Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Hands-on with Shadow of War’s spider mercs and singing orcs

In place of a drake, I deployed a shag carpet of giant spiders

In my first five minutes of Middle-earth: ShadowofWar, I hired spiders to torment an orc bard. He wanted me dead—sang about it and everything. I wanted us to lead an army together, and sweep the land with song. If only he hadn’t made such a fuss over my spider mercenaries. My goal was to siege a fortress, a massive castle with thick stone walls, battlements peaking into sharp points, each occupied by artillery units dropping curse bombs in big AOE circles on the dozens of fragile orc soldiers below. There’s quite a few of them in ShadowofWar, and taking control of each will be a unique experience. That’s Monolith’s goal, at least.

Leaving it to chance

During my demo last week in Santa Monica, I played a fortress siege sequence—taking over a fortress led by an enemy overlord takes back the territory from Sauron’s forces, letting you to push further into another region, giving you a crack at another fortress and so on.

Fortress encounters all share a similar structure: You bring your army to their gates, charge, breach walls, take over capture points, and then bust down the front door and kill or subjugate the leader’s ugly ass. In most open world games, as you become more powerful, the process gets easier. In ShadowofWar, that’s also mostly true. For instance, captains drop loot, which generate stats based on how they died—if an archer does the deed, you might get a new bow.

But power isn’t everything. The traits of captains aren’t the only variables. You can still inspect the hierarchy of orcs in a region to determine strengths and weaknesses. Some might be afraid of spiders, or stealth, but they can make up for it with skills like buffing the orcs in their charge. And because there are about a dozen orcs in leadership roles in a fortress, there’s no way to prepare for everything. I spent ten minutes in the hierarchy menu, and it wasn’t nearly enough. Eyeballing those ugly boys, their fears, faces, and ranks, made it easy to forget that ShadowofWar is a third-person action game, and not a streamlined Total War spinoff.

Each fortress is equipped with buffs based on the overlord’s personality and traits. During my session, because my overlord was a tanky brute who loved animals and fire, the fortress had reinforced walls, artillery, specialized spearmen that were good at killing beasts and molten lava that was dumped out of big cauldrons over the walls and onto my good orc boys. My poor, poor orc boys.

The sound of music

But the most disarming orc was Ogg, a bard. I met Ogg on the final capture point. Things were going well. I’d countered the spear-throwing units by hiring orcs bearing tall shields. In place of a drake, I deployed a shag carpet of giant spiders— they’d scurry past ranged units without issue, while the drake would’ve had a rough time with the spear-wielding orcs. But even Smaug himself couldn’t have saved me from my impending heartbreak.

Like ShadowofMordor, meeting an warchief kicks off a cinematic where the orc says something mean and comes at you. Ogg sang a cute (mean) song about killing me, which sent my imagination racing. I’d break Ogg, bend him to my will, then travel the land, searching for more bards to convert until I had an entire fortress of bards. We’d defeat Sauron with a chorus voices, and sick lute solos. I can’t help but think Tolkien would approve.

Then the spiders leapt on Ogg. He stopped singing and screamed. I stabbed him through the head, a sombre note for him to end on. If only I could’ve sang with Ogg—but no. He was gone. It’s only a demo, I told myself. Only a demo.

Capturing the fortress was easy. I didn’t feel like I had to retreat from battle often or use stealth at all. I didn’t need to babysit my forces too often beyond reviving one or two of my own captains early on. The overlord’s bark was bigger than his fat, slow bite—a few arrows finished him off with ease.

ShadowofWar’s fortresses reframe ShadowofMordor’s nemesis system in a grander scale with more variables in how orcs look and behave. By drawing out relationships with foes and friends over the course of dozens of battles and chance encounters, ShadowofWar could become the ultimate fantasy soap opera.

The stakes are higher than before, but I’m still not sure how different the orc captains and grand encounters will feel over a complete playthrough. By fortress seven, I worry that my army will be so complete and my abilities so strong that the only challenge will be in not killing orc commanders and capturing them instead. If Monolith really has expanded its pool of orc faces and personalities, then there’s probably nothing to worry about. But by expanding the Nemesis system alone, ShadowofWar is already unique among other open-world adventures. What other game lets you choose your friends and feed them to spiders? James Davenport