Middle-earth: Shadow of War (2017)
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a 2017 role-playing (rpg) video game made by Monolith Productions and WB Games.
Set in the years between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, this sends the ranger Talion and the wraith of Celebrimbor deep into Mordor to raise an army against Sauron. The draw is the Nemesis System: orc captains who remember your defeats, hold grudges, betray you, climb the ranks, and turn every rivalry personal. Around it runs a big open-world power fantasy of scaling fortresses, dominating enemies, and bending Mordor from the inside. It plays loose with Tolkien's canon, but the orc-by-orc drama it generates is unlike anything else in the setting.
Quick answers
What is Middle-earth: Shadow of War about?
Set in the years between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, this sends the ranger Talion and the wraith of Celebrimbor deep into Mordor to raise an army against Sauron. The draw is the Nemesis System: orc captains who remember your defeats, hold grudges, betray you, climb the ranks, and turn every rivalry personal. Around it runs a big open-world power fantasy of scaling fortresses, dominating enemies, and bending Mordor from the inside. It plays loose with Tolkien's canon, but the orc-by-orc drama it generates is unlike anything else in the setting.
When was Middle-earth: Shadow of War released?
Middle-earth: Shadow of War was released on 10 October 2017.
Who made Middle-earth: Shadow of War?
Middle-earth: Shadow of War was made by Monolith Productions and WB Games.
Similar games
Explore Middle-earth: Shadow of War guides
A few thoughts on Middle-earth: Shadow of War
It lives inside Tolkien's world, so The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack scores the same doomed march on Mordor and lends the war its weight. For armies built on grudges, shifting loyalties, and betrayal treated as sport, Game of Thrones runs on the very fuel the Nemesis System bottles up, one scheming captain at a time.
Middle-earth and other realms consumed by war
Shadow of War pushes further into Mordor's slow collapse into open war against Sauron's armies. The Fellowship of the Ring shows the same struggle from the other side of Middle-earth, its Return of the King soundtrack carrying that same sense of a world running out of time, and Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon build separate kingdoms around that same dread of a throne nobody can hold.
Grudges that follow you across a battlefield built to remember
The Nemesis System means every orc captain who beats you remembers it, and these share that same sense of enmity with a long memory. Berserk follows a warrior whose entire life is shaped by one betrayal he can't outrun. Attack on Titan turns endless, replenishing enemies into a war of attrition, Fullmetal Alchemist makes every act of vengeance carry a cost, and Inuyasha keeps its demon rivalries running across centuries.
Open-world fantasy conquests built for carving an empire
Shadow of War lets Talion raise an army and bend whole fortresses to his will. The Witcher 3 and Skyrim offer that same scale of a fantasy world to roam and reshape, God of War turns myth into a hands-on personal war, and Oathbringer builds an entire epic around armies, oaths, and characters fighting to hold their own ground.
Soundtracks as punishing as the war itself
Shadow of War's fortresses and orc armies call for music with that same scale and menace. In the Court of the Crimson King still defines dark, sprawling progressive rock decades later, Painkiller turns heavy metal into a full-on assault, IX Equilibrium pushes that extremity further still, and The Spectre Within carries a mythic, doom-laden weight straight out of 1980s prog metal.