|
 The story of Talion the Ranger of The Black Gate continues with Shadow of War, the 2017 sequel to Shadow of Mordor. And so I return with AhrimanPK to take you through this wonderful game. Everything they did right in the first game is improved or expanded upon and what few low points the first game have been reworked. If you liked enemy orc captains having a bit of personality in the first game, then you'll love SoW. There are now close to a dozen different tribes of orcs, each with their own visual style, class preferences, and captain abilities. Did I say class preferences? Why yes, I did! On top of being from different tribes the captains will have a class type, from tank, to marksman, to trickster, to assassin, all sorts of different fighting styles and abilities to greatly expand the diversity of orcs you get to meet and kill in Mordor. The skill system gets a huge revamp and has a sort of Diablo 3 feel to it, with each skill being unlockable and then typically having 3 subskills, mutually exclusive at one time, to augment the main skill. This lets you change your loadout as you go to better respond to a given situation. Runes as we knew them in the first game are out, but their effects live on in the new gear system where more powerful gear will not only boost stats but grant abilities. And possibly last, but not least, is just how much bigger the world is. In terms of space, story, and characters. There were 5 areas at release and a DLC added a 6th. Talion will have so many more people to talk to other than the 5 mission sources of the previous game. The story will cover so much more ground too, and as a casual watcher of the movies, I loved, but I'm sure it may needle a few hardcore Tolkien fans because this story goes places. No Spoiler Policy Ahriman is going into this game blind. Do not talk about the plot or future things until we get there. Mechanics, enemies, gear (except the plot legendary sets... you know the ones), is fair game, but no talking about the plot ahead of time. No DLC plot chat either, I'm going to be getting to all of those too. No lootbox discussion When the game first came out WB pushed for a microtransaction element in the game so monolith had to put in a marketplace for that sort of thing. And real money could be spent on lootboxes containing gear or followers or exp boosts. While these were available for real world money, they were also available for in game elf cash. I thought this was the least offensive implementation of lootboxes I had ever seen at the time. There was nothing you could buy with real cash you couldn't buy with elf cash and loot boxes came as a reward for doing the online multiplayer activities, such as avenging another players death. When EA came around with the Star Wars lootbox drama, I'm sorry, "Surprise Mechanics", Monolith cut their marketplace out of the game, refused to take real world money and retooled that part of the game. Lootboxes in SoW are now rewards for quests and things, not purchased via real money or elf cash and they added an elf cash market for Training Orders, which is essentially throwing elf cash at your followers to make them stronger.  Improved Nemesis System I can't tell you the behind the scenes details of it, but the Nemesis system got an upgrade between games. Orcs have a lot more personality than before and they will express themselves a lot more in SoW. Unhappy orcs can and will betray you, sometimes at the worst moments. Sometimes they'll bring you gifts like a treasure carrier or a worm for you to interrogate. Sometimes friendlies will just show up out of the blue to help you in the middle of a difficult fight, or enemy captains will ambush you while you're pressured by another captain. It's great, just all of it is great. Multiplayer fun More than just the vengeance missions to kill an orc that killed another player, SoW has an online conquest mode where you can assault other players fortresses. The attacker is the only one that stands to risk or gain anything, while the defender just receives a notification of how the assault went. The attacker brings his orcs to the fight and any of his orcs that die on the assault stay dead, but any orcs he brands and recruits get cloned and come back to the attackers main game. The defender does not lose any orcs that are killed or branded. It's a very fun side activity, with a ranking system, timed goals and rewards for participating. The one down side is that the dev's overlooked how the rating system would interact with multiple playthroughs. The LP will be my 5th new save file and the online ratings do not reset your rating when you restart. This means when I get to the point in the story I won't be able to show off online assaults right away because my rating will probably have me matched up against max level fortresses. Which kind of sucks. However, this does mean that if you have a fort out there, I might get a chance to visit it during the LP. Also friends on steam can attack each others forts at any time, though targeting friends is like an exhibition match; no rewards, no losses, no rating changes, and you don't get to keep branded orcs. That last part is really, really tragic, though understandable. Otherwise you could effectively clone orcs between friends, which could be used in your save file or for online fights and that wouldn't be great. However it also means we can't just invade each other to clone the funniest, dumbest orcs possible and fill an entire fortress with copies of one particular orc. Or should I say Olog... DLC? Hell yes I will be playing through The Blade of Galadriel and Desolation of Mordor. These DLC's are great.                                                  Blade Of Galadriel DLC        [img]https://i.imgur.com/HmBFr81.png][/img] Desolation of Mordor       Post Game Stuff   By Kurieg  By Delacroix  By Bootcha  By Wheany  
Jade Star fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Oct 1, 2020 |
#
?
Sep 18, 2019 22:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 11:31 |
|
|
Rats, I was kinda hoping the subtitle would be Keep Mordor Great! 
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2019 22:29
|
|
|
The Story so far: Celebrimbor hosed up. Talion hosed up. Now to watch both of them gently caress up again. Edit: Which only took about 10 or so minutes. Impressive. Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Sep 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2019 22:54
|
|
|
Jade Star posted:The one down side is that the dev's overlooked how the rating system would interact with multiple playthroughs. The LP will be my 5th new save file and the online ratings do not reset your rating when you restart. This means when I get to the point in the story I won't be able to show off online assaults right away because my rating will probably have me matched up against max level fortresses. Which kind of sucks. A few months ago I tried it on a fresh file without any ranking at all (my first time playing the game ever) and was still getting matched against max level fortresses. A real shame, the system looked interesting but there was nothing I could do to interact with it and by the time I'd gotten strong enough to do so I'd forgotten.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2019 23:22
|
|
|
Your videos are always so quiet for me. Of course, this may be my damaged hearing but sometimes I have to turn my computer to max volume to hear you. One thing in this game is a lot of orcs have piercings. I found it kind of uncomfortable to look at when I started but I suppose that was the idea. Drakenel fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Sep 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2019 23:33
|
|
|
Woohoo, ground floor! You finishing up the last game finally pushed my lazy rear end to finish this one, even though I bought it on release. Glad I finally did, but hoo boy will I have some words once you finally get that far. Great game, but there were some dumb choices made. edit: Speaking of sales, for the next 22 hours, you can get SoW for about $12! ShootaBoy fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Sep 19, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 00:20
|
|
|
It's time for more of C-Man Makes Terrible Decisions!
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 00:23
|
|
|
I agree mostly about the glaive, but it does have an important use. It's one of two attacks in the game that will always remain effective, and the other one captains can have immunity to. So if every single avenue of damaging an orc seems closed off, the glaive is always an option. Very happy to see this LP start so soon, with co-commentator blind as a bonus. I scratched my "beat SoW again" itch back during the first LP but this is already reminding me how fun it is.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 01:31
|
|
|
Taking out the microtransactions was an easy choice, any revenue they made from it would have dried up by then. More of Celebrimbor ruining everything around Mordor can't be a bad thing, can it? He's looking a little more ghoulish (desiccated?) this time around.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 01:34
|
|
|
So, on the Tolkien "Oh, poo poo" Scale, where does one of Ungoliant's spawn getting a Ring of Power rank?
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 02:14
|
|
|
Delacroix posted:He's looking a little more ghoulish (desiccated?) this time around. He did pour most of his "life" force into the new ring. They should have given you a bit of time to enjoy using the ring before taking it away. As it is the cutscene feels rather rote. They know they're going to strip you of the power you got in the first game so it happens right away with no explanation about how Shelob knew what you were doing or how she could do it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 02:19
|
|
|
Brunom1 posted:So, on the Tolkien "Oh, poo poo" Scale, where does one of Ungoliant's spawn getting a Ring of Power rank? It's kind of unclear. Ungoliant yeeted into Middle Earth at some point unknown prior to the elves waking up, wasn't created by God, and was more than a match for Morgoth hopped up on Silmarils, but how much of that got passed on to Shelob is wholely unstated. Moreover, given the enforced entropy going on in Middle Earth, it's probable that Shelob is much diminished from what she was. Just as basically everybody is at this point, aside from some of the elves as long as they stay within their Three Ring anti-entropy fields. Overall, less than a Balrog, more than a Ringwraith. Definitely more than Sauron at this point, who's still largely disembodied (*) and hiding. The White Council would not enjoy picking a fight with her right now where they pretty much stomped Sauron and drove him from Dol Guldor give or take 900 years later (lol timeline). (*) Having a body is a prerequisite for affecting the physical realm beyond scaring people in Lord of the Rings. The Wights in the Barrow Downs could only hurt the hobbits because they possessed buried bodies, the Ringwraiths fled from Glorfindel when they got owned at the river to get reembodied in Mordor, the ghost army scared the Umbar sailors into abandoning ship to get shot to pieces by the armies of south Gondor before loving off to parts unknown, etc. The movies kind of hosed up that dynamic, and this game basically ignores it completely so how much that actually matters itt idk lol. Also I'd like to apologize for spoiling that this took place around Minas Ithil in the last thread, so Ahriman I'm very sorry for spoiling the first 15 minutes of this game. Complications fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Sep 19, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 02:31
|
|
|
Doing the avenger stuff in the early months of release were rough if they ended up bugged. Seeing something with 20 failures side quest pop-up and you give it a shot, only for the game to crash right there and lock you out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 02:32
|
|
|
Exploring Minis Ithil in this video and doing quick side quests for skill points. Which means no main story mission and thus no C-Man hammering the drinking game keyword. So relax a little on this one and enjoy. Delacroix posted:
This is loving priceless. Jade Star fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Sep 19, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 02:57
|
|
|
Orcs must be terrified of learning things; if you know stuff Talion will smell your thoughts and squeeze them out of your brainmeats.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 03:42
|
|
|
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the floating rat in the first video at 15:35
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 04:38
|
|
|
Brunom1 posted:So, on the Tolkien "Oh, poo poo" Scale, where does one of Ungoliant's spawn getting a Ring of Power rank? I think she’s going to be seriously diminished after this game, though. Probably enough that a couple hobbits could best her easily. Or even one hobbit, after she loses the element of surprise. 
achtungnight fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Sep 19, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 04:42
|
|
|
Jade Star posted:What's the time frame on this? Well, forging the new ring was probably just on the far side of impossible, so what must've happened is that they integer overflowed the time remaining on that and glitched the calendar date back 1,000 years. This had the usual kind of unpredictable effect on hardcoded events tied to certain years mixed with the characters Talion was also hardcoded to meet at certain times, which retroactively resulted in a total mess of a timeline. Thus this series is what happens when a dumbass powergaming player fucks around with speedrun glitches - thanks Celebrimbor, you broke the universe. I'm sure that'll work out great for him, in this universe where ironic fates regularly occur to people who do bad things. Clearly Talion was actually an Ithilien ranger who answered to Faramir and was used to the more freewheeling late-Gondor guerilla war ranger practices prior to his timeline being retroactively hosed, who then ended up thoroughly lost but found his way to past-Gondor where he decided to hell with it and ended up posted to the Black Gate just before it fell due to being a latter-era roughneck. Where he then got hosed over by Celebrimbor because everything is his fault, who then ended up forging the ring that screwed up Talion's existence in the first place. In terms of a canonish-timeframe, ignoring Gollum as the outlier and whose existence is entirely responsible for this being a hilarious mess of a timeline(*), the time from the Nazgul regathering in Mordor in T.A. 1980 and finishing up kicking out Gondor and the onset of the siege of Minas Ithil was about 20 years in T.A. 2002. So... a while. Incidentally, the year the Nazgul finished kicking Gondor out of Mordor was the same year the Balrog woke up and kicked the dwarves out of Moria for partying too hard. True story. Sauron, incidentally, is not in Mordor at all but chilling in Dol Guldur where he'd be until T.A. 2063, before being kicked out of that fortress for the first time. He returned to that northern fortress in T.A. 2460, his whereabouts in the intervening centuries unknown but known to not be in Mordor. After returning to Dol Guldur under the guise of a random necromancer (because apparently that's legitimately just a thing that's around in Middle Earth and isn't massively exceptional, but is never otherwise mentioned as a profession) he stayed there until being kicked out for a final time in T.A. 2941 during the events of the Hobbit. (*) yes, yes, he existed and was met and blah blah blah, and taking that as given the entire timeline of all of this is less than a decade at too late a date.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 04:43
|
|
|
You know, I'm not actually hating the character of Stupid Sexy Shelob. EDIT: Like not as much cleavage as I was worried about, still a decent unsettling vibe going on there. It would be a lot funnier if her dialogue and voicing remained the exact same but she was a giant hairy spider, tho. Complete with that chin tap to Talion. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Sep 19, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 05:11
|
|
|
Shapeshifting just seems like the kind of thing really powerful people can do in this place world.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 05:26
|
|
|
15 minutes into the first video and I identify with that random flying rat walking over Talion's head.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 05:29
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:Shapeshifting just seems like the kind of thing really powerful people can do in this place world. Also she needs to be able to wear a ring. (Is it really a spoiler if I'm just talking about the first video? Spoilering anyway.)
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 05:32
|
|
|
PetraCore posted:Also she needs to be able to wear a ring. (Is it really a spoiler if I'm just talking about the first video? Spoilering anyway.) Ah you're fine. was covered in the video.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 05:44
|
|
|
Jade Star posted:Ah you're fine. was covered in the video.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 05:55
|
|
|
Celebrimbor is riding around in Talions soul, so wouldn't that mean that Talion IS the Elfmobile?
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 06:32
|
|
|
When I was playing through this, I sometimes decided "hey, I'm going to avoid story missions and just clear out orcs and collectibles so that I can listen to music or podcasts or whatever while playing the game." As you pointed out while looking at the Shelob memory, this game does not subtitle any of the bits of lore on the collectibles, unlike the first game. And so, rather than giving up on listening to what I want, I just went without the lore bits. It's a bit of a shame. Also, it had been so long between me playing Mordor and starting War that I had figured that the ring crafting thing in the opening cutscene to War must have been a flashback that happened midway through Mordor, and that was why losing it made us lose the ability to mind control orcs in between games. I was pretty surprised during the last LP when gaining that ability was just Celebrimbor going "Oh yeah, I can do this."
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 06:32
|
|
|
Red Minjo posted:When I was playing through this, I sometimes decided "hey, I'm going to avoid story missions and just clear out orcs and collectibles so that I can listen to music or podcasts or whatever while playing the game." As you pointed out while looking at the Shelob memory, this game does not subtitle any of the bits of lore on the collectibles, unlike the first game. And so, rather than giving up on listening to what I want, I just went without the lore bits. It's a bit of a shame. Also frustrating is that the game has a lot of granular ability to tweak visual effects, including turning quicktime prompts off. This does not turn the quicktime EVENTS off, jokes on you if you thought it was an accessability option. As for the ring, it's one item on the checklist: forge a new ring. So they do. No biggie.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 06:56
|
|
|
I cannot even begin to hear what the hell Shelob says in those memories. That's a really poor design decision, both the audio levels and the lack of subtitles. This game looks beautiful and great fun though! I'll have to actually get around to it someday. Talion's moonjumps and floatiness look hilarious.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 11:07
|
|
|
Yapping Eevee posted:Talion's moonjumps and floatiness look hilarious. You've seen nothing yet, actually grabbed this game due to the SoM lp and holy hell you can move after a few upgrades.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 13:04
|
|
|
This is gonna be so fun going into blind. I knew what I was in for and I still managed to be surprised at times. I never finished it, though. One day I need to get back to my army of blinged out orcs.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 14:30
|
|
|
New link stealth inserted for video two. I'd forgotten my recording settings had gotten adjusted at some point and the game audio had come out much quieter than I expected.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 16:05
|
|
|
PetraCore posted:Yeah and also it's really clear why she would do this in this case - Shelob in the books is a lot more bestial and a lot less intellectual, but this version of the character very much has her own ambitious agenda and also Talion is going to listen to a pretty elfy (? I think I saw eartips under her hair) lady in a way he's not going to listen to a kickass looking giant spider. Like Sauron showed up to Celebrimbor as a hot elf dude. Yeah this Shelob is basically an entirely different person than in the books. The one in the books isn't really even a person. JRR Tolkien posted:Little she knew of or cared for towers, or rings, or anything devised by mind or hand, who only desired death for all others, mind and body, and for herself a glut of life, alone, swollen till the mountains could no longer hold her up and the darkness could not contain her. So yeah apart from the name there's basically no overlap at ALL between this Shelob and Shelob from the books. This is a super non-canon setting, and if you're cool with that you'll probably be fine with the game.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:03
|
|
|
Grab yourself a rootbeer and enjoy this update as we get a couple new abilities and talk about the Palantir a whole lot.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:07
|
|
|
I'm looking forward to reaching certain milestones in the game so we can talk about the fun things that are a big improvement from the last one. Especially in regards to the captains.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:22
|
|
|
M E A T Also I honestly don't mind the stealth dagger being higher level from the start, since it fixes the worst part of the earlygame, stealth kills not... actually killing non captains sometimes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:29
|
|
|
Dude what? When have stealth attacks failed to kill a grunt? I've not seen this.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:37
|
|
|
I'm down for opening loot boxes like crazy, because sometimes there's some really weird things you can get on weapons. Like the dagger I got that catches enemies on fire around the guy you stealth kill. I carried that dagger around with me for far longer than it was really useful for.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:39
|
|
|
Not the gruntiest of grunts, but the one just above that, I forget their name, the slightly meatier ones that are basically just slightly tankier copies of the basic grunt, the ones that are usually Savages I think? Also, is there a reason to wait until 60 on the legendary gear other than not having to upgrade it a few times? Nalesh fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Sep 19, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:44
|
|
|
I thought it was only the tribe stuff that depended on domination. Nalesh posted:Also, is there a reason to wait until 60 on the legendary gear other than not having to upgrade it a few times? That and legendary gear only gets really good when you have multiple pieces in a set.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 19:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 11:31 |
|
|
Wait wait wait, I missed a Shadow of Mordor LP? Where was this?! Can I get a link, by any chance?
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 20:38
|
|