the next step up from Oblivion's janky attempts at dynamic systems with a sense of life to them, but alas. Of course, that's a lot of processing required, assuming you can even create a stable enough ecosystem with interesting interactions to begin with, but I just know there's some nerds somewhere out there trying to crack these problems without compromising what makes it so interesting.
It’s great to have long relationships with the other characters and a game that remembers your actions. It’s a pity that so many of the interactions are about negative reactions. How would this look like with positive interactions? Eg teach each other something new, exercise together, organise a party together, listen to each others story.
Actually now that I think about it, the nemesis system, but focused on wholesome stuff is something I need. I unironically think this can work in something like GTA (maybe in 6 but that's coming out after I pass away so) where it acts as a more fun way of making side activity/side content and is essentially a way to encourage the player to take a break from committing 6th degree muder for no reason. Maybe I want it because I'm lonely irl, that'd be crazy....
Oh! I did my thesis on this, looking through the lense of dance choreography to see how many concepts would stick. These games (taking Mordor to be the prologue to War's larger systems) are unprecedented in how continuously and comprehensively everything is always meaningfully moving and adapting, while the player is pushed to continuously move and adapt as well. Like an improv group tango on a tiny seesaw dancefloor, rolling around on a ball. Even down at the navigation level, you're constantly prompted to adapt to patrol routes and hunts, or to rush off before folk come to investigate your activities, all the while knowing that enemies will actively learn and adapt to however you've been playing the game. This comes in directly when choosing between the many ways to defeat or avoid every enemy, as every enemy is uniquely weak or strong to each specific buttonprompt, modifier, and combo move available just then. All the way up at the macro level, standing still or using the menu systems never happens without the rest of the gameworld moving along and learning, and every single thing you do gets quantified with a different kind of ability unlock tokens that changes the playing field again. Lots of games have all this stuff, but in no other game is every dynamic bit so tightly balanced and linked to every other bit across so many layers of scale. Moreover, everything, even paratextual menu stuff, is explicitly diegetic and meaningful. The whole thing becomes this epic of a guy resisting, but thereby only integrating deeper into Sauron's necromantic hellscape trap. There's themes of toxic macho masculinity being an endless torment here, of bigman power plays condemning you to a life of weakness and repeat death. All the while, Tolkien's unspoken orc world gets humanized and perfectly slotted into that original author's metaphysical intent and racial pantheon, as this kind of gleefully vulgar postcolonial war-elf parable that Tolkien would've never wanted to directly describe in his day. And they even do fitting new craft and language philosophy stuff! My Tolkien soul was content. And the thesis well enough received.
Wow - that is excellent work. I can imagine that you had a memorable and interesting thesis defense when discussing how you related the game mechanics as designed by the developer into a critique of how this fits into Tolkien's literary themes. It would be really interesting to sit in on a thesis defense in which your faculty committee had professors who are interested in game design along with literary scholars who have deep knowledge of Tolkien's work. Congratulations on generating an interesting thesis (and just for completing it - as that is no small accomplishment)!
@@rayjones1455 Oh no the whole process of doing this was a mess : ) I had game studies tutors who couldn't seem to follow along with me trying out new terms to describe games with, and who admittedly never did understand dance. Then my other tutors were theatre/dance experts who hadn't ever considered games. And no one had any interest in Tolkien, or in these games specifically. I burned out hard situating my work as broadly yet meaningfully as possible in these three separate fields, so everyone could keep up and provide input. Because I was making such impressive extra effort, I suppose, everyone just kept encouraging me to keep going like that, and I ended up only finishing a fragment of the work when I got my grades and had to quit academia for health reasons. The project came together well enough for me, but I don't imagine anyone who tutored me actually got the full picture and intent. Thanks for the compliments though, mr. Jones : ) Really appreciate it. I might one day do that full comparison of Mordor to MarioMaker, Last Guardian, and NobyNoby Boy, to round out a logical model of radically opposed rubrics for fully meaningful, dance-like systems of player movement direction in games.
I got this game for Christmas and have been playing it for two months. Now I’m about to take on the final boss but I’m not ready to do it yet because I’ve had such an amazing adventure playing it!
I played this game recently because of this video. I poisoned a barrel and then an alchemist captain appeared behind me and said "thats not how you do it mate" it was so surprising and interesting
Now I understand what made me re-play this game years later. I really enjoyed them the second time around, but just couldn't put my finger on what it was. You nailed it!
Another game that uses clever AI for storytelling is The Sims. Here's a video on how that works - ruclips.net/video/9gf2MT-IOsg/видео.html
Two games that I wish had this Nemesis mechanic to keep players glued for hours and hours of procedurally generated storylines after the main story finished are:
1. Ghost Recon Wildlands - imagine having those cartels also betray each other for a drug turf power play. Or, El Suenio being replaced or betrayed by that annoyingly DJ guy for overlord😂😂
2. The other game is Mount And Blade: Bannerlord II. There are so many potential relationships between leaders that can exploit this mechanic
@@AkekalaWildlands was great, a system similar to SoW would of been a great opportunity.
The gameplay of both games, Shadow of Mordor & Shadow of War is still only an Assassin's Creed copycat. And, they didn't even implement voice & cutscenes for the ``female skins´´ we can play! Also: Mission content is repetitive as beep. 🤔
@@a.m.pietroschek1972it’s fun though and they changed quite a bit from ac
@@Akekala I would have loved to see this system, or similar, in Starfield. Especially going NG+. New main quests that feel different each new game. Generating new baddies and stories driven by what the player has done.
Imagine if a mafia or gang-related games use this kind of system for the hierarchy. So you climb up from the bottom, intimidate other members or enemy and eventually became the boss.
Yakuza 0 have the thing, not in mechanics but in story instead, the guy demoted from his rank so hard yet he still want to win against the protagonist
Also if i remember correctly when i played it, the Godfather game from 2006 PS2 got hierarchy mechanic where you rank up from Outsiders to Don of New York. It's so fun taking over the other gang turf and progress trought the ranks.
Basically Jojo: Golden Wind but without the Stands.
I can also imagine a superhero game where villains and heroes have a hierarchy. And as a new metahuman, you rise and fall as you build your own legend.
Territory control like San Andreas would be awesome
Early on in the game I let a slave orc kill me just to see what would happen. He became a captain. I thought this was cool. The story took me away from this area for a really long time. When I came back he was overlord. I felt weirdly proud of him. It was the one fort I never took.
I am so proud of your boy. 👍
cute... i guess
Better plot than Twilight
@@2112-c5w better love story - its an orc love story
I had similar but more hands on. I let the dumbest, weakest looking orc in a camp kill me and then tried to see how far I could get him up the ranks without making him my follower and by having as little personal interaction as possible. In the end he ended up part of a big fight a one of my bodyguards killed him. I proceeded to "aggressively demote" said bodyguard.
Broke an Immortal orc once and he got stuck in a loop. I shamed him so much he wanted to die but couldn’t. Then he developed a “fear of the Gravewalker”, so he would show up randomly, beg me to kill him then realize he is supposed to be scared of me and run away.
That's why immortality is a bad superpower
I had one orc that I shamed so much he became deranged and kept saying "Mix it up, you mix it up". He was level 85 and I shamed him until he was level 1.
@@void2920 Getting your brain fried repeatedly also does a number on you
Holy crap this is the most liked comment I’ve ever got. Since you guys liked it show much I’ll tell you guys how my immortal orc finally stayed dead. One time when he was running away I summoned a Drake and it so happened to spawn directly in the path he was running. Of course he had a deadly weakness to fire with his level being so low. The drake burned him to a crisp and for whatever reason (maybe because it wasn’t me that killed him that time? I don’t know. ) that was the death that stuck.
@@chief664 Congratulations
The nemesis system being patented and not used is one of the greatest sins in gaming history
He said upcoming Harry Potter games and I chuckled, since the Hogwarts Legacy game is the furthest game from a Nemesis system
its going to be used in the upcoming wonder woman game from the same studio
@@austinjnr2775 let's hope they make something new with this. And they perfect it for a sequel to the Hogwarts Legacy games because they owe us a story after kidnapping our Main Character to do as they wanted.
If people couldn’t patent their good ideas they would be less incentives to make them.
@@Quincy_Morris Why? You saying people would rather use boring ideas than good ideas? If people can patent their good ideas, then there's less incentives to make those ideas better or to actually use those ideas.
"Small chance to cheat death" Yeah well tell that Hoshu the Survivor, who has come back so many times I'm convinced he's immortal
With a name like that, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a higher chance to cheat death.
I once accidentally created an invincible, mutilated, undying nemesis by losing to him 5 times consecutively, finally killing him. Then having him come back. Eventually I killed him again without fleeing. He came back again, this time unable to talk. When I finally killed him again, he was impervious to EVERYTHING, resisted decapitation, and was angrier and less sane after each death. Before I killed him the last time, he was a nearly invincible demon who hunted me, and when he would encounter me would just scream and charge! Then he came back again… Instead of killing him I eventually made him my most powerful ally. At the end of the game he killed more enemies than the other captains.
@@rezlogan4787 I had "Horza - The machine" in my playthrough. FIRST time, he killed me, became a captain, and I went after him, then he came back to life as "The Machine" with mechanical limbs and that sort of thing. Ended up being killed 6 times, after ALL THAT, Zog still revived him. Now I'm trying to find a way that I can revive him myself and add him to my army
If they come back enough its possible for them to basically be immune to everything...lol
Jeez sounds like DC's Solomon Grundy
I really would love to see this Nemesis System applied in other studios, it has so much great potential
Yeah me too, but with WB patenting the Nemesis System the chances of seeing other studios to shake things up or even improve it are pretty slim.
@@deatheater161 At least in the near future, patents eventually expire after all.
@@troykv96 wouldn't call 2030 the near future
@@AnEggShellWhite True, I just wanted to remark that this isn't going to last forever, is just a matter of time. The industry isn't going to die after all.
@@troykv96 true, I still find the length of patents too long.
Great usage of Stitch and Maku to explain the procedural generation possibilities of the Nemesis system.
Thank you!
Dude, I got a Olog once hat legit came back 5 fucking times, maybe even more
I don't even know
4 of those times where by my hand, and that included the execution finisher where ya cut off a couple of limbs and his head, and I went "Surely he's dead now"
And nope, he came back
After that I recruited him, and then he came back after being killed by some other captain
At that point I just went "Fuck it, he'snever gonna die"
Yeah, that was a sick story and it was literally just a random game experience, I wish the game was on switch
I loved that game. But I stopped playing after I finished the story, I had some "orc story" but I got tired after a lot of hours and I decided to stop leveling and just finish the main story. I still remember that piece of sh*t lvl 72, I had to conquer everything on the area to kill him. The first times I died were so stupid but he became so hard after that. And the betrayals were fun.... I killed all of them >:( ......
@@flaviocampos3581 I once deleveled a captain like 5 times because I didn't want to kill him after he betrayed me, and he had the iron will perk after all those times, even after the fith when I drove him mad. Decided to keep him around as a meme as he was super underleveled compared to the rest so I said "Fuck it, I'll let him live"
Toatally didn't come back to bite me in the ass later...
Small chance to cheat death? In Mordor, I killed a orc named "... the Unkillable" over 7 times and he kept coming back until his face and body were covered with metal plates, scars and others. He really lived up to his name
Small chance for the most of them, obviously if one cheats death the system is not counting the other times, but the flag sticks to it
He didn’t just cheat death, he became unkillable. I believe it can only happen once in a save so it’s extremely rare and it just makes cheating death more common on only that one orc.
Bro I had someone named exactly like yours who died 7 times and he was legendary
Mines nine and counting
@@crowbell3059 oh
"Design director Bob Roberts says there's a knob we can turn."
Yes, please tell me about the Bob Rob Knob.
Love that Bob is short for Robert, too, so the man's name is Robert Roberts.
William Williams/Williamson. Jacob Jacobs/Jacobson.
Bobert Robert
Bob lablaw's law blog
SOW had one of my favorite gameplay moments to this date. I raided a fortress and the Orc Warchief taunted me with my "spy" held hostage and executed him in front of our army. Only I never put a spy in his fortress. He killed his own captain and made the takeover easier for ME. It was fantastic. The nemesis system rules
I love when that happens because even your orcs mention it. "Wait, we didn't have a spy there did we?"
God damn that's gameplay depth right there. Love these games
Dude Killed his own captain just to fuck with you
I believe your orcs comment on it when it happens. They ask whether we put a spy there
I guess the real treasure was the orcs we killed along the way.
Gold
Pretty much sums up the franchise perfectly.
that's beautifully said
I think the real treasure was pressing R2+triangle to brutalize an orc and cackle maniacally as their brothers/friends run in horror, terrified from seeing their friend get stabbed in the neck 43 times.
I think the real tresuare was attacking my own orcs till they betray me then shame him till he screams
Ar-Karo’s story sounds compelling, a rise in power, from a simple trooper, to a powerful captain, to an undying monster, to a faithful companion, to an immortal overlord
And it’s completely unique to the player! No one else will have this interaction!
@@harrimcneilage6122 yes
Reminds me of that video about the opposite, an orc who starts off as a level 60 member of talion's army but his attempt to save his brother leads him to lose everything, even his mind
Someone in the comments did a whole 3 paragraph breakdown of it
@@historicflame972 do you know who the youtuber is?
@@Spider10v Zanar's Aesthetics
player interaction score: aka they turned plot armour into a gameplay stat
From plot armor to a plot point?
It works 🤷♂️
That makes me remember of some orc i killed 6 times and still cheated death once and another time.
@@usuariogoogle4347 I can see how this can generate a genuine grudge
Reminds me of an orc I killed 16 times before he ended up being killed finally in the endgame
The nemesis system is so good that I still remember the name of my rival from the first game and he even showed up in the second game because I played both on PC and it used my save file info. Shout out to Nuruk the Painted and his one shot poison throwing spears. You were the best rival I could ever hope for ✊
Hdjajdggahah this happened to me too had one of my nemesis come back. I thought I was tripping at first 💀
Me too dude. Dush blood axe will never be forgotten especially since he got amped in sow2 for me
@@tim6454 I had one named douche too
I had to fight my first guy 4 times cause he kept coming back lmao
@@creativename5573 Yup.. Had a super annoying poison archer kill me over and over and become 4x my level, and every time I killed him he came back, eventually becoming "The Machine".
I still remember in my original playthrough of Shadow of Mordor, there was this uruk called Zunn Blackheart that would always come and fight me. Zunn and I would exchange battles, sometimes of me killing him and other times the other way around. Zunn would ambush me in the wild, and his body parts being replaced with more machines as the days gone by and of me killing him multiple times. Eventually at the end of the story before I fight the Hand, Zunn fought me for the one last time and I finally cut his head off.
What a glorious system, this
Lovely. You reminded me 'Telling Stories with Systems" video, in which Mark told us how great epic narrative can emerge from games that don't have a plot at all, like Civilization.
@@palebluenarratives that’s exactly how I felt!
Have you played Shadow of War too? I recommend you to play it on the same system as your Shadow of Mordor playthrough.
@@victormorales2172 I’m planning to give it a playthrough soon after watching this video! Just really caught up with life at the moment due to Covid. I played Shadow of war back in 2015 so it’s been a while and I’m quite excited for it.
Exactly the same thing happened to me! They made me think I killed my greatest enemy off, and then BOOM, there he is with an orc spec ops squad, right before the boss fight. Still one of my most memorable moments ever.
I love the nemesis system.
One time i was attacking my nemesis, aka my punching bag, and about t shame him for the fifth time. BUT, then a captain ambushed me to tell me he was betraying me. And then 3 other captains showed up immediately after him to say they were betraying me too.
I died by them, and then spend a few hours hunting them down one by one and shaming them down to humiliating obscurity, who all either die by accident or instant mortality weaknesses.
Love it.
sweet ol revenge
Dame 😂😂😂
Kill Bill plotline
Lol
I had a single betrayal so far, and when it happened i just shamed him repeatedly. I shamed him so much he broke and could only repeat a single phrase, "Angry" his name became the deranged and went from level 6, to level 58, jesus christ man.
The research undertaken for this is as mind boggling as the Nemesis system itself.
This comment was 2 hours ago but the video was made 45 minutes ago. Wtf
Lovely Dan is a lovely Patron. GMTK supporters always get videos early :)
@@GMTK ohhhhh that makes sense
@@GMTK Hey Mark, lovely video. How long was your research for this video?
About three weeks for this one!
The number of voice lines in this game must be truly massive.
kinda yes, i can say i never truly heard the same thing twice
probably why it takes up 100GB
It'd be interesting to see someone make another push in this direction using text-to-speech, the resources needed are much less and for "monster" voices they usually work fine since you can filter it until it sounds right.
@@thiccboi5335 ??? I have the base game and its two story DLC downloaded, and it's only 52.5 GB...
@@CassidyCope I'm talking about shadow of war, are you talking about mordor?
I can't even imagine the amount of work of the dubbing people to record so many lines for a game!
It's even more impressive considering that the game is fully dubbed to other languages, with quality voice acting too. I'm playing sow in spanish for latin america, and it was a pleasant surprise to hear some of the most talented voices from the dubbing industry around here.
Imagine a nemesis system like this with an AI that is able to make new voice lines as well.
@@Chaylubb Hopefully it's nothing like Watch Dogs Legion. The AI modified voices in that game were horrendous.
I played 35 hous of this game and not once the orc's dialogue repeated. Not. Once.
@@victormorales2172 can confirm the quality for Brazilian Portuguese
You forgot to include that in the opening parts of the game there was a mission where you had to face your nemesis from the first shadow of war game. Meaning that in order to progress the story you had to kill your biggest rival one last time. The fact that it remembers your rival from the last game and FORCES YOU to put that story to rest in order to complete the game is insane. The nemesis system is truly special.
Sadly never got to do this as the new versions have this disabled with the removal of the loot box shenanigans
Nah he'd come back tho
When I bought the game I started to play and then he appeared in the Arena. Barfa a orc grunt that killed me in shadow of mordor and becomed Captain at the very start of the game, literally the first hour, I tried to get reveange he killed me again. Then I killed him but he returned, i killed him again as he burnt alive but he returned and kept ambushing during others orcs missions as i killed them, at this point he would always flee when things are not going well and he was fast as fuck, same as me as i also would have escaped in 1vs4 situations.Then i left for the other region to continue the story, when I got back he slowly climbed in the hierarchy and becomed a warchief bodyguard. I killed his chief and he tried to avange him but failed and fled. Then in the final mission he was there at the last battle where I killed him chopping his head off. Or so I thought as he returned once more, level 20 immune to everything in shadow of war the Arena mission, during the story..my reaction was "BARFA!!! You again!!?" He was all stiched up. I never had another nemesi like him, he was like a brother, an abusive brother but still a brother.
@@robfusnigga said brother
@@lonewanderer1328 this negro said brother
It sucks that the Nemesis System has only been used in one franchise and nothing else. Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War are some of the best action games I’ve ever played, and at least 1/3 of why is because of the Nemesis System.
The closest thing we’ve seen when it comes to replication of this system was the bounty hunter system in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which was just a lazy husk of what the Nemesis System actually was, and Watch Dogs Legion, which was more of a “playable character” system.
Here’s hoping Monolith’s next game continues the Nemesis System cause the system is fantastic.
Warframe's Kuva Lich system is similar to the Nemesis system, in that it creates a randomly generated personal enemy.
@@dazzle9712 i don't think it's any close to compare, kuva lich literally won't affect anything in the game except if you choose to fight him yourself.
@@liberifatali6975 The lich'll confiscate parts of your reward in missions taking place in parts they own. That includes rivens and rare drops.
@@dazzle9712 ah... yes... i forgot abt that part lol
Warner bros patent protected it so no one can use it
“Death cannot take you today! Just as it cannot take me…” I legitimately smiled from that
Ikr same!!
The cool thing about games like this is they are infinitely replayable and entirely unspoilable.
Kind of. You can spoil someone new to the game by telling him what surprises the orcs have in store for him. So for instance, someone would never expect a breakdancing orc, but now that he is told about one appearing in general, he will not be as surprised to see it himself.
@@Pedro_Le_Chef there's a breakdancing orc?
I've played the game for 170 hours and never met any breakdancing orc
@@eothorn3217 sadly no. But, there's a title called "The friendly" and he's just a bud everytime you encounter him he goes "Hey man, how about we just talk it out?" "Yo, you're pretty cool, can we like, not fight and stuff?".
Your priority must be to recruit him and keep him safe.
@@eothorn3217 it was an analogy
Let's add to the fact that Overlords can get anxious to a spy in his ranks to the point he will kill a captain or warchief thinking he's a spy. The dialogue of one of your orc will be along the lines of "We didn't put any spy there. He just killed one of his defenders."
"The vast majority of orcs will never cheat death" clearly they never had my gameplay experience
Well, on my 35+ hours playthrough, it happened only 4-5 times.
exactly
So true now I’ll try recruiting him
I don't get it right why, in these weeks, everytime I play an online feud, I always find Captains with the Iron Will trait. It's really annoying! I can't recruit any of them anymore, and the only thing I usually do is to shame them.😡
The bad point is when they cheat death and betray you they all got the "Iron Will" trait... and if you lvl them doen they may lose some resistances along the way ... i usually just kill them when they came back
Ar-Karo: Did you really think killing me would be enough to make me die?
Big brain time
Shirou Emiya: CONFUSED SCREAMING
But, but, people die if they are killed!
Umh yes... I'm used to that being the case.
Who knew that Ar Karo was secretly Anos!
I wish you talked more about the deranged trait. There’s a sliding scale that pushes the orc afflicted to go more and more crazy. It’s really cool and a bit haunting
I had a very tragic storyline similar to GMT's "Stitch", except my Olog betrayed me, gained the ability to nullify being turned, and was eventually driven mad. His high Player Interaction score caused him to be repeatedly brought back to life, to be a huge nuisance to me in whatever late game encounter I was doing. He gradually lost his mind through his brushes with death until eventually he was a gibbering mad blob capable of only one thought: kill the gravewalker. I had taken this proud being, broken it's will, forced it to fight for me in arena matches, placed it in charge of my most powerful fortress; of course he rebelled against my iron hand! Twice broken, he was doomed to wander the lands as an exile; his once noble spirit destroyed and his keen mind shattered, his only thought revenge against the human who had made him into this wretched thing. He was finally slain during his ambush on my ambush - by his replacement bodyguard, some recent recruit hastily pressed into my service that despite his stats, would never reach the glory of his predecessor.
As a player, I was so frustrated to have this happen! I made this guy into the power that he is, and now he's my immortal surprise nemesis? He was so cool, and funny, and now I just dreaded seeing him scream "ARGABLAGADAAA!!" and extend a simple encounter into a ten minute slog. Defeating him would only mean hearing him scream at me again 30 minutes later. It felt like the game giving me a huge middle finger. His story, though, was so powerful and tragic that it's stuck with me for years! It was a real, "wait, am I the baddie?" moment where I realized that Talion was just Sauron in a different form. 😲
@@galacticbob1 This was a really good read, thanks for sharing your story!
The Nemesis System in a Batman game with the “Nemeses” being crime lords of various gangs would be incredible. Imagine starting with Carmine Falcone, Penguin, Black Mask, and others as “Overlords” and as the game evolves, cool new procedurally generated Batman villains and gangsters rise through the ranks.
I think Wonder Woman is a better fit with the nemesis system than batman. I can see the main villain of the game be ares the god of war.
You, my friend, are a genius.
@@cupcakes6919 nah
@@dyltube6395 so are you not going to elaborate?
@@cupcakes6919 nah
Storytelling is a powerful thing - I know that because I care immensely about Ar-Karo despite only knowing him as an example of how this stuff works!
Ar-karo is a gigachad: even though he is just dying over and over again he never just gives up
@@mrmoi9838 sounds like the rival character in an anime. Even though he hates you he would still help you out
@@DJ-fn9zk true
The nemesis system is literally 'what doesn't kill you make you stronger'
And sometimes “I died and got better”
@@aidanedwards8931 fun fact. I also got kuga the machine you see at 15:52. The guy returned 6 times after i killed him
@@mohammadnaghizade3544 same, i killed him, then he hunted me down, later (much later) i came back and recruited him
or weaker when shamed
@@johankhamaruddin3775 Maniac orcs : "YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD"
I remember doing the arena mission in shadow of war for my first time. I defeated all the other captains and then HE walked in, Grublik the Immovable. Responsible for dozens of my deaths, has killed my favorite captains on several occasions and has caused me to rage quit Shadow of Mordor entirely. So when he walked into the arena with his spear and shield I, no joke, turned off the game for a day because I knew what was bound to pursue.
The next day after hours of trial and error I was finally able to defeat him only for him to cheat death and remain in my game until the final mission against sarron and his army. And this is the reason I love the nemesis system. It can create situations like that and can leave an impact on peoples playthroughs.
There was this one cunt that i couldnt beat killed me like 40 times so instead i recruited him because i was tired of dealing with him after i recruited him i got a trophy named "If you can't beat them" lowkey my most humiliating moment in gaming afterwards i banished him and made him turn insane and killed him he cheated death... kuga the machine
I won't lie but I choked upon seeing "HE walked in" like some major Super Villainy was about to go down.
You can die in shadow of mordor? 😅😅
@@K4inan no you don’t understand. I played on this one save. For a WHILE. I swear the game learned. This one guy had everything I hated to fight against. Also I may be very bad at the game but I’m pretty sure being bad at the game makes the game better.
@@collincampbell7508 From what I've seen it would: Damn last chance is near impossible to fail.
I knew a orc once. First name Tärz. I thought I'd kill him but Instead he killed me. I found his new place and shamed him. He ambushed me later on and I accidentally killed him with poison. He cheated death and become Tärz the poisoned, I proceeded to shame him when he became deranged. I decided I'd tracked him down and shame him again, when I started searching he ambushed me now babbling like an idiot, that was when I he died of poisoning again. I was bummed as I wanted to shame him. Cut to half hour later and he ambushes me again when in the heat of battle I used his mortal weakness against him and stealth killed him. I thought for sure he was dead and joking thought "if he comes back I'll recruit him and make him my overlord." Wouldn't you believe it he comes back and I do exactly that.
What a spectacular game. The amount of awesome stories you get makes the price tag worth it.
"deranged? I was deranged once theu put me in. A room'
@@Bacon2000.A rubber room, a rubber room with rats. I hate rats. Deranged? I was deranged onc-
You saw the potential in him and you took it, well played
I’d love an orc to be really obsessed with being your nemesis, but he’s super forgettable and he gets really offended when you don’t remember who he is. Konroc the forgettable
I’ve seen an orc like this in my playthrough no joke
Daryl? Dale? Doris? Debbie? Dave... Daaa-yve...
I think there's actually an orc like this. He's not called the Forgettable, but his whole schtick is "How come you don't remember me? I killed you! I literally ended your life once!"
I have an orc like this in my playthrough. He killed me once and that became his whole personality. He comes back to fight me just about every day and is always killed immediately.
@@EteamProductions
"I killed you! I literally ended your life once!"
meanwhile the player: "Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?"
The video has been out for a while and I am not sure if anyone will see it, but I just wanted to leave the story of Pushkrimp the "Many Titles" here:
Upon entering the fourth zone of the game for the first time I was ambushed by an epic level Uruk named "Pushkrimp the Sickly". His body was swollen and green which gave him a unique look so after beating him with relative ease (he was an archer and not that strong for an epic orc) I shamed him to a lower level so that I could recruit him later. Before I even got to do that he fulfilled a mission, which involved killing some Caragor and became "Pushkrimp the Beast Slayer" complete with a nice animal hat that covered his deformed head. I was quite impressed by his quick recovery from being shamed and recruited him for good.
Together we killed and recruited quite a few Captains until I decided that it was time to go after one of the Warchiefs. I obviously wanted to take Pushkrimp, my best follower, with me and sent him to infiltrate. The time for the challenge came and we faced the Warchief and his two bodyguards. Things started out well with Pushkrimp quickly taking care of the first bodyguard, a rather imposing Olog, and executing him with his crossbow. However, when the other two enemies were almost down a third orc (that's another story but the guy is a real bastard, believe me) ambushed me and put me in the ground with his "No Chance" Trait.
That stung a bit, but the feast held by the Warchief offered me a chance for revenge. When I finally had him cornered Pushkrimp showed up out of nowhere, and betrayed me at the worst moment, calling out my weakness. In his mind, he had already surpassed me when I died in front of him and now he was his own Uruk again. With some trouble, I managed to fight back until Pushkrimp made an escape. After taking care of the Warchief I started to hunt him down. He had been my best guy and I wanted him back. However, as it turned out his betrayal had given him an iron will, which I had to break first. After numerous encounters, in some of which I had to fail the finishing moves to keep him alive, I got my Pushkrimp back, although he was "The Shamed" now.
The orc hunt continued for a time with him at my side and it felt just like before. Unfortunately, the good times came to a brutal halt, when I engaged multiple captains in an ambush. The fighting got really chaotic and at some point, Pushkrimp must have gotten killed. I only realized it when looking at the army screen after the battle and it was quite a shock. I had wanted to make him Overlord at some point to reward him for his help, but now he had just died in a manner that was not spectacular at all, hell, I had not even seen it.
Luckily it was not my last meeting with Pushkrimp. When I was about to take down another Warchief he showed up on his Caragor, cheating death and betraying me at the same time, because I had abandoned him on the battlefield and now he wanted revenge. His newly revived self was quite over-leveled and we had our most hard-fought fight yet. In the end, I still succeeded and decided to shame him, because I wanted him back in my ranks. That proved to be a bit much and poor Pushkrimp broke, turning into "the Ruined". For now, I am debating what to do with him: I would really like to make him Overlord, although he won't care anymore. At the same time, I would like to see what kind of nemesis he can become for me if I leave him to continue his hunt. And then there is the option of finally delivering his scarred body and soul the mercy he deserves. He always had a point when he betrayed me after all. Only, I am not sure if I can even kill him at this point...
I almost had the same experience with Pushkrimp (yea, i meet with an orc with the same name). He was also swollen, but in my game he carried a giant spear and a shield. I play this game that; if i found a cool looking orc then i command him to my side, but Pushrimp was neither cool nor interesting at first so i just killed him without any struggle. Obviously he then came back for revenge and he looked even more disgusting, but it was my first playthrough in Shadow of War, and this was my first connection with an orc so i decided to keep him with me. He was my number one bodyguard, we killed many uruks, gologs, caragors together. I had a lot of fun with him by always prioritizing to keep him alive which gave an extra challenge for the game... until one day he betrayed me, and i was so angry with him that i humiliated him to something like lvl4. After that he couldn't talk, only babling in himself - i took his mind and drove him crazy. I could not decide what to do with him so i just ignored him for sometime. After Pushkrimp betrayal and madness i focused on the main story of conquering the first fort. Unfortunately Pushkrimp died in that first battle... but i feel that after my massive humilliation towards him, death was the best option that he could have had.
I’ve gotten so many amazing stories from this game I have around 182 hours I believe from me just killing captains and conquering everything in Mordor. I now almost have all regions completely controlled with all slots filled with friendly captains that all have amazing stories and character developments. I remember my friend and I playing this game for hours on end during sleepovers as we’d do the craziest of shit and meet the funniest of captains and have just an all around fun time. I must say that one of my most old and favorite of captains in this game that I have is Amûg the Head Lopper. I’ve had this captain since the very start of my playthrough and I do not regret it. I’ve taken this guy all over Mordor to help take all of the fortresses and help slay all overlords and warchiefs, he was my right hand as we’d saved each other more times than I can count. Now after his long adventure he’s had, I’ve set him as overlord of Cirith Ungol of the Terror citadel, he’s earned it for sure.
Heres my story: My nemisis was "luga of the flies" He was a assassin in a early story mission, and i dropped a fly nest on him and killed him, he came back as "luga of the flies" (He was called something else before, but l don't remember it), with his face and shoulder being F-ed up and "hivey" (11:50). i then killed him 2 more times, cutting off his arms and legs (each time giveing me a legendary item) (he came back with a 3 pronged metal hand after one of these dismemberments (2:10 for example)). by the 4th time i encountered him, l decided l NEEDED to make him mine, so the next 2 times he ambushed me, l ran (5 encounters in all during the minis ithil arc/C1). Time passed, and eventualy, he became overlord of the area next to minus mogul. And i'm happy to say, he still is, though under my control.
Edit: I think it might have been him!: 1:00 (though, i think the level is a bit too high)
My story starts with a little orc captain in shadow of mordor called "Mogg rock crusher"
I decided to do some exploring after doing a handful of missions at the start of the game, and i found Mogg. I co uldnt brand him cause it was early game, so i killed him. He came back of course, and i killed him again. I think around this point i did the prompt and moved him to shadow of war, but anyway, i kept playing. I killed him again, and again, and again, until he was messed up, barely living, and i killed him for good.
Or so i thought.
I played Shadow of war, and during the arena mission, who would show up but Mogg rock crusher, looking like he did when i must of accidentally moved him to shadow of war or something. So i killed him to progress, a nd later he came back as mogg the hook. I lost to him, and he got killed by the mysterious savior tribute guy. Then i did the mission with the necromancer orc, and i was sad to see mogg among the undead, meaning it would be impossible to recruit him. To this day, he was the orc i had the longest feud with, and is pretty much the face of this series for me.
@@noahsf7676
You're story fills my heart with warmth.
This game is VERY fun to come back to 4 years later with the market entirely removed.
I really dont know why they removed it from the store ....thankfully i bought sow as a disc
@@theintruder6085 tons of backlash saying that it was microtransactions, yet it was barely
The game was always fun, people just deprived themselves of the experience for the longest time because of the arguably ridiculous overreaction to the market back when the game came out.
@@theintruder6085 because it was pay to win
@@chrismarple How? You could buy Orc's and chest with items (nothing that you cant have with regular playing), but there wasn't option ''buy this and win the game''..
And it is solo player game, so who cares about microtransaction.
One of the coolest orc encounters I had was this one orc bodyguard I was hunting down. I revealed a handful of information on him then behind me I heard, “Ranger! Find anything interesting??” Then I proceeded to turn him into my own spy
Oh shit! So it's like he knows he's being spied on!
Honestly, Shadow of War is a brilliant game, not just the Nemesis system. The combat is fantastic with how much variety and power its willing to give you, the artdirection is superb and only adds on the style of the movies, and the story is suprisingly emotional at times. The ending is one of the few that ever managed to make me shed a tear.
SOW had too much pastel coloring for it's theme and the shadows, texture and lighting are not as detailed as the first game.
I kinda wanted to dominate Sauron and take over Mordor but hey the ending we got opens a potential sequel where we can play as Nazgul Talion and dominate humans instead of Orcs in the pursuit of the One Ring, that would be AWESOME!
Shadow of war managed to redeem the story of the series. Throughout the first game I couldnt help but feel like they were spitting on the themes of the lord of the rings e.g. Power corrupting. They turned it around with the sequel and it actually fits into the world now
I love playing through the game, it's really fun, but I wish there was more endgame content than just orcs and forts. Like when you unlock all your cool necromancy powers you don't get to do anything with them because there's no quests, no people to talk to, no new things other than fortress defence, no nothing. Really fun to replay, but nothing to do but replay
I thought it looked generic and janky, with elements from other games that weren't as smooth. The nemesis system is its only real claim to fame.
It’s interesting to think of when AI voice acting is perfected, just how far systems like this could go.
* if
@@przemysawzanko6700 when
@@przemysawzanko6700 lol... AI voice acting is already there...can mimick an actors voice with only a few lines of dialogue. (But the more the better).
Combine that with an advanced text generation AI that uses context to create dialogue (an advanced chatbot)
And boom...
It just hasn't been used on games yet I think. Since these are technically new technologies from research areas
It's already there but the only good company in it has a pretty aggressive and shitty business model, and the open source alternative is old and underwhelming.
Personally, I think both AI voice acting and procedurally generated text aren't technologically anywhere near close enough for something like this, but the technology is advancing fast.
I would fucking love a similar system to this in a Pokemon game where trainers can become actual rivals rather than the often poorly written, non-engaging rivals currently used in the mainline Pokemon games! Fantastic video btw!
This nemesis system would work amazingly in almost any rpg really, to bad its patented.
@@PaperEater_ You could work it differently. The patent is for their system specifically, with the promotions and cheating death and the like. But let's say the bug trainer you beat at the start when your starter crit all of his bugs returns to get revenge after your second gym badge, with a better team. After you beat him, he storms off in a huff, vowing to get revenge. Later on, while your defeating team whatever, and your about to defeat their head, he steps out, now high ranking member, with a much stronger team. It could work even better if you lose, let's say after the second battle, so he wont appear at the end. You can do alot without infringing on the patent
@@PaperEater_ It's patented? NOOOOO I mean I love this being here but I need it in other place too you know???
@@PaperEater_ a patent doesn't mean you aren't allowed to use it. It would have to be settled on a case by case basis but it just means they want you to pay up for the work they did, which is not unreasonable.
Also, as Data Flaherty said, patents are very specific and as long as you don't want the exact same thing as what's in the Middle-earth games, you'd have no problem being inspired by their system
Flo, oh, I new it was "openish" but I didn't know it was that open to use.
10:52 Even though this was a pre-written and pre-recorded line, you only experienced it as a result of a procedural generation system. And yet it gave me chills like it was a major story moment, because of the connection you conveyed through your telling of your playthrough.
i mean every quote is pre written, when this game was created there was no AI to generate this
Now I see why games like this take so long to make.
Millions, perhaps even billions of lines of dialogue
Finally got the answer to: "why isn't the nemesis system in more games?" and kinda sad and disappointed about the answer. I hope somehow, someway other game devs find a way around this patent and maybe even make something better or WB let the patent expired. It honestly feels like they stump alil bit of growth in the gaming community. But, I guess we'll have to see.
its so shitty for a developer as beloved (and one of my personal favorite studios) to just say like "hey this is a great idea... no one else can use it". its not quite like but almost like Infinity Ward saying "hey call of duty 1 is a fantastic game... no one else can ever make first person shooters anymore, because we patented it". Its a rehash of PUBG suing Fortnite, just because they share an immense similarity doesnt mean there aren't key differences in style and substance.
or that company that patented loading screen minigames
@@quinnmarchese6313 Namco Bandai patented minigames in loading screens, though the patent ran out around 2015ish. Just nobody's really bothered to do any of them in modern titles, since loading is now either front-ended as a one-and-done when you boot up, or is hidden in increasingly clever ways.
It's not as bad you think. Another studio could always purchase use it and sell it as well. But, I do agree that this is shutting out a very cool feature that could be used in unique ways for future titles outside the lotr universe
It is entirely designed to stumt growth.
That is the entire purpose of copyright, at least when employed by corporations.
Fuck copyright. All it does is stifle creativity.
"First, it's important that you can actually remember and distinguish between these different orcs" I reinstalled Shadow of War after going over a year without playing it and my save had been stored on the cloud so it was still available. I was very surprised at how many of the orcs in that save I remembered, even when revisiting starting locations.
This video also made me want to reinstall it
this system would be sick in a dating sim
"she will remember that..."
I gently open the door.
@@Michael_Schumacher NOOOO
Like in a soap opera. The villain who was supposedly killed returns with memory loss, or something.
It will be a good NTR system.
I'll never forget the orc that gave me the most trouble. Luuga the Wrestler. And the fact that I can remember his name without fail means the Nemesis System is something we need to see more of.
"You can't have improv when your partner is dead"
Well, that got dark.
I didn't wanna do this, but it doesn't truly get dark till she died. "Yes and."
that is why ar karo is best improv partner, death is not enough to make him die
That depends entirely on how good you are at puppetry. Or Necromancy. Whatever.
@@morganrobinson8042 Huh, not a huge difference really. It's all body animation one just prefers dead ones, the other doesn't necessarily care.
@@insaincaldo One uses magic to animate the dead, the other uses your hands. That's pretty different.
i've always wanted to try this game, & 18:30 has convinced me to buy it. I am a HUGE fan of compelling procedural stories. I can't wait to play it, get inspired, & get sued for trying to innovate making some inspired indie game 🙃
Try to teach viewers how to make a system like that then WB kicks the front door open
Hi
Fancy seeing you here! Love your content.
Get it now, maggot!
That was very cool.
One of my best experience’s in the game was in the early game before I got the ring of power. I kill some no name orc captain with fire and he becomes “the flame of war” (strong and badass as hell). He proceeds to kick my ass multiple times and becomes overlord. When I finally get the ring of power within the story he is now the overlord of one of the toughest fortresses in the game. So through the entire campaign I have this rival I am set on fighting. Three forts later I fight through his captain’s and war lords, Infiltrate spies into his fortress only to finally face him in a epic duel and defeat him!
One of the best gaming experience’s I’ve ever had.
I remember being absolute blown away by shadow of war and being convinced that system would show up in loads of games after that. what you've said about trademarking makes alot of sense and is incredibly frustrating
One of the best systems to ever come out of a AAA game.
I gotta say, it was pretty brilliant how, in a video discussing the way the nemesis system creates stories, you use the stories created to make ongoing stories in the video and keep viewers engaged. Halfway through, I was like "damn that Maku, I gotta see how he takes him down now," and then it hit me
Yes. That emergent story of "The rise of Ar-Karo the Stitch" felt more satisfying than most crafted game stories I've seen.
I had an obsessive Ork who fell in love with my dead body and he kept escaping or coming back from the dead so I recruited him and he’d fight alongside of me constantly complimenting me and mentioning how he loves me but wants to kill me
So when did he betray you?
I think the epilogue is terribly underrated.
Spoilers below:
The fact that the story there goes on pretty much infinitely, which you could technically say, until Talion joins the Nazgul, is pretty cool imo. The endless amounts of sieges you can play gives it such a real feeling.
I mean, there are only 10 sieges total, so I don't know about "endless"
@@blackvendaeta7104is more like siège the other player
@@blackvendaeta7104i remember the launch epilogue was like, 50+ sieges total?
I personally enjoyed it, but people made a lot of stink about it
This reminds me, I had a nemesis named Krosh the Machine. The man always came back, he came back five times before I cut off his head and he was dead for good. Then in a later mission, a necromancer revives all your dead nemesises as weak zombies and when I ran into Krosh, instead of the usual zombie gargling, he just. Stared, while the music got more and more intense.
Holy hell...
Did you kill him?
@@Phi_Lix yes. Easily.
@@thelonelylump4015 And did you ever see him again after?
Yeeeah, this happened to me too. The orc that got made into "the Machine" kept coming back again and again, even after chopping his head off, and when I thought I managed to kill him, that necromancer brought him back. NIGHTMARE SHIT.
The personality of the orcs is probably my favorite part of this system. I love the dichotomy between those orcs that bring a smile to your face with their ridiculous antics, who you can't help but feel proud of when they kill other orcs and ascend the hierarchy, and the orcs who have you swearing up a storm every time they appear or even are referenced, acting as an aggravating stain on the world that you just can't seem to be rid of.
It's great.
You forgot to mention that orcs can kill one of their own, that they think are a spy.
I love how the orcs leading your army comment on it too, like, they look at you and say things like "wait, we didn't have a spy, did we?" "that stupid paranoid just killed one of his own!"
@@EteamProductions "am I going mad or did he just kill one of his own men"
@@RodWaffle I went to kill a Warlord once and he killed one of his own orcs thinking it was an spy. I died, retried it and he killed another one, my spy still alive. When I finally beat him down, my spy said "The shrakh was so paranoid he killed all his allies and trusted me, what an idiot".
@@MrRogordo hahahaha
Yeah that’s hilarious, but unfortunately he decapitated Loki (necromancer) bc I planted a spy
The game really does build a relationship between you and the orcs. When an orc first betrayed me, I shamed him over and over into oblivion out of anger. When my Architect died, I nearly cried. Still miss that bearded old olog wearing a Tudor flat cap.
"In the future, entertainment will be randomly generated"
-VeggieTales
Weedeater
Weedeater
Weedeater
Weedeater
Weedeater
I was going to type "Unless you decapitate them they can come back."
WOW. Just wow.
You encountered this in a video. I did in my (grave)walkthrough. This was the most unnerving moment in the whole game when I realized I’m fighting an orc I already beheaded!
I've beheaded orcs before and they've come back without any kind of stitching or reinforcement. I either got a bug or this was an oversight in the game mechanics.
Update: In this video I revealed that Monolith and Warner Bros have a patent for the Nemesis System. It turns out that the patent in question had not yet been accepted. However! As for February 5th, that patent has now been approved and goes into effect on February 23rd. www.ign.com/articles/wb-games-nemesis-system-patent-was-approved-this-week-after-multiple-attempts
Patents are unfortunately still somewhat common in game design (Mass Effect's dialogue ring, Eternal Darkness's sanity meter, and The Medium's dual world system have all been patented, or had patents applied for). This is despite the fact that game design is heavily based on inspiration and iteration (see, for example, how the Mordor games use gameplay elements inspired by Assassin's Creed and Arkham Asylum).
The exact details of how this patent can be enforced (or licensed) is impossible to know without getting legal advice - so if you wish to develop something similar I'd heavily recommend talking to an IP lawyer before getting too into the weeds. And that's the chilling effect of patents: while giant game publishers will be able to get this advice, it may be impossible for smaller studios - leading them to steer clear of making anything similar to avoid legal action.
Anyway - thanks for watching, and for sharing your Mordor stories in the comments below.
It really is unfortunate. With corporations controlling the flow of innovation through financial domination and seeking to stop game design innovation before it happens like spraying for weeds... I only hope that we lean more toward a future of sharing ideas and uplifting each other instead of jealously guarding our pearls, which glimmer so much less in the darkness of locked chests. Tabletop games have seen such a boom in this regard, precisely because they don't seek to gate off ideas from others when they know we push the fields of play and human connection further through collaboration than capitalism.
Thank you as always for your wonderful work! Game on 🎮💚
If WB Games (or Ubisoft) patented freeflow combat we would never have gotten Ghost of Tsushima, or Spiderman PS4.
This is by any metric bad for the industry.
The timing of this choice is interesting, as it's directly after the launch of Watch Dogs Legion, and the reveal of Gotham Knights, and this very video.
I think the purpose here is twofold: 1. Prevent Ubisoft from using the system from Legion in any other games such as Assassin's Creed, as it was likely planned to be implemented in all their open world games which already share so many mechanics and systems.
2. Utilize the Nemesis System in their own games, namely Gotham Knights (unlikely), Suicide Squad, or the as-of-yet unannounced WB Montréal game (most likely).
It's definitely bad for the industry, but I'll be a marginally less salty about it if we get a DC Superheroes game where you actually cause your own supervillain vendettas and stuff🤩
@Mr D J You're trolling aren't ya.
@@JainaSoloB312 No. If anything it calls for a strike. But then again "Vote with your wallet" is absolutely bullshit.
@Mr D J You know innovation happens by iterating on other people's ideas, right? Almost nothing is a truly purely original idea.
I had absolutely no idea about the nemesis system. I always wanted to play Shadow of Mordor. After watching this, I think it climbed a lot of steps in my wishlist.
Up until this day, I never knew there was an interaction in which the orc breaks your sword and you lose it!!! This is such a cool detail, quite a marvel. Like this video! Keep it up, I'm loving these!
Even better, if you get revenge, you get your sword back, 5 levels higher (can even crack the max level that way) and with upgraded rarity. Basically the most powerful weapons of the game can be created by getting it back after being broken
@@philippmeier3363 so if your sword is broken then does it mean you can't fight with a sword till you get revenge or what?
@@krishrocks11 No. In Shadow of War, you can have multiple weapons.
@@philippmeier3363 oO wow. I want hehe
@@philippmeier3363 game actually creates your own Anduril, so cool
my favorite part about the nemesis system is the fact that anyone can become a captain, so some insignificant uruk soldier you bump into on your travels somehow kills you, becomes a captain and can become it's own story
Something like this happened, some random uruk killed me, became known as mogg cannibal, he kills me gets promoted and stuff, I kill him and cut off an arm, he comes back as mogg the machine now with a prosthetic and some wacky other things, after that we have some other things, he kills me a bunch, becomes damn near unstoppable for my level, I kill him again cutting him in half, the third time I sent in a graug, a bodyguard, and another uruk to attack him, I kill him for the last time barely winning and he was very cool
@@bigloser5104 I find it super cool that the nemesis system can make memorable little stories and rivalries from basically nothing, it's why even after completing the story twice, I keep coming back to this game because there are still so many unique experiences that can be had.
@@drunkenpeanut6582 The system truely is a work of art
The assasin you kill in the early game story came back, and since I started on gravewalker difficulty he was my bane, and caused an infinite loop in the mission where you defend the courtyard. I had to lower the difficulty to kill him
I never played these games, but all I heard was "Yeah, the Nemesis system is pretty cool."
I would've never thought that it's actually this deep, dynamic and well executed. The amount of voice-overs that must've been made for this is just incredible. It seem very underappreciated.
There are around 300+ different personalities, all of them with 40 unique voicelines + generic voicelines shared by orcs interpreted by the same voice actor, so... Yeah, it took A LOT of effort that was underappreciated because of controversy :c
I have met an ork on the very beggining in Minas Ithil. He was enraged by everything which made him hard to kill, hard to posess and he killed me a few times, and vice versa. He kept coming back until I finally got him into my ranks, upgraded him, made him a bodyguard. But the nemesis relation must go on, so he betrayed me, I killed him, and he is yet to be seen again
Come back Tuka the survivor I miss you
I killed such an ork at the beginning of my first playthrough. He was revived by Zog the eternal and immediately killed everyone he could reach, including Zog.
I had two Nemesis Orcs that were blood brothers that kept saving each other and kicking my butt so I recruited both of them and ended up making them both really strong teammates of mine and they were my best friends because they saved me alot, miss those guys, I’ll always remember you Bûr and Gûrshu
You should have thrown them in the pit to fight each other to death!
@@l.b136 what happens if you send blood brothers to fight?
@@Shadowed_Ninja I believe they will fight to the death, but the winner will betray you in retaliation
I think Xcom is a great "Mirror" to the Nemesis system where you grow stories with soldiers you level and appreciate them only to see them get one shot by a Sectopod that you swear was not behind that wall one turn ago. Rip Karen "Bee" Araragi - you will be missed.
or for a low health gatekeeper to fly up next to your best gunslinger and fire and miss. just for your gunslinger (who's also low health) to return fire, killing the gatekeeper which promptly blows up, also killing your gunslinger...
then again, not as bad as Tobias Batch
I always reload a save if that happens.
Was not expecting a monogatari reference here
@@deederelict Monogatari is very good!
War of the chosen even introduced the Chosen, who were clearly influenced by the nemesis system in how they could evolve over the campaign and all their taunting conditional dialogue.
Is there a place where one could find a list of patented gameplay mechanics? I've heard of a few, but only from scattered sources. It would be nice to have a list of them, if only to know what mechanics to legally avoid.
My understanding is that mechanics cannot be legally patented.
There are a few things that have gotten through with loopholes, such as the loading screen games that were categorized as a technology (although that patent is no longer active).
I just searched for "patented gameplay mechanics" on Google and got a list of them right away.
@@obsidianmoon13 makes you think how fucked up that isn't?
@@ariezon Not necessarily. In these voodoo games for example, that single mechanic is the whole game, and if the mecanic is quite specific, the dev should at least have the option to protect his/her work
(Not to defend voodo btw, that company is as bad as ea)
@@Eggscargot Lawyers exploit the patent system in various ways, allowing them to get patents that really shouldn't have been allowed. Once it is awarded, it can pretty much only be contested in court, and most people/companies aren't going to bother fighting to get it overturned. Particularly if you have plenty of lawyers to defend your patent, and the money to make a case drag out for years... It it easier and safer for others to just cut a deal, or outright avoid even approaching anything that potentially infringes upon even the absurdly vague and intentionally broad overview.
Which is a big part of how IMO patents stifle innovation and progress.
One of my favorites from this system was in TearofGrace's videos with the Uruk, Prak Jaws. That guy was an absolute menace and the cherry on top was the game constantly bringing him back all the till the base game's finale. XD
And the different reincarnations of him
I can't imagine how a patent for this would hold up under even flimsy scrutiny. It's just a series of dice roll tables. Sure, the end result can be really neat, but that's the power of procedural randomness!
At best it’s a power structure which the player has input while the game has an idea of its own the player can alter this idea by say killing an orc or recruiting them then the game adapts to that change in the story , quite impressive imo considering how unique some of the orcs are
Basically the game is running another story alongside the player while they play the main and side quests , serious points for this I loved SOW
I think the problem is that even if you're in the right, you probably have to spend a significant amount of money and time to convince the court of that. It doesn't have to hold up, it just has to convince others that it's not worth it.
Loved hearing about the villains generated in your adventures and it makes me really curious to try the games. Thanks for the video and what I can only imagine was a ton of time spent delving into the system!
You can get the first one for pretty cheap on a lot of sales. The gameplay is pretty generic but it's still fun to play through for the orcs alone
The actual gameplay is pretty awful TBH. Their main way of changing/growing the orcs is making them increasingly invincible. In the first game it's fine because they gain resistances slowly over the game. Maybe a warchief will have invincibility to some type of attack and resistance to some other. In the second game that's every random captain, and instead higher lvl enemies are just invincible to every attack type but one. It sucks all the fun out of the game frankly. No creativity, no skill, just do what it tells you to.
You will not be disappointed
@@compassionatecurmudgeon7025 Maybe stop it with the misinformation? The orcs in the second game function the same, they gain strengths and lose weaknesses as they level up and Talion also gains abilities that allows him to more easily take advantage of weaknesses that the orcs still have. And on that topic, the system is set up so orc captains will have a minimum of three weaknesses even at maximum level - and that is without taking into consideration the things that captains will never be able to adapt or be invulnerable to such as the spectral glaive - there is never a point where a captain will only have one weakness, it is quite literally hard coded that way. Invincibilities also only last as long as captains are not dazed or afraid of anything since their fear overrides their strengths.
Maybe your experience comes from fighting hacked online orc captains?
@@MyDreamCrusher I mean they function the same, except start higher level and have more strengths and less weaknesses from the word go. Yes, there are technically multiple weaknesses, they're often environmental weaknesses that aren't an immediate or practical option. It still feels deeply artificial and restrictive. Perhaps it wouldn't have killed the game for me on its own, but the plot also left me completely cold and I completely didn't care which generic orc was the leader of a faction that doesn't move or do anything that would depend on the nature of its leadership.
To put a finer point on it: Those invincibility attributes force you to take a slower pace and think, which doesn't help when stopping to think makes you see all the seams in the narrative and gameplay. It broke the magic and left me just seeing everything as hours of wasted time rather than challenges to overcome.
The nemesis system is a neat trick, but it doesn't actually *do* anything. The impacts that it has on the game world are minor and unpredictable, as such it offers no new choices to the player.
It does autogenerate the equivalent of flavor text for the generic bosses. Sure they added fancy graphics, but there are plenty of more intricate and impressive interactions in gaming.
Heck, dwarf fortress generates a history before each game that creates major historical figures, sees empires rise and fall, betrayals, environmental disasters etc. and then also generates structures, people, and towns in accordance with that history.
My experience was sitting unmoved as the game acts like a crackhead fisherman with no arms arms and no legs, throwing plot hooks out time and time again sloppily by mouth and with no strength. None of them ever get close. Eventually I just feel sorry for the metaphorical game paraplegic wiggling on the dock.
'You're not enjoying this either are you buddy?'
*muffled affirmation noises*
'Remember the hobbits buddy?'
*calmer affirmation noise*
'Think about the hobbits...'
*muffled* 'hobbitses?'
'Yea'
*BANG*
The epilogue actually offers a lot of interesting things with the nemesis system, you can consider it a test of how much you interacted with your own followers because they will for once matter. Additionally sieges are some of the most brutal experiences out there and can lead to the presence of new nemesis orcs and the death of beloved followers at the hands of potential new ones. While I dont like how the orcs never react to your new *theme* its made up for when considering just how deep it is in other places. TLDR epilogue is worth it.
Ar-Karo's story arc could be an entire book by an author, with him as the main character, and Talion as both his rival and his savior that allowed him to rise to such power.
Some of the best parts of it are the things that can go completely forgotten or unmentioned, from captains you walked out on that way later when you re-enter their zone will reference how time has passed and you're both more then you used to be. how in secret many captains are willing (or desperate to prove themselves) to be challenged by you. i even had interactions where i got scolded by one captain for going after another. along the lines of "Hey you should have paid attention to me!" and above all, Captain's loyalty. it is a painfully difficult thing to get. and you can lose it in an instant. but its beyond satisfying to tag along with your mates. fighting off all Mordor has to offer and promote one of them to be a warchief only for them to suddenly jump out and save you when your about to get killed. genuine emotion comes from that. the highs and lows.
My favourite olog, whom I considered my hand, and took a while to get and who I really wanted for a bit. I used him to fight in pits for loot and while I overlooked my citadel which he helped fight for, he betrayed me and I fled. I shamed him and to my dismay, he became a maniac. I had to kill him.
@@videoms1271 Aw that sucks bud, been there and had to do alot of experimenting with the nemesis system before i got to understand their loyalty, and even then it can just be a bugger of a suprise when they do turn their coat again. can you try finding an older save or do you have him in your garrison too? that way you could try again.
@@Noxims47314 and the worst part: Just now while avenging someone else I found him, Az-Teru, wielding a flaming weapon. Sadly I couldn't recruit him
Shadow of Mordor brought me one of my most memorable rivals, “Mozu the Mountain”. No matter how many times I killed him, he wouldn’t stop returning, eventually he quite literally was a metal mountain with how many scars I put on him. He was “the machine” but twice as armored. It wasn’t just me destroyed him over and over again, he was killing me regularly as well. I sent 3 captains and myself just to kill him. Then, I stopped playing Mordor and switched to War. A year or two later I came back to Mordor to finish the game. On one of the final missions, he returned. After all of these years, I saw my worst nightmare once again. But after playing Shadow of War, my skill has greatly improved. I easily put him down one, final, time…
My nemesies are an absolute blast
@@CrystallizedBlackSkull I can never get any good nemesis’s nowadays
@Psycho restart the game have a good time trying new ones, see if you can point the game in the right direction by Purposely dying to an orc or Something along those lines to get The story to build. That's what I did When my stories got boring.
Now that's a story
That ending, it must be heartbreaking when the orc that adventured together with you suddenly betrays you and you have to put them down for good :(
The worst part is if you don't kill them and they get the Iron Will trait so you can't recruit them again.
Well you just constantly shame them until they lose their iron will trait - then recruit them again.
@@aetherblackbolt1301 yeah, but they get crazy after you shame them 3-4 times, so their personality is gone, Brüz for example
I haven't played the shadow series in a long time( i should probably finish it one day) but nothing will ever beat my first play through where I killed an orc who was afraid of bees with bees and have that same orc show up 5 hours later covered in bee stings looking for my head. Magnificent
I’m curious what parts of the nemesis system are actually patented and what other types of dynamic video game story telling are still completely available to other developers.
There’s no way that something as general as “characters remember your actions and the story adapts to your play” is even patentable.
EDIT: I have learned that the patent has not yet been granted, simply applied for. It's been 5 years. So who knows the legality of trying to patent this stuff.
You might be surprised. The entire collectable card game mechanics of Magic was patented (under "Trading Card Game Method of Play"), and while I believe that patent ended in 2017, WotC claimed (though it's questionable if it was a defensible position) that they basically "owned" the rights to making any kind of CCG at all for those 20 years.
Of course, there does happen to be instances where a patent can be struck down in court even after it's been given, but it's a gamble to challenge a patent too.
This seems to be the patent in question: patents.justia.com/patent/20160279522
But I'm having a hard time figuring out what it actually protects. Its not very clear. The summary description is too vague and the detailed description is way too detailed (it starts off talking about how a processor connected to a screen can change parameters for an NPC.. uh duh.. and later even goes so far as to list all the things the orcs can be afraid of and other traits they can have. So, yeah, I can't figure out what its actually protecting specifically.
@@guywithknife When reading patents, the part that matters is the claims list. Ignore the rest. Secondly, the whole point of saying "by a processor" is to indicate that "this isn't a software patent, as such, it's really a fancy hardware patent" lolz.
It's the loophole which allows software patents, which are not allowed in US or EU law (as such), but have been accepted by the truck load by pretending they are actually "a state this particular hardware is in". So if I created a game with these exact mechanisms, but didn't use a processor (I dunno how, magic I guess) then this patent wouldn't apply.
@@doctormo the patent in question here doesn’t seem to have a clear claims list. It has a very very detailed “detailed description”, which is what confused me here.
Unless that’s Thor the full patent? There seem to be drawing missing and the descriptions appear to be describing the drawings? Maybe? So perhaps there’s a full copy with claims elsewhere?
Nintendo I think has a patent on a Sanity Meter which causes Interface Screw
It's so sad seeing that just a week after this video was published, WB Games (those selfish pricks) decided to create a patent for the Nemesis system
Unfortunately they've been trying at it for years now and kept getting rejected. But it seems they finally found one judge who agreed to pass it. I wonder how....😑
Brie B Well to be fair it is their creation
@@spiritorange8325 copyrighting game systems is a prick move since it would be like if call of duty or halo copyrighted the fps genre or more accurately if titanfall or mirrors edge copyrighted advance movement
the nemesis system could spawn an entire sub-genre for the rather stale button mashers like batman and mordor if they were allowed to grow but that claim is going to hamper alot of studios
@@Airsickword well they are a company and not a charity......... Nothing personal. Just business
Not really. A patent is really promising as it means there could be potentially a new addition to the series or a spin off or side game featuring the system. There are also ways in practice to get round it. Many games have copied the system and there have been no court battles yet. Regardless, the games are still in their eyes after all this time.
Unpopular opinion: the endgame of SoW was the best part. Throughout most of the game, your abilities are locked behind plot missions, and the narrative is driving you in directions that distract you from your nemeses. Once it gets into that final chapter of "keep taking over strongholds until you're blue in the face," you are finally free to use all the tools the game has to offer and just explore the nemesis system to the fullest. This is where I could forget about the mediocre "main story" and focus on the best part of the game; these personal stories that are only possible in the nemesis system.
People complained that the last chapter was a slog designed to force you into microtransactions. In my opinion, using microtransactions to bypass this section is robbing you of the best part of the game. Just like how the auction house ruined Diablo 3, since buying the best items meant there was no longer any reward to strive for, buying better orcs meant you no longer got the reward of subjugating them yourself.
Imagine if Minecraft didn't let you craft half of the items or stray more than 200 chunks from spawn until after you defeated the Ender Dragon. Wouldn't you consider the "main quest" a slog and the epilogue the meat of the game?
The Shadow War missions were pretty great as they were essentially the culmination of all the game had to offer, the biggest problem was that many people perceived completing all 10 stages (at launch) as being necessary in order to "beat" the game and not as the endgame content that the developers confirmed them to be. Had Monolith just labeled "Act IV" as "Endgame" then I think the whole debacle about the game being artificially lengthened wouldn't have happened.
Also, I think that most of the people that complained about the whole "Act IV being designed to force you into purchasing microtransactions" didn't actually get to play that part of the game, and if they did then I think they didn't really understand how the system was designed. The fact that almost all of the attacking orcs in those stages can be recruited and added to your army was done on purpose, the developers intended you to turn Sauron's forces against him just like you've been doing during most of the main story mission. If you instead decided to just kill them because your followers were already good enough to help, because you didn't need the extra help or just because you wanted loot then you would get an insane amount of armor and weapons.
During the SWs, these were your only choices and you had to do them if you wanted to progress through the stages yet they gave you the same exact resources that you would get from the loot boxes...so why would you ever think about purchasing more (or any) loot boxes for this act? I wasn't only a waste of time but, since if all of the slots on the captain army board in an area were full then any good orcs you would have recruited during the SWs would despawn at the end and you'd lose them forever. Instead of doing all of this you could have spent that time just playing the mission, like you were intended to do.
And that's just from a gameplay point of view, what you said about skipping out on all the interesting Nemesis system interactions by purchasing already dominated orcs is also very true, and it made the prospect of engaging with the microtransaction system even worse.
I liked the ending as it was one of the only real areas you got to test your AI Uruks skills out against another in a siege mission. I still do regular AI siege missions but since I control the entire map its less interesting and i'm maxed out now. There's a lot of replay ability in it. I personally NEVER felt the need to use loot crates but I enjoyed using them because the Mithril ones were free and required no out of game money to open as opposed to the gold ones.
Endgame sucked because the fight you have been waiting for 2 games and several years to be in you aren't even a part of. You get to play as generic elf lady
I completely agree and honestly thought it was reasonably difficult and long without using any lootboxes and gave me a ton of satisfaction in the end
Agreed the rewards (the nazgul cloaks) are dope as well.
I had a Nemeses Orc that, first time we met, had the trope of being made out of poison. Killed him and then went on. Next THREE times he ambushed me, looked more torn apart each time and stated the beauty of death and poison. Left the area thinking he was dead and when i came back to take the Stronghold, he rose up to be Overlord. In the final battle he defeated me and i was saved by another Orc i recruited. That was the Story that could fill an entire Game. Absolutely stunning what they made with such a (technically) simple idea.
Of course, the Orc who saved me was promoted to the new Overlord.
If every dev patented their ideas, where would gaming be? How would the industry grow?
Would there even be an industry? God, the thought is genuinely scaring me.
It wouldn’t. Imagine Nintendo patented the first platformer, and no platformers existed except Mario games. Patenting gameplay mechanics should be illegal.
flashbacks to patenting the word "react" ensue
just like Namco did with loading screen minigames
The industry would quickly die. Devs without said patents would be too afraid of being sued into bankruptcy and switch careers to a more stable industry
You can have interactions with followers, you just need to make sure you fight alongside them and not let them do all the work, show them why your in charge and you'll notice a change in their behavior.
You can walk around the fortress to see them drinking and singing with the troops, sharing anecdotes, mock-fighting each other, bullying slaves, etc. you can even call in your bodyguard and if you just walk alongside him he'll start talking to you
@@EteamProductions clevers have the best lines
@@ironbull08x93 Nahh, The Obvious is hilarious.
@@demutrudu6106 or the "one-worders"
When you recognise the absolute potential of the Nemesis System being implented into different games....but are constantly dissapointed by fads like Battle Royale & mobile gaming & microtransactions overshadowing it.
WHY WON'T DEVS & PUBLISHERS SEE THE POTENTIAL OF THE NEMESIS SYSTEM?!
Edit: *Video mentions Monolith have a patent for Nemesis System* .....Oh. That makes sense, but still; I'd still enjoy seeing it implemented in other game genres, stories and themes, to explore the seemingly endless possibilities of the "faceless/nameless grunts" actually having a purpose past something to shoot/kill/defeat, and have some character to them.
the patent has not yet been granted, simply applied for. It's been 5 years.
And there’s a sanity meter patent from Eternal Datkness and here we have games like Amnesia who use their own version of it. I say screw patent law, long live inspired plagiarism.
Idk, the system is certainly neat but in my playthrough I just demolished every orc on our first encounter and thus didn't get to witness any real narrative. The closest it ever came was sometimes an orc would cheat death just to give me the chance to decapitate him a second time. My big "nemesis" in the story was some orc I didn't even recognize.
@@Clownbelt-u2s I came to know that there were patent for game system because of this. It is ridiculous.
And i agree with you screw patent law, long live inspired plagiarism.
@@creativecredence850 This is a weakness of the nemesis system, If you are very good or are in late game things can get boring. But we can hope that the system will grow more because of advancement in gaming industry and it will get more perfected
The nemesis system was amazing I wish they hadn't patented it.
I think you pretty much nailed this down, aside from a small thing. An easy to miss small thing. Betrayals tend to only happen with mistreated or ignored uraks. Have an urak you have passes over for promotion repeatedly, though they saved your life? Could betray you. Abuse an urak to test out some new skill? He remembers. Give an urak a demotion? That's gonna cost you. It's subtle, and doesn't always happen in an expected way, or right away. Another big one is blood brothers. I have, at times, had an absolutely amazing ork. He typically has an absolutely sloppy blood brother. Recruit at your own risk, as if you kill his blood brother he could turn right around on you.
The saviors? They tend to be the orks on your side who you have done the most for. This is less fleshed out than the betrayal system, and pretty much any ork can act as a savior. It seems to me as more of sort a fodder for the betrayal system, if anything.
You can sort of predict and head off, or aggravate, betrayals to some degree. Kill a blood brother, then immediately promote the recruited one. This levels out a bit of the loss, and can forestall that betrayal. Kill a blood brother, give a demotion and cause an ork to miss out on a chance to get stronger, be it by neglect or by choice... Hope you sleep with a knife under your pillow.
A good way to get rid of the meh blood brother would be to recruit both brothers then send the meh one to the fight pits over and over until he died by someone else's hand
@@Empty-Mask Funny thing, you'll still get betrayed as the strong brother blames you. Learned that from experience too.
I always send my loyal captains to kill my captain blood brother or call my bodyguard let my bodyguard damage the blood brother and recruit him. Always work tho if your captain that you send to kill the blood brother then successfully kills him... The captain that you send will have a rivalry to the captain that have a blood brother that died... Its awesome specially if your captain patrol around your fort then they meet each other they will fight LOL
I forgot to add yes Sending your captain to kill One of your captain blood brother they will not betray you unless you interfere or hurt the blood brother
One of my favorite stories is when I was playing, there was this one general that just kept killing me. Eventually I would beat him and decapitate him. I was finally so relieved to have gotten rid of him. Until I was clearing out an area, then there was an encounter, I read the name, saw his face and was horrified. I quickly thought, HOW ARE YOU ALIVE I DECAPITATED YOU. He then replies with like they sewed his head back on or something. A gaming story I'll never forget.
I was so motivated to try to add a system like this into my game, only to find out they put a patent on it. AAA disgusts me sometimes. It’s such a broad system. That is not ok.
Just do it. I think the patent has been in pending status for six years, and other AAA studios are already releasing lite versions of it.
Plus, if it ever were granted and enforced, a big studio sued would easily invalidate those shit-tier claims in court before you even show up on the radar of WB's lawyers. Gameplay lawsuits are unheard of anyway, except for big deals like the battle royale genre.
Seriously, it's impossible to build trivial things like a generic online shop without violating over a dozen patents. Just don't worry unless the holder is known to enforce it, or you'll never release anything.
(Also, death to the assholes who stopped ventilator production in the EU during the pandemic because the devices used metaphorical tabs for the UI. That's literally the whole patent: tabs for the UI of medical equipment.)
@@rikamayhem Thanks man, I'm thinking of adding it to my RTS game. If I keep on it ill send you the progress. :D
@@samcook6250 That sounds neat, actually. I'm guessing each faction would have some sort of hero units that can get promoted over the course of a campaign.
I'd say the cool thing about doing it on an RTS is that even your own heroes can be made part of the system.
#abolishcopyright
Same here. But I am also worried that it might be to big a workload for an indie game. Though I was also inspired somewhat by One Piece. Since its a western game I thought it be fun to generate outlaws like mii fighters and give them titles. When a low level gang member escapes or kills you they would have a chance to get a title like Zane the swift legs and their bounty would rise. Their bout could get higher over time and they would become more infamous with more wanted posters and npcs talking about them
Thanks for explaining the Nemesis System in detail, it makes me appreciate the two "Shadow" games even more.
I remember the first time an Orc saved my life, I was so thankful I made him overlord, and buffed him slightly, as I was already deciding whether or not I should keep my current. It was such an incredible relief.
it's sad that the only thing remembered about shadow of war is the lootboxes even though, they're gone. replayed it last year and had so much fun with the nemesis system
I blame Jim Sterling's corpulent ass
@@ToxicBastard, I blame the industry being stupid
@@pedroh.pereira8292 that too
@@ToxicBastard I blame Kotaku and Polygon's reviews of the game, they were the ones who initially suggested that the endgame of SoW took "tens of hours to complete" (if you are that bad just play on a different difficulty setting, but in reality they probably didn't even know the game had those) and that the loot boxes somehow allowed you to "skip the grind" which was not even remotely true. Jim and tons of other reviewers just ran with these headlines because it fit their narrative.
@@TheMasterMind144 exactly, the sieges were awesome but hard, especially if you had shit orcs and forgot to upgrade stuff, so obviously it's going to be hard for a game journalist who plays like a child.
Whenever a journo complains something is too hard I make a mental note that it's probably not a game my mum could play, because that's all it means; like Yahtzee criticised Overlord 2 for its spider temple puzzle (something I beat as a child) I have to wonder: does being a journalist make games ten times harder or something?
I really want more living systems like this.
Another dream I always had playing Elder Scrolls: Bandits actually go out and make decisions, if they pillage and win, they take their spoils, whether it was gear or goods/money to be traded with sleazy merchants, they actually use that gear and maybe start to snowball. Eventually, they start recruiting more and their faction controls a lot of the land. Though, with certain scalability factors taken into account, not everyone is gonna become a bandit and they can only reproduce and supply food to a certain extent, the nation, guilds and freelancers trying to get rid of bandits also adjust their response appropriately, to keep threats they recognize in check. If Bandits become so unified it's boring, then internal conflict arises and they split up again, some camps going independent altogether.
They'd then also actually pose problems to the player, the world state could even get partially ''ruined'' if you let them get powerful enough to come together to clear a small village or take out somewhat vital npc's, which would take away trading options etc. for the player. Ideally we'd then also have a town population system, and responses from the nation at large to take the town back if still occupied, and then rebuild and repopulate, with new traders/craftsment etc. and their own traits as well as how those traits fare in the environment.
All of that happening in real time, though things can be simplified into numeric simulations when away from the player, as long as it's accurate enough and takes significant and precitable enough factors into account. For example, the chance they'd find a bear on their route to a small town, and how much of a number that would reasonably do on them in their state, little things like that. Taking factors we have a hand in into account is also important, if we helped a faction set up shop, that's a much bigger issue than a bear, this would be very satisfying to interact with.
If it's a game with a lot of differences in kind rather than differences in values, it's gonna become hard to meaningfully quantify a lot of factors though, but I don't think these bandits have to be all that complicated and mostly just fluctuate in stats, with a few special resources like ranged weapons, stealth and a few kinds of utilitarian magic, as long as one side of the equation is simple, the interactions shouldn't be too hard to predict with an acceptable margin of error. Different patrols and arising conflicts etc. simulated all around the world, until you get close enough and it transitions into a true in-game event, or alternatively, somehow reach the levels of performance required to fully run it all without abstraction... Incredibly ambitious and I've definitely learned not to expect things like this to work anytime soon (No Man's Sky/early Starbound/supposed Skyrim prototypes etc.), but I hope one day it becomes feasible.
When Skyrim came around, a lot of word was going around about a dynamic civil war, I thought they'd finally start making small steps towards systems like this, seemed like the next step up from Oblivion's janky attempts at dynamic systems with a sense of life to them, but alas.
Of course, that's a lot of processing required, assuming you can even create a stable enough ecosystem with interesting interactions to begin with, but I just know there's some nerds somewhere out there trying to crack these problems without compromising what makes it so interesting.
It’s great to have long relationships with the other characters and a game that remembers your actions. It’s a pity that so many of the interactions are about negative reactions. How would this look like with positive interactions? Eg teach each other something new, exercise together, organise a party together, listen to each others story.
Sounds like the relationship system of the Sims.
Actually now that I think about it, the nemesis system, but focused on wholesome stuff is something I need.
I unironically think this can work in something like GTA (maybe in 6 but that's coming out after I pass away so) where it acts as a more fun way of making side activity/side content and is essentially a way to encourage the player to take a break from committing 6th degree muder for no reason.
Maybe I want it because I'm lonely irl, that'd be crazy....
@@gibleyman gta 5 had something really small like that, where a random theif steals money from a pedestrian, def would be cool if they improved on it
Oh! I did my thesis on this, looking through the lense of dance choreography to see how many concepts would stick. These games (taking Mordor to be the prologue to War's larger systems) are unprecedented in how continuously and comprehensively everything is always meaningfully moving and adapting, while the player is pushed to continuously move and adapt as well. Like an improv group tango on a tiny seesaw dancefloor, rolling around on a ball. Even down at the navigation level, you're constantly prompted to adapt to patrol routes and hunts, or to rush off before folk come to investigate your activities, all the while knowing that enemies will actively learn and adapt to however you've been playing the game. This comes in directly when choosing between the many ways to defeat or avoid every enemy, as every enemy is uniquely weak or strong to each specific buttonprompt, modifier, and combo move available just then. All the way up at the macro level, standing still or using the menu systems never happens without the rest of the gameworld moving along and learning, and every single thing you do gets quantified with a different kind of ability unlock tokens that changes the playing field again. Lots of games have all this stuff, but in no other game is every dynamic bit so tightly balanced and linked to every other bit across so many layers of scale.
Moreover, everything, even paratextual menu stuff, is explicitly diegetic and meaningful. The whole thing becomes this epic of a guy resisting, but thereby only integrating deeper into Sauron's necromantic hellscape trap. There's themes of toxic macho masculinity being an endless torment here, of bigman power plays condemning you to a life of weakness and repeat death. All the while, Tolkien's unspoken orc world gets humanized and perfectly slotted into that original author's metaphysical intent and racial pantheon, as this kind of gleefully vulgar postcolonial war-elf parable that Tolkien would've never wanted to directly describe in his day.
And they even do fitting new craft and language philosophy stuff! My Tolkien soul was content. And the thesis well enough received.
Wow - that is excellent work. I can imagine that you had a memorable and interesting thesis defense when discussing how you related the game mechanics as designed by the developer into a critique of how this fits into Tolkien's literary themes. It would be really interesting to sit in on a thesis defense in which your faculty committee had professors who are interested in game design along with literary scholars who have deep knowledge of Tolkien's work. Congratulations on generating an interesting thesis (and just for completing it - as that is no small accomplishment)!
@@rayjones1455 Oh no the whole process of doing this was a mess : )
I had game studies tutors who couldn't seem to follow along with me trying out new terms to describe games with, and who admittedly never did understand dance. Then my other tutors were theatre/dance experts who hadn't ever considered games. And no one had any interest in Tolkien, or in these games specifically. I burned out hard situating my work as broadly yet meaningfully as possible in these three separate fields, so everyone could keep up and provide input. Because I was making such impressive extra effort, I suppose, everyone just kept encouraging me to keep going like that, and I ended up only finishing a fragment of the work when I got my grades and had to quit academia for health reasons. The project came together well enough for me, but I don't imagine anyone who tutored me actually got the full picture and intent.
Thanks for the compliments though, mr. Jones : )
Really appreciate it. I might one day do that full comparison of Mordor to MarioMaker, Last Guardian, and NobyNoby Boy, to round out a logical model of radically opposed rubrics for fully meaningful, dance-like systems of player movement direction in games.
I still want a Mad Max game sequel with the nemesis system.
I want one with Ghostrider
oh my god that would be amazing
how to kill facinating gameplay/game design?
- patent
-microtransactions
Was looking for a comment like this, it really sucks how they undermined an otherwise great system just from corporate greed
No more mtx tho
bruh its long gone, just play it lol its not dead
I got this game for Christmas and have been playing it for two months. Now I’m about to take on the final boss but I’m not ready to do it yet because I’ve had such an amazing adventure playing it!
I played this game recently because of this video. I poisoned a barrel and then an alchemist captain appeared behind me and said "thats not how you do it mate" it was so surprising and interesting
Prak Jaws: 'Unintelligible Screams.' 'Translation: Allow me to introduce myself.'
Eyy, someone else that saw the nemesis system working at full capacity
Prak Jaws, the true nemesis.
Now I understand what made me re-play this game years later. I really enjoyed them the second time around, but just couldn't put my finger on what it was. You nailed it!