👉 All my links: linktr.ee/lukestephens 👈
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TIMESTAMPS:
Intro: 0:00
The Nemesis System: 5:06
Microtransactions: 9:15
The Patent: 14:30
The Wonder Woman Game: 24:23
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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a 2017 action-adventure video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Shadow of War is the sequel to 2014's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, both of which are based on J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. The game is set in between the events of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings film trilogies, from which the game also takes inspiration. The player continues the story of Talion, the Gondorian Ranger who bonded with the wraith of the Elf Lord Celebrimbor, as they forge a new Ring of Power to amass an army to fight against Sauron. The game builds upon the "nemesis system" introduced in Shadow of Mordor, allowing Talion to gain followers from several races of Middle-earth and command them in warfare.
Monolith Productions, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Kirkland, Washington. The company has been a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Games since August 2004. It formerly published third-party games in the 1990s.
~ Wikipedia
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#gaming #ps5 #xbox
They patent this system then did absolutely nothing with it. 7 years since it was last used is actually shocking
They definitely were hoping other studios would license it but for 99% of games it’s not worth the license so they look like idiots because they could’ve said there no fee anyone can use it just advertise wb games on your technology splash page every game has when you load it
@@iaqh The game thats not releasd yet? Yeah I dont think that counts.
@@iaqh yeah it’ll be cool to see it used again. But a 7 year gap is surprising given its success. People play Shadow of War a bunch still.
Executives are short sighted trash bags that investors dump their money into.
The Batman Beyond game was supposed to use it. Idk if Gotham Knights used it or some form of it but people were mixed about its usage in the game.
A pirate game with the nemesis system would be revolutionary
Honestly it would fit with just about any type of game. Car racing: ai drivers that you continue racing against that develop their own habits to counter your driving style Fighting games: rematches against rivals that adapt how they fight to beat you, forcing you to change up tactics Strategy: entire factions that have unique views and strategies, and react accordingly to how you act towards them I could go on further, as it's honestly harder to come up with games that WOULDN'T benefit from having this system thrown in somewhere.
You just made me sad because we will never get this.
Bounty Hunter game in general would be sick and you could work it into a number of genres. Maybe a Pirate hunter game? Or an old West setting? Maybe an original superhero game where you create your own original character and build them up whilst defeating supervillains? Hell, imagine giving a competent studio this tech and licensing Star Wars to make a Boba Fett game where you hunt down bounties on criminals, fugitives or even other bounty hunters or something like that. The possibilities are really endless when you think about it
@@TobeasJ We will, in 13 years...
Ubisoft having the nemesis system and also Black Flag under their belt and STILLLLLL making a bad pirate game will always infuriate me
"Its MY IP to sit around and do nothing with."
I mean .. kinda fair ? .. even thou i hate it 🧐
@@stefanemanuel5606 Its not really though. Its the same as the very first fps ever, a game called 'Maze War', filing a patent for FPS games. Its dumb to grant patents for general ideas.
Well.... yeah. It's their idea and their work
@Mike_Dubayou It's only general, because they didn't patent and everyone else copied them. It's the same for LOTR being the grand-dad of fantasy. Fantasy only exist because endless people literally copied another man
@thegreat7878 so you WANT there to not be any FPS games or fantasy as a setting? You understand that is what you are arguing in favor of right? Current Patent law is abused severely by corperations, the whole thing needs to be ripped apart and remade until it is fit for the original purpose, and not a tool for the 1% to keep hold of innovations
Patents should expire 5-15 years after being filed, depending on the field. They should also only ever be owned by individuals, not abstract entities. The point is to give inventors a chance to monetize their innovation, not for garbage companies to sit on like a senile dragon riding a dildo.
They are, a patents can be up to 20 years
It is a bad thing in this particular scenario, it`s a double edge sword. But I believe if they don`t do anything with the patent after a certain amount of time anyone can use it.
That is quite the visual at the end there
@@user-cb9kp1tx8p 20 years is much too long.
Blame Disney. Unfortunately, they screwed up how the whole thing was supposed to work.
Patents to game mechanics could KILL THE INDUSTRY. Imagine if Bethesda patented side quests or if Activision patented First Person Perspective.
Activison wasnt the first with an fps tho 😂
@@SWOTHDRA That isn't the point. Neither did Bethesda create side quests, aside from what you think /s. The point is that patenting mechanics, whether you create them or not, is harmful to everyone else since no one else can use them. If no one could use a First Person Perspective other than Activision, what about everyone else? Those Battlebits, the Lethal Companies, and especially games like R6S and Valorant? It brings a bad precedence to the future of gaming if you can just patent whatever you want.
@@wolfyderoguy6621 If you want actual example, BioWare patented the dialogue wheel.
the gaming industry is bigger than movies… no single mechanic is holding the entire industry together
@@alexanderchristopher6237 I actually never heard about that, but it makes a lot more sense why I haven't seen it since.
Kinda wish loot boxes were patented
Right????
If that happened, that would fit the description for Necessary Evil
You know every companies in Asia will dish out hundreds of lawsuits
As a loot goblin, no
The nemesis system is amazing. Shadow of Mordor/War are some of my favourite games because of the combat and crazy shenanigans that can happen because of the Nemesis system. It makes me so mad they put a patent on it and haven't used it in 7 years now. So many games would benefit amazingly from such a system.
So good I haven't even uninstalled Shadow of War, almost nothing compares
To be honest with you guys I'm not exactly sure why that system is so amazing, I did play the game, and it was maybe a fresh way of playing the game, but it wasn't groundbreakingly amazing like everyone keeps saying it is.
@@user-tp5yb4hr4w tbh I'm not even sure how it's an idea that 'can' be patented. What does it do that's actually innovative? The only thing it does is makes some enemies flag something they did previously and talk about it later, then they just act like every other enemy's AI. How is this something that a company can even claim they invented? I guess in fairness, they've done literally nothing with the system since they patented it, so we haven't been able to see a company do something remotely interesting with it.
@@reaven2535I think the patent deals with dynamic villains? Idk I haven’t read it and honestly don’t care enough to. I’m sure you can find it if you do, though. Patents are public.
@@RDR911 As if every RPG where you can make choices that change the story doesn't have dynamic villains lmao. Warner patented a series of if/then statements for randomized enemies and people act like they discovered God. If Warner actually patented something interesting, then the patent is a damn shame given they've basically abandoned the idea and no one else can use it to develop something meaningful.
The fact that companies can even patent game mechanics is a very dangerous precedent that has scary implications for the future of the game industry.
mad max with nemesis system can work.
I would've liked it in Hogwarts legacy. I probably would've finished it.
Welp, never getting this idea out of my head ever again, cause fuck is that awesome!!!
That would be great!
no GTA, imagine cops and gangsters getting stronger when they kill you
Mad Max was so awesome. They could do so many amazing things with their IPs but no they’re puking out rotting garbage like SquiziteSkwadd
I'm actually in the middle of replaying the middle earth games, just started War and even after 4 playthroughs I'm still finding new unique orcs I never saw before. Its a revolutionary system, that can be expanded beyond mass yet is stuck in two games. Two really good games, but a system held shackles by greed and not even being used while in purgatory.
How grindy is it to beat the game? I loved Mordor but not sure if I want to try War because of what I’ve heard
@@FadedBuddah Beating it isn't a grind, at launch is was but it wasn't that bad, less of a grind and more repetitive than anything. You basically just do the same mission 5 times instead of the 20 at launch, if memory serves. Honestly play it, its gameplay is smooth, builds can be fun, the perk tree is great, the nemesis system is huge in its depth compared to mordor.
@@FadedBuddahmassive grind, game is designed around micro transactions and after they were removed they never rebalanced it, it’s SUPER bloated, the game completely disrespects your time as it’s relying on you to spend money to fast track progression, Luke just did a video on this I recommend checking it out, Shadow of Mordor is really the only game you need to play, which is super frustrating but it is what it is
@@FadedBuddahthe last reply is a complete hater and please dont listen to him. The game is great and even the parts that used to be grindy were still fun back then and now its not even as grindy as when it released. Its very fun and the nemesis system is literally at its best in this game (until we hopefully get a newer one🤞🏽)
@@DishonoredSkull Ok thanks! Well I think I’ll definitely give it try at some point then! If the example of it going from 20 times to 5 times is somewhat accurate then that’s a grind I can get past
I think the concept makes more sense with Talion who’s part wraith. With Batman if he loses to a criminal wouldn’t he just die?
Not neccicarily. I mean don't get me wrong the thug will try to kill but even if he manages to beat Batman up, Batman would have ways of escaping
He's gotten beaten up many times without being killed or escaping before they can try, so it could definitely work.
@ConnorLonergan then how would the thug be promoted or get stronger if batman just escapes ?
@@harmansingh95100 "Wow! You beat da Bat! You made da Bat run away! We're stickin' with you, Eyes." "Hmm, yes, excellent job, Eyes! You are my new chief henchman."
Batman has lost plenty of times. He's famous for losing and then coming back stronger, armed with more knowledge of his opponent, leading him to victory. So really, the Nemesis system works perfectly for Batman, especially if you learn the weaknesses of the opponents who beat you.
Man, the Nemesis system is such a genius design, especially when combined with something like Assassin's Creed Odyssey mercenary system...imagine Dragon's Dogma 2, you go around the world, killing those other groups of 4 adventurers that you see on the road, and one of them shoots a flare and BAM now you're wanted by every other group, who is now on their way to you...and even if you kill them all, 2 hours later, while you're miles away, killing goblins, you get ambushed by a raid group of adventurers lead by an elite one who demands justice for his sister's murder or something... Edit: lol, I forgot to add that they get stronger by capturing/killing your pawns.
Literally gold we will never glean 😢
Ac odyssey Ripoff was garbage
The problem with the nemesis system is that the better you are at games: The less you end up interacting with it. I never got a nemesis, because I consistently killed everyone. A couple of them would come back to life to take revenge, but I'd always just kill em on the first try... I don't know if they made it adapt to that in the sequel, since I never played it, but it's one of the reasons I don't really remember this game as much as a lot of people seem to.
They did add a mechanic where orcs adapt to what you do in the sequel, but most importantly they added difficulty settings which fixed Mordor's balancing issues.
It did not change in the sequel. The system only cares if you fail, with the occasional failsafe for when you succeed via unique cheated death orcs like The Machine when an orc cheats death form a cleave. That said, there is a lot more that can happen independent of your performance like the various ambush types, but if you are just good at the game and also don't intentionally engage with the system by dying then you get a very neutered serving of the intended experience.
If you were really, really good at the game you would die intentionally to experience the fun. But I find it hard to believe you never got sniped by an orc with a 1 shot cross-bow attack and the No Chance perk...
@@cmike123 Second part first, that's actually correct. Not only have I not died to a sniper shot (rather, i've never been confirmed after being downed since they were too far to trigger last chance), I've not died to marksmen period. My bane are poisonous assassin hunters. Way too many times has a spear come out of nowhere and nuked 85% of my hp, but thankfully poison either can't kill you, or there's some sort of condition it needs to fulfill as too many times to count I live on the magic pixel after poison and doom ticks away the last 15%. But you care about the substance and responding to that, yes I have died. I am nowhere near good enough to do a deathless run. That being said, it wasn't a whole lot. Only one orc comes to mind as an actual nemesis, a marauder savage assassin who killed me 3 times cause his boys made fighting him borderline impossible back when I was still learning the ropes (lvl 15-20). That's it. Any other orc died on the first revenge and no other nemesis were formed. I didn't get my first sword break until 75 when my computer chugged in the middle of a fight and the singular olog with no chance I've ever seen got the last hit when I was physically incapable of playing. Killed him on first revenge and got the sword back. There should be more ways to interact with the nemesis system besides death, as death is still a fail state.
@@GoldRider4265 I was talking to the OP, but I'm glad you responded. I can't help you if your gamers'' pride won't let you die to an NPC. I would also be in awe of you for being able to masterfully kill every orc that was basically resistant to all damage, enraged by everything, and adaptive. Those mothertruckers were always a massive challenge as you may not always have something they were weak to on hand. Or worse, they only had something like fear of pinning, but no fatal weakness. Once you shot the leg like 3 times, they would adapt if they werent dead. Usually, the only way to kill those orcs is to get saved by a Follower, a human, or Forthog.
This would have been an awesome Batman game
I completely disagree, Batman is about his rogues gallery. He is not going to get defeated and building a rivalry with some random street punk.
@@fl4shblade ay, every nemesis needs to start from somewhere, and I think it would be cool if that's incorporated into the gameplay and your actions and develops from it.
Not the Nolan tie in hel naww, but bad games can have good qualities it would've been cool to see
And Spider-Man too, I also think assassins creed would benefit heavy from this with the assassin and Templar war.
?? Uhh isn't that kind of how you build a rouges gallery lol 😂 broski taking major batman juice down his throat. Anywho a nemesis system in a arkham game would be top notch. Everyone gets a memorable arch enemy @fl4shblade
Would have been great in a Watch_Dogs espionage type game with grudge hackers and double agents, a Wild West Outlaw and Bounty Hunter game, A Sci-Fi version like a Star Wars Bounty Guild vs. Syndicates, and Angels vs. Demons apocalyptic warfare game... the closest thing I recall was Warframe putting grudge enemies you could eventually kill for a weapon or recruit as a summon.
The real tragedy is WB. I would love a great Wonder Woman game, but I have no faith in it.
Probably will be full of Politics aswell like random pride flags.
Wb is good example of greed arrogance and corporate incompetence
There should be a requirement for use with corporate patents. You HAVE to use the thing you patented in a certain time frame or you loose the patent, because your just sitting on it to stop other people from using it.
Unbelievable timing, just finished your Shadow of War video from last year cause I was pondering if I should give it another try. And you drop this exactly while I am sitting here and reminiscing about the nemesis system. How much I loved it in Shadow of Mordor. How impactful it was and how to this day I remember this a-hole orc Grisha who kept coming back and driving me crazy! Curse him and WB for keeping this locked away from us. This can make such an amazing gaming experience
They don’t like it cuz it’s harder to monetize then live service😂
Shadow of War was live service for a long time.
They should not have been able to PATENT this at all. Characters with a memory (persistent game state) and that effect their behavior is NOT a new idea and should not have been granted a patent. Do they want to patent game saves now, too? Patent damaging a boss and saving that you damaged them? WTF?!?!
The reason it worked though in SOM was because your character was undead and you didn't need to save scum. A game with a mortal character isn't going to work as well as there needs to be a realistic death mechanic. I imagine this is the reason the system isn't used. People do not want to be defeated and having defeat as a core gameplay loop isn't going to work in most situations. It would work in MMOS though where there are unimmersive death systems always present
Theoretically, one could design the game so that when you run out of “health” something other than death happens. Ex: Assassin’s Creed was more a “desynchronization” state than straight death, and the.. was it Superman Returns? It didn’t give Superman himself health, but the meter was about City destruction. Death is an easy one though, especially if there aren’t a lot of extra movements to program and animate. With heroes, for an example, it could be just designing the fail state to trigger the hero doing something to escape and recover, buying time for the criminals to be all about the guy that just beat the hero back and how that leads to them being promoted within a crime group.
I wanted something like this for Watch Dogs Legion where your agent could get hospitalized or die and you just switch to another one. If they had grudge hackers and betrayal added to the impressive recruitment and NPC scheduling stuff, it would have really improved the blandness of the random characters.
Batman has escaped near death scenarios multiple times. Even in the Arkham series he gets taken down multiple times
imagine a serious deadpool game
@@caliburn1123 Yeah but this would have to be a gameplay loop otherwise it would be a wasted system. SOM you might die dozens or hundreds of times depending on skill and difficulty. It is the core feature of the game and it works because you are already dead. It is an immersion feature, it makes logical sense so you can't really put it in a game that doesn't have immersive logical systems. Batman dying over and over might make gameplay better but it breaks the immersion of the story.
There is a mod that adds the Nemesis System into Skyrim, and it is awesome... died 4 times to the same Mudcrab, that thing got stronger and stronger... had to play for a few hours and level up to slay that legendary thing.
I played the hell out of shadow of war. Such an underrated gem
Flak the Wicked, that bastard was the bane of my existence. Encountered him close to the start of the game and by the time I was just about to finish it we had fought so many times that he was horribly scared and was resistant to literally almost everything. Dude was a nearly invincible fortress even though he was actually one of the smaller slimmer type orcs. The ONLY way to bring him down was using his fear of wargs against him but of course a lot of the times I encountered him there were non nearby so it was either die or run and fight another day. The amount of dopamine I got from finally killing him was unlike anything else I've ever experienced in a video game before. god those games were so good
Patenting game mechanics is blatantly corrupt. I have no idea how this could have been approved.
What’s your problem ?? Tell devs to come up with new ideas ??
Nobody can come up with new ideas if anything close to something copyrighted is made. Have you ever wondered why there aren't anymore black and white Mouse mascots these days? @@QfngB
@@QfngBhow would they be able to innovate on the system if the foundation is patented
Assassins creed as nipped at the edge of the system, and it would be great if they could just do it fully.
They could have, they had years after "Shadow of Mordor" to do it
@@firmak2 shame they never did, cause shadow of mordor is more assassin like than then the last few ac games combined
It could be great in an AC game! Would be such a fun twist to have some low level soldier keep showing up throughout the game powered up and out for revenge! “I’ve tracked you down again, Eivor! You burned down my village, and now you will pay!”
They pretty much did it with the Mercenary system in Odyssey
@@msm3150 just cause its endless doesnt make it the same as the shadow series
Star Wars would be perfect for a Nemesis system. So many times Jedi and Sith fight without actually killing each other. Imagine a game where you start at a Jedi padawan or Sith apprentice and by the end of the game the, some of Sith lords you're fighting are the guys you've been fighting throughout the story.
Warframe did try to use a system like this a few years back. It introduced special enemy types called the "Kuva Liches" and "Sisters of Parvos", for two of the main enemy factions respectively, who have differing abilities and special upgraded weapons with elemental properties depending on what Warframe you used to kill them with. They get stronger as you try and fail to defeat them and, when you do finally manage to take them down for good, give you the option of killing them off to take their weapon for yourself or sparing them to turn them into an ally that can randomly show up to help you in missions. It's not perfect or all that deep from an emergent storytelling perspective, but it's the closest thing I have seen anyone get to replicating the Nemesis System without Warner Brothers saying anything about it.
I get the feeling that reason why they haven't worked more on Kuva Lich System is because of this stupid patent bullshit, some of the features that were planned scrapped. if they would refine it more i think WB would come knocking at that point.
The Nemesis system, especially in SoW is awesome. I still regularly go back and play it ans every time some interaction or orc will surprise me. A particular highlight being a long time back I super shamed a high level Olog and it demented him and lead to him only being able to make this hilarious "YEEEE-YEE--YEEEE" noise rather than be able to speak. Still kills me when I remember it. Awesome system
I looked at the Nemesis System patent and it is fairly specific, so implementing that exact thing into a game is asking for trouble. However, there have been several games that use proceedural generation and developing social links and rivalries between players and NPCs in alternative ways. Ubisoft's done it at least twice, including in your recruiting apparatus in Watch Dogs Legion.
Assassins Creed also
Ah, the sad thing with Ubisoft is theyll contantly introduce all these cool systems and never put the effort to actually see its potential through. Fitting, the name Legion with how evry NPC you interact with defaults to the same character personality.
This is how business works now. If you have something unique that can be patented, you NEVER license it out - you sit on that gold and use it in one (1) project, then wait for someone to infringe on your copyright. Then you call the lawyer squad. Profit.
A batman game with the nemisis system would of been dope. WARNER BROTHERS ARE HOLDING THEIR SELF BACK TRYNNA CHASE TRAINS THAT LEFT A LONG AHH TIME AGO
I remember GRINDING by leveling up my orcs to get through those 10 phases of tower defense and retakes to get the final ending. Losing orcs in the process to RNG. It was miserable. But I can honestly say that in 2017, I was among less than a percentage of players who seen the real ending without spending a dime. I believe at the time only like .7 or .8 percent of players even got the real ending.
Unless you really cared about your captains, there was no reason to level them up for the Shadow Wars, you just dominated the attacking captains and breezed through the stages. My favorite trick was to stay in the fort towers and use Shadow Strike Pull on the attacking captains and get them up there since they couldn't escape and couldn't take the points, and I'd be free to deal with everything else. This tricks still works in the latest version as well.
The entire game is a massive grind fest. Nice gameplay loops and the Nemesis system adds a lot but the game's a chore.
@@kloakovalimonada It really is, but it's grindy by design not due to lootboxes. Heck you could tell Monolith wanted the game to be grindy when they increased Talion's max level by 20 AFTER they removed the loot boxes. If you enjoy messing around with orcs in a procedural story system, then you won't be bothered by it, if you don't like the gameplay then SoW isn't for you.
@@TheMasterMind144Exactly! I remember when those 70 -150 hour playtimes were coming out and being dumbfounded about how it could take so long. Now it makes sense if people were really leveling up their orcs like this instead of just dominating the attacking ones. Seems like a pretty obvious blunder in strategy by the players which the game unfortunately got attacked for..
@@buzzy4682 That, or they were really bad the game and failed the missions over and over, and didn't know about the difficulty settings. Unlikely though. If I remember correctly it was Kotaku who said that it "might" take someone that long to beat the endgame, but I don't think anyone in the history of this game ever took that long. But that one uninformed statement from Kotaku was repeated over and over again until it became the "truth", and it unfortunately persists to this day and is hard to refute because that version of the game is gone.
Great timing on this video. I finally finished Shadow of Mordor yesterday. I tried and failed to play it years ago and never got far. I don't know why I suddenly found it much easier this time. I finished it in about a week. The nemesis system originally bothered me a lot, but I think I had bad RNG and suddenly had a lot of beefy enemies I couldn't defeat. This time I had a lot of fun, especially when I got the power to brand orcs and use the system to my advantage. There was only one orc who killed me throughout the game and I can't remember his name, something Marauder. He was immune to range damage, a combat master, he had a hatred of fire so setting him on fire only made him madder, and his only vulnerability was to stealth attacks which I couldn't easily do since he was always in a group. But once I had the power to brand and command orcs I thought I'd try again. I was losing until I started mind controlling other orcs around him and eventually I had enough of an army on my side that he was killed when I wasn't looking. Not really related to the nemesis system, but in the beast hunter DLC I was losing to the final warchief but suddenly a wretched graug happened upon the fight and took care of him for me. That was hilarious.
I've been observing the discussion around ''what did we miss with this game?'' and i'm quite sure the if the game had been published, we would now be discussing ''What do we do with 2 different batman franchises, this is just a mediocre clone from Arkham series. They actually had plans to do LOTR-game with these kinda game mechanics! I'd give me soul to see that!''. And I'd be posting this same message reversed.
I think AI being introduced into NPCs is going to achieve something similar. Yeah they won't be ranking up and stuff, but diverse personalities and remember previous encounters is definitely within possibility. And that is the core of what made it interesting imo
Yup, more relevant dialog , NPC's really living their lives.....hopefully GTA6 will habe something like this
This system combined with ai or done through ai could be amazing.
@@SWOTHDRA nah prolly in gta 7
Ahhh missed it. Congrats on 500k 🎉
This my friend is the type of content I expect from you my brother!
This is why I hate patents because they literally serve nothing but so withhold innovation for extremely short term profits
Imagine a Pirate game with the Nemesis system, where you could build your legacy and have countless other pirates that rise to be deadly sea demons along side you, that would have been super cool
thanks for sharing this, still dope to see.
That Shadow Of War music in the background 😢 Making me a little nostalgic
Imagine a Harry Potter game where your classmates use the nemesis system. Think Harry Potter, Bully, and the nemesis system all mixed together.
Thank you! He missed the low hanging fruit here. How many students go to Hogwarts? How many dark wizards did we fight? So many great places to implement house rivalries or straight up dark nemeses
Would certainly be nice for rp's sake if there were any sort of consequences for being good/evil.
That was supposed to be in the recent HP game actually
Imagine if a movie studio had patented the The Cavalry Arrives trope, thus preventing things like the ride of the Rohirrim or the portal scene from Endgame.
We love and appreciate you Luke cant wait to see you hit the big Mil
Really good video Luke! Love your content.
I think the Nemesis system makes a lot of sense for any superhero game. Reminds me of Project Awakened by Phosphor.
I think I read recently that WB sold their LotR license to Embracer, so we will never see a third Middle Earth game. Hopefully Wonder Woman will be as good if not better than Shadow of War, the Nemesis System while amazing can also be easy to mess up. I've played the game 3 times now with minimal bugs thankfully but watch someone like Tears of Grace (/Disgrace Livestreams) and boy does that man see the game in it's most broken state.
Warner Bros. doesn't own LotR, they had a license to make movies and some games based on it. What Embracer bought was the actual IP rights from the Tolkien estate. It doesn't change any contracts that were already in place. They could choose to not renew those contracts later though.
Fish Trap Lake! Love that place. We used to vacation there and loved it. Keep up the great work!
As always I'm always amazed at your choice of background music....I Love it
Imagine if the nemesis system was in Elden Ring. Absolutely Phenomenal!
Yes!!! Or in sekiro or wukong
The Shadow games got to be the biggest and funniest case of irony in the gaming industry. There’s not a single original bone in these games and yet the one thing that was different they patented. Fucking hilarious.
It's like a dog that found a bone and chewed on it for a few minutes before he realized he didn't want it. Then, when he sees another dog going near, he decides they can't have it.
The most up my alley video you’ve ever made when I’m scrolling for something to listen to
Nemesis systems had so much potential could you imagine it used in GTA game or other open world game
witcher series
I feel like the idea behind Warframe's Kuva Liches was similar to the Nemesis system but definitely not as wide reaching.
I entirely forgot there had been loot boxes. I think other than the ones occasionally earned for free my brothers and I typically just went to the gladiator pit and ran it until someone hit max level. It often ended up with some good entertainment AND some pretty sweet champions. Hell I lost a lot of legendaries to that pit.
Nemesis is one of my favorite game systems and it sucks how WB gatekeep it. Even under WB it has a lot of potential for great games. Like Mad Max with Nemesis system would be so freking cool.
Yesss
If a patent application if rejected MULTIPLE times. You should not be able to apply for a patent on the subject again. Period.
This.
I still want a warhammer 40k where you start as an ork boy fresh out of the ground and you work your way up to war boss to lead a waagh against the imperium. You could have other orks, humans, nids, etc as enemies that come back on different planets using the nemesis system until you eventually have your Crew assembled to attack terra.
To add I think being gorka or morka would also help with balancing lore aswell considering they was the only real ork threats to the imperial forces
Nemesis System would only truly be appreciated and reach full potential in an RPG genre, imagine Fallout New Vegas esque game with Nemesis System. That would be HUGE!
as i’m reading the silmarillion right now, while also doing a shire to mordor running challenge (660mi), i love the LOTR. shadow of mordor on my macbook pro in 2016 during class and lunch breaks was a blast. i loved the game. we need more of them :(((
Imagine if the nemesis system was arkham knight's big step forward in the formula instead of the batmobile
Thank you! I've been complaining about this for years!
*Best system I've ever encountered on a game, hands down.* Because of it, Shadow of Mordor/War were two of the best games I've ever played in my entire life.
The nemesis fits in a ton of games idk why it’s not used more
Because they can't. They patent it
Because Warner Bros patented this system. Did you not watch the video? EDIT: here, 14:30. Timestamp.
@@JacoBee93 i know that part I mean within the company
@@royjones0824 Because AAA companies are so stupid it's hilarious
@@PearlBladeBeats the answer that I kind of thought about lol
I love Shadow of War with all my heart! Dropped around 150 hours at launch in the span of a couple of months and have been back plenty of times as well. The day the patent dropped my heart shattered. The nemesis system is such a cool concept
Hey! I just wanted to chime in with my personal experience of Shadow of War at launch. I can't remember exactly how long the original Shadow Wars took me but it was DEFINITELY not seventy plus hours. Imo, anybody who took that long had a severe blunder of strategy Sure, you *could* grind up your fortress until it's a reasonable level to take the attack, but that would take forever. (Hence the extremely long playtimes mentioned.) By endgame you should've been at the level cap which means you could dominate any enemy captains that attacked which feels like the strategy you were supposed to adopt. It seems like it was meant as a simple way of catching your fortresses up to level without making the player grind longer hours to achieve that. Sure, sometimes you'd lose a fortress and have to retake it but that would come with little consequences other than maybe a few lower level orcs you had around before dying. The loot boxes were never necessary in my playthrough and I made a point to never spend a dime on them. Though, that was pretty easy since at the time and still looking back on it they were laughably useless. Why would you spend money to not play the game you bought? Especially when there's minimal grind if you don't play like losing a fortress is the end of the world. Seemed/s pretty silly to me
To clarify, the strategy I used was to let the higher level orcs attack and dominate them as they came so they would be added to my defensive forces. Pretty easy to do if you're competent at the game
Imagine a fantasy action RPG with the Nemesis System and city building as well as RTS elements present in Manor Lords. You grind in order to make your character not only stronger, but also to become more influential. At some point in the game, the King or Emperor recognizes you and believes you have the potential, so he gives you a piece of land you either manage yourself or at the very least, hire someone else to do it for you. If you choose the former, you will be given the chance to spend some time building your own city and your own army. This is where the features in Manor Lords comes in. In addition to that, you also do not necessarily have to focus all of your attention towards the needs and/or improvements of your city. The kingdom or empire will send a representative that will aid you while you're out in the wild doing whatever. The rep will notify you of anything that requires your attention, like if your city is about to get raided, winter is coming, a storm is coming, the funds you provided are running low, etc. However, you becoming a lord, does not sit well with other characters that also wanted the King or Emperor's attention. This is where the Nemesis System comes in. Some of your rivals will send assassins to eliminate you and if they succeeded, their employer will either acquire your land, destroy it, or let the assassin that dealt the killing blow own it. The others might want to do it personally, and the same possible outcomes can also happen if they succeed. If indeed you get killed, you'll be reincarnated, and will have to start all over again, unless you earned enough points to gain divine favor. The points mentioned is similar to the Paragon and Renegade System present in Mass Effect. Choosing to do good things will earn you a favor from the benevolent gods, doing otherwise, will earn you a favor from the malevolent ones. If you want the favor of reincarnation with all of your stats, powers, and abilities, intact (excluding influence), the benevolent gods could give it to you if you earned 200 points. If you choose to go with the malevolent ones, they could give it to you for 100, but once you reincarnated, they'll force a crazy quest on you that might get you killed again or ruin your reputation, so much so that the same King or Emperor might order your execution. Since you lost the King or Emperor's trust, you might want to build your own city or kingdom and army, in a completely different way. You can also ignore the city building aspect altogether and just continue adventuring but the Nemesis System will still be active. Any enemy you encounter, lord or not, will still have the opportunity to become even more powerful, influential, etc.
As a big Tolkien fan I'm more glad we got Shadow of Mordor over Batman game. As for the Nemesis system, I can only imagine what kind of games some passionate studios would have made, if WB wasn't such an dipshit and patented this game mechanic.
Lord of the Rings is such a painfully underused IP. I really hope the success of Hogwarts Legacy has convinced WB to make a Middle Earth game.
As it should be tho. I don't trust any of these triple aaa modern studios or Hollywood to give Tolkiens work the respect it deserves .
Oh Luke man, this news just BREAKS my heart WHY ARE THEY JUST SITTING ON THE NEMESIS SYSTEM
As someone who played shadow of war day one. Let me just tell others who was not there at the time. You grind and do all the main and side quests of the game and of course you have lets say about 10 hours where you are just collecting and messing around in the world. When you get to act 4 of the game ( the shadow wars) you and im not joking will be so underpowered that you will keep losing your army time after time and then even if you manage to win one you will have more sieges pop up. The game at that point is forcing you to use the loot boxes just to get orcs that are high level enough because the orcs you gathered through the game just arent up to it.
As someone who also played through the Shadow Wars when they were unpatched, I honestly have no idea what you're taking about. The first 4 SW stages were very easy, you just had to defeat 6 captains which were always lower level than Talion. That was objectively easier than the last few missions of the main campaign. Then as the SW ramped up you just continued to dominate the attackers and always had a fresh supply of high level guys. Why BUY more when the entire point of those missions is to dispatch attackers by dominating them? If you felt underpowered, you just lowered the difficulty. It's amazing how everybody that complained about the ability to buy loot boxes NEVER mention how this game incorporated these settings, which Shadow of Mordor did not have. Maybe you forgot they were there...?
@@TheMasterMind144 I played on normal this was not someone hardcore run I was doing.
Favorite gaming KZheadr!!!
It could’ve been amazing to see who else would have been able to use the Nemesis System and improve upon it.
I just started replaying the Middle Earth games. On the first one now. They still hold up for a good time. Not GREAT, but still so solid.
Patents for video game mechanics should not be legal. We start allowing that now after decades of innovation and investment went into building everything that provided a foundation for the Nemesis system to even work. I’m talking about the very basics, 3D modeling and physics, combat, a “hit box” itself, these were all originally invented by someone but we didn’t patent them. It’s too late to allow patents for obscure mechanics in video games when there is very little originality to any of them by necessity. The patent process also doesn’t allow competitors to challenge the patent. It relies on the ignorance of a legal process that wasn’t built for software, it was created for real tangible items and mechanical processes.
Shadow of mordor was such a good first entry, it was so suprisingly fun I remember just devouring it and the DLC. But for some reason when War came out i felt no desire to play it and still haven't touched it more than an hour to today. That nemesis system tho, pretty genius. I'd love to see it brought to other IPs like assassin's creed or a Star Wars bounty hunter game could be sick. greed sucks.
I remember keeping track of several indie projects that went up in smoke when this patent went through. Lots of groups weren't willing to come close to the game mechanic due to the stank of lawyers chomping at the bit by WB.
I'm more shocked that a company can "patent" this concept in the first place. So they now "own" the idea of having enemies join you or switch sides, hold grudges and act on their own, that's what I would have thought would become a basic evolution of enemy ai in ALL games in general, weird.
I hope to god the Nemisis doesnt come to MK. The gameplay of MK isnt vast enough. There would be no difference between a tower and Nemisis. It would be a waste
Dude just imagine a Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction with the Nemesis system. With attention to detail like the RE Remakes running on Unreal Engine 5.
Really miss that franchise. Serious disservice to the gaming community by shutting Mercenaries down.
I will always maintain that Shadow of War is proof of the concept of "too much of a good thing." Mordor had 2 areas and finding/getting ambushed by a captain was an event, War has 5 or 6 areas and you couldn't walk 20 feet without running into a captain. I never was able to get that emergent storyline of me vs "that one orc" like i did in War, because either they died or i moved on to the next area. I knew exactly who my nemesis was going to by in Mordor, i had no clue who my nemesis was in War.
Your nemesis didn’t follow you everywhere in War? Mine would pop up all the time to ambush me like an asshole
If you are good at the game you will never even get a nemesis
The loot boxes are totally optional, unlike games like Overwatch, and many other Blizzard or Warner games. During my playthrough in Shadow of War I didn't actually use them till the end when I needed better gear for the end fight. And you can even get them for free just by completing in-game challenges like the Vendetta challenges.
never optional, it was accept or don't play, just cause u could not press it doesn't mean it has no effect even now with it gone its apparent how much of the design suffered for it
The best part was that they never had any exclusive items in them, not even skins unlike most games with lootboxes. They were still a pointless addition that should've never been there, but people blew them out of proportion.
If you couldn't tell the games balance was designed around the loot boxes, I don't know what to tell you. Aside from the fact they had to fully rebalance the game when they patched out the shop, orcs that were stalwarts in the story turned into tissue paper in the endgame, and i played it after they were patched out. Also, its impossible to call them a "pointless addition" when the game clearly, objectively, factually was balanced to hide the "true ending" behind 70+ hours of resource/level grinding to survive the 10 ROUNDS of wave defense
@@TheMasterMind144no, they made the game more grindy to get you to buy them. After they removed them they actually rebalanced the game to make it ot rely on grinding as much and the game instantly got better
@@umphreak9999 if it takes you 70 hours to clear 20 fort defenses, then you must have failed them dozens if not hundreds of times since they all had a soft timer where if you let them go on for too long you'd get so many orcs attacking that your point would be taken and you'd lose and have to retake the fort (around 30 to 40ish minutes). NO ONE took that much to beat that stage, this number was thrown around by ignorant people back in 2017, either starting on 4chan or Kotaku (you know, the guys that couldn't get past the tutorial level in Cuphead). In reality, even on Nemesis difficulty, the hardest difficulty at launch, it wouldn't take more than 10 hours to beat all 20 missions. If you played it on Easy, you could get past it in less than 4 or 5 hours. Also, nothing was "fully rebalanced", Monolith just slashed the number of missions required to beat the stage, lowering it to 5 but making it much worse in the process since the difficulty spiked hard between them. If anything they were much more balanced when they were spread out and orc levels increase gradually. You'd understand this if you played the game when it launched, not post final 2018 patch.
Pisses me off that they were aboe to successfully patent a f'Ing gameplay mechanic in the first place and then haven't done shit with it since and of all the games they plan to implement with it...Wonder Woman.
I beat the end game when the game came out and it only took me 8 hours. The problem was it was a never ending spam of orcs that came in big groups so it was one intro after another. And don't get me started on the annoying skill swapping to exploit weaknesses to kill them faster. It was terrible but it definitely wasn't 70-150 hours.
i hate that it's way too broad of an idea to patent, imo. like Namco having a patent on mini games during loading screens, which pretty much changed how we dealt with loading screens for decades, they could have been so much better and more tolerable
Not to mention that patent should never have been granted, because other games did it before Namco.
Congrats to lawyer team who could manage to copyright an abstract concept.
What a waste is right
It would be so cool if this system were used to develop an open-world Batman game based on the Snyderverse.
I ignored the loot boxes from the beginning and had a great time. I got it within a year of launch. I honestly wasn't bothered by "the endless war" section. It was very engaging. I also started another playthrough of it last year and I had a blast. The nemesis system just clicks with me.
7:02 I'm sorry but is this all one fight scene? The shadow of mordor guy stopping you chat with each Orc he fights/parries with 😂
Yea that can happen
Excellent video and points, can't lie I disagree with 95% of the videos on this channel, but this one right here is gold. Kudos 👍
Wow I actually looked up Luke Stephens Nemesis 2 days ago and couldn’t find anything. What a “coincidence”
Another company can simply reconstruct something like the Nemesis system, and give it a different name, if they feel the need. It is a gameplay mechanic, like any other. You can not monopolize something as general as that. At least in Europe this will not hold.
As someone who was playing Shadow of War when they removed the loot boxes. I miss the loot boxes. I like loot boxes when you can spend your abundance of on game currency on them which Shadow of War had but people kept complaining that the orcs you got from loot boxes would die and therefore your money isn't guaranteed but... You could just spend in game currency on them?
Yup, after you were done upgrading your forts there was nothing more you could do with the silver currency than just buy loot boxes. I remember people made fighting tournaments where they pitted loot box orcs together so they could have make a background story for them. It used to be pretty fun.
@@TheMasterMind144 I used to work out while my loot orcs were fighting in the pit. The pits are so frustrating and so fun at the same time. The AI could have definitely been a lot better but I like the pits. I can imagine some series on KZhead where they would commentate for the orcs like a WWE match. That would be golden.
No lie been replaying this game for the past week and talked abt this with my friends yesterday 😭
I'd rather have never heard about what could have been. It just depresses me. Thanks, Luke Lol. Just because WB patented the nemesis system, shouldn't mean that other devs can't create a similar functioning system and call it something else. You can't patent the idea that a game has enemies that can defeat you and get stronger and fight you again later..
I'm right there with you on this one. I always imagined how cool a Star Wars game with a Nemesis type system could have been. Only instead of Uruk, you have Bounty Hunters and Assassin Droids coming after you and you're on some new backwater planet so there's no lore conflict. Dark Jedi or Sith could play the main big-bads (like the Sauron level enemies in Shadow of Mordor). If you take a Droids head off, he could come back just like the Uruk's did. Same with alien Bounty Hunters and losing limbs or learning new weaponry to counter you "Jedi Magic". Even the split protagonists work with Star Wars. You're an undead Jedi tied up with some other Force Ghost but he doesn't understand how he is still there since spiritual projection wasn't an oft used skill in the Jedi order. Build a story out of that somehow. THe potential is mind blowing.
I remember when Warframe implemented a similar system with their Liches, and it was a ton of fun watching a rival grow in power and challenge you. We need more nemesis style mechanics in games!