Been playing a lot more of SoM since the announcement of SoW, about another 40 hours on top of my original 40. I've been trying, rather pointlessly, to have all of Sauron's Army be dominated Captains that, I dunno, I just like. Been trying to find the most unique ones I can, getting them leveled to 20, killing off the more mundane or weaker ones. With all the Epic Runes and abilities unlocked, their traits aren't even really a consideration anyone.
But every time I get tantalizingly close to filling out the whole army, something seems to happen to one of them. Either it's self-inflicted like I grab them trying to dominate them and accidentally fling them off a 5 foot ledge and they die, or they activate when I'm fighting something else inside a fortress and end up getting mobbed while they're essentially off screen to me. I hope that you're less prone to inadvertently killing your own guys, but everything they've said about SoW implies it's has the potential to be way more chaotic than SoM.
They also said they've increased the amount of active AIs at one time, so groups of grunts and multiple captains will press you a lot harder than they did in SoM. You can see it pretty clearly in SoM where under a certain number of opponents, guys do a lot of standing around, and beyond a certain number then they start attacking more aggressively, until they hit a cap and you're basically surrounded in a sea of guys where only three or 4 can actually hit you.
Anyways, I'm hyped now I think, desperate enough I'm watching the live streams now. Something interesting came up in one of them:
https://youtu.be/yUsaMOpdJJw?t=5017That's why you gotta be careful of the "gameplay" trailers. They do stage stuff and even though their reasons might be legit, it can create a false impression of how stuff works. Granted, a lot of that is just camera play, I'm fairly sure a lot of those animations are actually playing out, it's just in actual game you wouldn't get this swooping, panoramic view of each critical part of the action. It's them going "Look at all this cool shit that you will honestly be too busy to notice when you're actually playing, but you'd complain about if you were actually looking for it and it was missing." I'm still not really a fan of that because I just want straight, undoctored representations of what I'd experience. But I'm a little more comfortable with it than when I first saw it. Because they laid it on thick.
I'm liking how they're describing gameplay in the streams and the amount of activities available to you over the course of the game. Sort of like SoM, it seems game play progression will be tied pretty strongly to the story. You'll start in Minas Ithil when it's a human city as its getting invaded by Sauron's army. Minas Ithil will fall and become Minas Morgul. From them on it will be an open city you can revisit (with the Arena and Ork fighting pits) only under control of the orks. At some point past that I imagine you travel to Mount Doom and forge a Ring of Power (which, canon nerd, I find it hard to believe Sauron doesn't notice it), and then the real game begins as you start taking fortresses and working your way East toward Mordor.
And then you'll have collectibles, side missions, Celebrimbro's Barrows, gear to farm, gems to farm and unlock and upgrade, runes for the ring to farm. "Mirrian" or whatever is essentially is experience will be spent on upgrading fortresses and unlocking gem slots on gear which you'll constantly be collecting (I assume you use it to buy up your own abilities as well too or that additional XP is converted into Mirrian), so constantly murdering orks will hopefully still have a small payoff as opposed to SoM where the xp you earn just kind of dead ends after x hours.
Between all that, and dozens of fortresses containing ~12 Orks each to fuss over, each with several more layer of personality, appearance, traits and I guess gear to try and customize...? Yeah. This could be a game to sink a stupid amount of time in to. Maybe one for the ages? I'm encouraged to hear that them say they play the game a lot and get caught up in just playing it, and a lot of their testing is just test arenas and throwing shit together to see what happens.
(As an aside, guys have more trait groups than they did in SoM. They're still roughly grouped under strengths and weakness but there are several subcategories in them now that are better laid out than in SoM, and makes clearer what all things can potentially make up an Ork.)
Under strengths they have their primary abilities and their immunities. These are sourced from several top level attributes of each ork. First is their Class, which dictates their weapon types and provides some bonus like a mounted beast or inspiring their troops to attack more aggressively, sniper shot, necromancy, etc...then there's their tribe, which provides yet another bonus like an Arcane Weapon. Race might also provide a bonus as the Olog Hai get a strength bonus from it, for example. So those are just their biggest ticket abilities and immunities from all their various top level traits. Then they have Hatreds, the things that makes them Enrage, which makes them attack faster and do more damage. They can have way more Hatreds than in SoM. Then there's another column of strengths they haven't really shown which I assume are their actual special combat attacks and moves. At least I assume so because it changes between swords or a bow depending on the Ork in question. Lastly under strengths there's "Epic traits" which are another set of bonii based on how veteran the ork is, and is where you find stuff like the gang leader trait and such. Then there's weaknesses, of which there are more kinds than in SoM. You have what I assume are their "instant kill" weaknesses since they haven't really shown them off. Then you have the "stunned by" weaknesses, where various kinds of attacks will or won't cause them to be stunned. This is important because it looks like the ol' "Hit A to roll over them and stun them then Wraith Flurry them to death" tactic is gone. Rolling over guys no longer universally stuns them now. Then there's the "Fears" weakness column, which is the stuff that will cause them to flee. Lastly there's one weakness column I've never seen revealed or talked about, it's the one at the far end.
(It's also not clear if Race, Class and Tribe impart weaknesses of their own.)
I'm thinking at this point I'm hyped enough I'll probably preorder. Now I'm just trying to decide if the Silver is worth the extra $20. Two Ork Tribes actually amounts to a lot of content when you think about all the things it entails, not just for them individually in terms of their abilities, appearance, gear, dialog and all that.....but also the effect they have on the region, as an overlord, etc....By contrast I don't even really want the Legendary Captains or the DLC weapon.
Compared to SoM, where once you've cleared out the side mission and collectibles, unlocked all your abilities and just started farming runes, the real meat of the game boils down to a) gaining Intel b) giving orders or reacting to missions c) dominating and/or murdering orks, and you're dealing with the same pool of like 40 guys....SoW sounds like it'll have a much wider breadth as well as depth. In the end the reason I keep fussing with Orks instead of beating SoM is I kinda don't want it to end.
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Topic: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Read 76562 times)