The new "Lord of the Rings" game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, will be available on both new and last-generation consoles, but the developers have told IGN they will be focused on the next-gen version of the game.
The recently-announced "Lord of the Rings" title involves Assassin's Creed-style climbing and combat, and showed off some pretty interesting gameplay features in its debut gameplay video. It does not follow the events or characters of the movies and books, but rather its own original story based on new character Talion.
Design director on the game Michael de Plater told IGN, "We're very focused on the PS4 and Xbox One. We're focusing on the next-gen platforms, and then going to do whatever we can to get as much as possible on current-gen."
He goes on to explain that the core mechanics, combat, and story will be mostly be the same, but it's mainly the game's "Nemesis" system that will separate the two versions. "[the 'Nemesis system'] is just so huge in terms of content, calculations and AI we'll just have to try and get as much of it in as we can," de Plater stated.
The Nemesis system was shown off in the initial gameplay footage, and allows the player to create long-term rivalries with unique enemy NPCs that have lasting political and gameplay impacts. The video below is narrated explaining how it works, so I suggest watching it to learn more.
Among an initial wave of launch titles that are mostly current-gen games ported to (and slightly improved for) the new consoles, it's nice to hear about a game that will be on both while focusing on the new hardware. I still assume that being on both the old and new consoles will hold back the next-gen version to some degree but we will have to see how the game comes together, and it makes sense while the install bases of the Xbox One and PS4 are still small.
I think Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor could look very good graphically and play very well if it was an entirely next-gen title, but for now we'll have to just settle for the Nemesis system showing us what the new hardware can do. You can watch the debut footage for the game below, which I highly recommend.
