Shadow of War feels like two games. On the one hand, you have lofty, boring Lord of the Rings fan-fiction starring Talion, an undead Ranger and Celebrimbor, his ghostly, Elven compatriot. The two share a body are doing battle with Sauron and the Witch King and allying with sexy spiders/assassins/trees to get the job done.
But then there’s another game, one full of goofy-as-hell Orcs who have an enormous variety of interesting character designs and spout some of the most darkly hilarious nonsense I’ve ever heard when you face them. The Orc NPCs like Bruz and Ratbag are the most interesting story characters with the best dialogue, certainly better than Talion himself who might be one of the single dullest video game characters I’ve ever been forced to control.
One of my biggest problems with Shadow of War is that despite minor changes and improvements, it just feels too much like the original. And to solve many of its problems, I think the answer is clear:
Why the hell wasn’t Talion replaced with an Orc hero?
This is something I was discussing with my colleague Dave Thier yesterday, and he says it's something that's stuck with him since the first game. The Orcs are the most interesting, most well-designed characters in the games. The entire series is about commanding Orc armies. But when Talion does it, he uses mind-control magic that is a…not great look when you’re a handsome white dude forcibly enslaving hordes of unwashed savage Orcs. This could be avoided if you simply were an Orc yourself.
I’m picturing the game starting off with a character creator this time, as your Orc is birthed from the Orc pits or whatever those were called in LOTR.
You pick your body type: gangly, muscular, enormous, etc. Your head(s) and facial features. You choose from one of a number of voice actors, Saints Row style. Throughout the game you get new, wicked-looking armor and weapons, new warpaint, etc.
In terms of the story, something happens where Celebrimbor is done with Talion (because he sucks) and instead, he’s forced to turn a “lowly Orc,” ie. you, to get the job done instead. You end up merging with Celebrimbor to become a “super Orc” having access to the movement abilities and special powers to make the game work, but instead of being a boring ranger you’re a badass Orc who looks and sounds much cooler, and can assimilate armies in a way that doesn’t come across as vaguely racist. It’s a win-win.
Warcraft figured out a long time ago that you can make ugly brutes like Orcs the good guys if you want. Lord of the Rings, both in the books and the films, always makes them evil with almost no redeeming qualities at any point. It’s only the good-looking, white rangers, elves, hobbits and (somewhat less good-looking) dwarves that can be heroes. Shadow of War takes a few steps in the right direction by making women badass warriors and having at least one black story NPC, but they need to break further out of the bonds that hold the series, and let Orcs themselves run the show for a while. There are plenty of stories you could concoct about a rogue Orc working with Celebrimbor to take down Sauron and unite his own clan of Orcs against other Orcs (and maybe make some of the human/elf factions evil for a change too).
This feels like a missed opportunity to me. Talion was a forgettable hero in the first game, and should have been forgotten altogether by the time the sequel rolled around. Shadow of War’s strength, like the original, is in its Orcs, and a custom Orc hero would have been a huge shift for the series and one that would have been genuinely interesting to explore. I am…less interested in returning to Talion who is the same character with 30% new abilities, and I can’t stop almost nodding off in all of his cutscenes.
Yeah, a custom Orc hero would have been a lot of work rather than just porting Talion and his skills over from the last game, but I think it would have been worth it. Sequels should evolve in significant ways, and I’m just not sure Shadow of War is doing enough to live up to its potential.
Orc-hero DLC, anyone?
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