14 DAY TRIAL // Monolith Productions, the developer of the recent Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, drew inspiration for its innovative Nemesis system from sports, as it doesn't have checkpoints and doesn't allow players to start anew.
Shadow of Mordor had quite a few interesting mechanics when it appeared back in October of last year, chief among them being the Nemesis system, which really transformed the whole action adventure experience into a fresh one.
Through the mechanic, Urok captains that killed the main character, Talion a ranger of Gondor, were promoted through the ranks of the enemy faction and gained more power, as well as abilities.
Sports inspired the Nemesis system
While talking about the mechanic at the DICE Summit, via Gamesindustry, Monolith Creative Director Michael de Plater admits that a major inspiration for the system were sports like football.
More specifically, he explains that a season of sports like football provide great stories because teams aren't allowed to reset after losing an encounter. Instead, they must move forward and ensure that they overcome the obstacle.
"Sports are designed as systems which generate stories every year. They start with the early play-offs, they're designed that if there's a failure through the mid-season you don't rewind to the last save and start playing again from that point, as much as you potentially wish you could. You embrace that and move forward," he explains.
In Mordor, players must then meet their rivals in the game's world and try to overcome them, now that they're much more powerful because of the promotions.
Besides letting players fight against more powerful foes, the studio also tweaked the appearance of the Urok captains, adding scars and traces of previous encounters. As such, it made things even more personal, so to say, for players.
Monolith's de Plater also promises that the studio will try to create as many new experiences as possible in the vein of the Nemesis mechanic in the future, so fans have plenty of interesting things to look forward to. Until then, it's going to debut more DLC for Shadow of Mordor in the following months.
