My thoughts on Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor + Shadow of War

So I play a lot of games in my downtime. Probably too many, if I'm being honest. They're typically the singleplayer sort, and mostly CRPGs with a few notable exceptions, but gaming scratches one or more important itches for me: escapism, relaxation, wish-fulfillment, and — in the case of more story-driven experiences — even helps to stoke the creative fires. I will luck into the occasional co-op experience that jives well with the interests of my lady love or, barring that, one or more of my gaming buddies, but that's pretty rare.

So: "I'm a pretty solitary gamer" is where I'm going with this, and I like it that way.

Which brings me to two particular games that I wanted to talk about: both Middle Earth games from Monolith, Shadow of Mordor (SOM) and Shadow of War (SOW).

First and foremost, I liked them both. A lot. Probably so much that there's at least some cause for self-reflection, but we'll get to that later. They were, despite their flaws, a damn good time. I even played through SOM's campaign twice, which is pretty rare for me, since I invariably remember too much from the first time through any given game and will have trouble re-engaging with the experience. But not here. There was something deeply, almost viscerally satisfying about both games and the larger sandbox environments they gave you to play in.

SOM was an incredible sleeper hit, and its Nemesis system created a dynamic, ever-changing field of battle that was totally novel and, even though its implementation was rough or overly simplistic at times, injected new life into the increasingly flat and derivative genre of story-driven, open-world ARPGs. (It is a system that I genuinely wish more games would steal from, although, with the exception of XCOM 2's War of the Chosen, none really have.) Pairing such a robust and disruptive mechanic with a decent story that respected the source material just enough to avoid clashing with it allowed SOM to become the very best kind of interactive fan fiction: one that doesn't change or negate the accepted story so much as it finds preexisting space for itself within it, which it then fills with minimal disruption to the established narrative.

SOW does much the same thing and, despite its flaws, is in many ways simply a bigger-better-stronger-faster version of SOM in terms of game mechanics and scale (even its flavor of the Nemesis system is the very definition of a newer, souped-up iteration of the original). The single, unified story effectively told across both games is demonstrably non-canonical, but its retcons and other narrative liberties accomplish big, entertaining, and even thought-provoking things without needing to demolish the house that Tolkien built.

I don't need or want to litigate the strengths or weaknesses of the series as a gaming experience much beyond that. As an example, the design failings of SOW — such as its microtransactions and the ways in which they seem to have directly and negatively impacted core gameplay features — are addressed at exhaustive length elsewhere, and it is both beyond the scope of this post and ultimately incidental to its purpose. Instead, suffice it to say that SOM and SOW are, taken collectively, like the best parts of the Assassin's Creed and Batman: Arkham games got together and made a badass, Orc-slaying, Uruk-branding baby in Middle Earth. (As a huge Tolkien nerd and a great lover of all things Batman, this is most definitely a good thing.)

But I'm not actually here to sing the praises of this franchise or to decry the encroachment of questionable design features into each and every corner of the AAA game space. Those things are certainly worthy of further discussion, but just not here. All of the above is intended to provide sufficient context and to establish the fact that I enjoyed these games. What I actually want to talk about are some of the deeper reasons why we might find games like this enjoyable, and some of the problems — or at least the troubling implications — therein.

[NOTE: SPOILER TERRITORY]

Seriously. One does not simply un-see a spoiler, so consider yourself warned.

First and foremost: SOM and SOW are both massive power fantasies. The player is literally entrusted with saving Middle Earth, although the means of that salvation are often dark, brutal, and frighteningly inhumane. Even with the most forgiving take imaginable, the methods and mindset required to wrest Mordor from Sauron's control are unquestionably sinister and buck high-fantasy tropes to exaggerated effect. But beyond its shell of depravity, things should otherwise feel pretty familiar conceptually and in terms of mechanical execution.

Most games are about winning at their most basic level, although some are far more grandiose and obvious about how they frame it than others. And those "victories" are almost always to be sought at any cost within the confines of a game's systems. So even though prevailing against an epic and ancient evil is, by definition, going to outclass the scale or grandeur of, say, clearing a tough level in Super Meat Boy, they both share a singular feature of design: an overriding goal or victory condition that only you, the player, can and must accomplish if you want to beat the game.

There are many systems that necessarily constrain and define the nature of playing a game — its input controls and interface, the limits and dimensions of its environment, the interactions and progression within that environment, and both the goal that players are striving to achieve and the barriers to accomplishing it — that will, by extension, establish the extent and nature of player agency. But because we tend to treat the player character as an extension of ourselves, they are simultaneously more and less real for it. Even if we acknowledge that our digital avatar isn't really us, the overlap nonetheless makes the stakes and emotional payload of a game and the actions we undertake while playing feel far more real. It can increase immersion and the impact of our successes or failures by whatever standards the game sets, and sometimes radically so.

So what does this have to do with SOM and SOW? Well, if we necessarily see ourselves in the actions and mindset of the protagonist of both games, Talion, what does that say about our willingness to spend 50-60+ hours waging what is, in effect, a terrorist insurgency against the standing armies of Mordor? Above and beyond the welcome novelty of its Nemesis system that ensures the game world is always flush with would-be victims, most of the time spent actually playing these games — or at least playing them well insofar as victory conditions are concerned — revolves around terrorizing, murdering, and enslaving as many Orcs and Uruks (and the Ologs exclusive to SOW) as possible so that you can ultimately challenge Sauron's supremacy by stealing his army and turning it against him. "Winning" here entails murdering and branding your way to the top of the hierarchy in the service of that end. And since you're an impossibly overpowered wraith/ranger hybrid that can't even permanently die, the tools at your disposal are vast and grisly. They are, simply put, torture simulators that skirt the edges of small-scale genocide if the player is sufficiently skilled and dedicated (and I use those terms loosely here). They exist in diametric opposition to the thematic elements Tolkien put forth with respect to conflict and the acceptable means of resistance and instead espouse the dangerous and often Faustian realpolitik of modern counterterrorism strategies.

Even just writing about this makes me feel kind of icky, so it is with an uncharitable eye that I reflect upon my own insufficiently critical enjoyment of the series.

But again: so what? Orcs, Uruks, Ologs, and all manner of other evil beasties are about as unsympathetic as they come, so Monolith's writers hardly needed to expend much effort to further dehumanize them. Characterizations of Orcish soldiers stress how irrevocably corrupt and monstrous they are, how irredeemable, despite the tragedy that underscores their creation during the First Age and their continued breeding and uses beyond that. Trolls and Ologs are no different, and the same could be broadly said of all "creatures of the shadow," which are little more than tragic, blighted perversions of the Free Peoples. Even the games' reimagined and irritatingly cranky Celebrimbor can't seem to shut up about it: stalking, interrogating, enslaving, and assassinating are all necessary evils, so stow your reservations and get to it.

The ends supposedly justify the means, no matter how horrific the path to "victory" for Talion and Celebrimbor (and, by extension, the player).

But do they?

I would argue that no, they don't. They can't, in fact, and it is incumbent upon us to resist such insidious logic. Affirming such an ominous and permissive stance, regardless of the innumerable caveats or counterfactuals required to do so, is profoundly dangerous, and it speaks to how pervasive and accepted this narrative has become throughout our society. Despite the allure of believing otherwise, adopting the guise and the tools of the villain makes you a villain. Even the ignoble distinction of being "only" a lesser evil is hardly synonymous with good or virtuous conduct. It speaks to our desire for easy, simplistic narratives that characterize opposing sides in stark, black/white terms that rarely align with reality.

These games are rife with unexamined imperialistic and racial undertones that I wish they had engaged with more seriously, but their only attempts are halfhearted and superficial at best. Even trying to more authentically characterize Talion's reluctance to continually escalate his campaign of violence could have gone a long way here, and it would have been a welcome opportunity to showcase the real costs of his reign of terror — both for himself and the larger cause, and how if undertaken long enough the best that could hoped for was to trade one Dark Lord for another. Even if SOW's true ending failed to fully embrace this more damning truth, I feel like it at least flirted with the prospect of showing that you, the game's supposed hero, had become little better than the monsters and despots and attendant ideologies that you were fighting against. And that unrealized potential is, perhaps ironically, far more compelling than anything they actually wound up doing with the story.

Both SOM and SOW are masterful at making you feel not just powerful but also empowered through the scale of your undertaking and Talion's ability to make good on it, but I'm disappointed that they either couldn't or didn't care enough to fully interrogate the implications of so much weaponized fear and violence. The fact that it so clearly apes our contemporary War on Terror in form is presumably a coincidence of design rather than intentionally allegorical, but the bones of it are still felt throughout.

So again: what's my point here?

For what it's worth, I don't think the answer is one of categorical prohibition. "Never play problematic games" is unhelpfully vague and doesn't really address the reason why doing so can be dangerous: because we frequently do so uncritically. To put this differently, there's usually nothing wrong with junk food in moderation, but it's still good for us to be aware of the potential health consequences of its unchecked consumption. Our media is no different. SOM and SOW are particularly delicious, ultra-violent power fantasies that are high-calorie, low-nutrient affairs and should be treated as such. That doesn't mean we should never eat them, but it does mean that we should do so with a little discretion and thought.

Being more critical consumers of our media in its various forms, however difficult, is absolutely worth aspiring to, and holding the producers of that media to similarly high standards is often a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle that can lead to better, more thoughtful art. Even violence itself can be a source of insight under the right circumstances, but it's easy to confuse the simulated transgressions that we sometimes delight in for meaningful commentary on that fact. SOM and SOW largely fail that particular test, even though they didn't have to.

I'm not going to lie: despite all of the above, I still enjoyed the hell out of these games. But a more critical examination of them after the fact has also colored my perception and forced me to reevaluate my experience, both of the gameplay and of its messages and themes. Games often have something to say whether they intend it or not, and as such necessarily reflect parts — some noble, others decidedly less so — of the world that inspired them, and there is real value in scrutinizing them and what they have to say about us as players and as people.