Shadow of Mordor 2 "revealed" by mo-cap actor's CV

The orc-bothering Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was one of the big hits of 2014, and so the fact that a sequel might be in development may not come as a planet-shattering surprise. And the appearance of a Shadow of Mordor 2 “Stunts/Acting” credit on iStunt, discovered by Nerdleaks, is by no means an official announcement that a new game in the series—“More-dor,” you might say—is being made. But it's a pretty good sign.

IStunt is similar to IMDB, but dedicated to stunt coordinators, they being the people who do the things in movies that actors either can't, won't, or aren't allowed to handle themselves. Entries list physical traits, from basic stuff like height, weight, and physique, to more profession-specific details, like who the person can double for and what “unique traits” they have. (Michael Stone, for instance, can remove his front teeth.) And naturally, they also list past work, which in the case of Lauren Mary Kim includes motion capture work for Blur on Shadows of Mordor 2.

Blur would presumably be Blur Studio, a CGI studio with numerous movie and videogame credits including The Division, The Elder Scrolls Online, Dishonored 2, and the fantastic Prey 2 cinematic that made its cancellation such a letdown. It's the kind of outfit a publisher might hire to whip up a cinematic trailer—a trailer of the sort that WB rolled out at E3 in 2014, for instance.

Kim has since made her iStunt profile private, but Nerdleaks has a screen capture, and a video of her mo-cap work from 2015 is embedded below. Shadow of Mordor studio Monolith, meanwhile, continues to work on an “unannounced project.” Make of it what you will.

Thanks, GamesRadar.

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Well, i'm all in for another game with such theme but man the first game bored me to death , at first i was like "man this is GotY 2014 for me!" but at the end it shredded my patience into pieces, repetitive af!

Nemesis system was great tho, kudos to them on that.

Thoughts?

It was my 2014 game of the year, loved every minute of it......hope this is legit

I really enjoy Shadow of Mordor on PS4, it was really the best LOTR games I have ever played. Honestly the cliffhanger left much to be desired and makes me wonder just how much stronger Talion can get and I hope they expand the settings and let us visit more LOTR areas like Moria, Gondor, Rohan etc. but one can hope.

I hope they improve upon the combat in the next one.

Really hope they do more with the world in the sequel. I get it, Mordor is not supposed to be cheery place. But exploring the world in SoM really became a drag after like 10 minutes. Maybe do some Fangorn or something (copy tree climbing from Assassin's Creed 3), or add a proper town. Also the campaign needs to be something more than a tutorial for your systems. The first game had potential, but ultimately it just wasn't that fun.

Even the story? The story didn't pull me through at all, i had high expectations.

Combat was good, the missions were repetitive.

Loved the first one and I'm super happy that a studio like Monolith got a real AAA blockbuster and that the classic Monolith DNA is still present after all these years. Also fun to see the old Lithtech engine still alive and kicking! While this may be great for some, I worry that Monolith is just gonna make SoM sequels or the publisher forces them to do it. Monolith had a GREAT variety of games in the past and I'm hoping they will still do in the future. Sometimes great games should not have a sequel. The nemesis system was good and often hilarious. Was really impressed how much controls they could fit in a small amount of keys. It was great as an open-world game that tried to do something legitimately new with the formula. Plus, gutting orcs with the Arkham combat style never got old. I hope they will pick an interesting setting. I'd be fine with a second one, but i hope this doesn't become yet another annualized franchise that started out interesting then is destroyed by the publisher.

@mjorh: Video game stories never really do much for me ( minus a certain few ) so it was all about the gameplay and combat for me......I am a fan of the Batman type fighting and this had that but with the ability to chop heads. Also really enjoyed taking out the leaders etc.....was fun for me.

I also said that like you at first ''Man, this is game is so much fun!'' then ''It's fun, but gets repetitive, might uninstall it.''. I gave it another chance, turns out it's not really that repetitive for me, side-quests are even surprisingly fun & rewarding, story is fine-good, combat & skills are a beast, heck I even liked the world eventually. I want the next one to be really different in a good way from the first one, you know, like what Assassin's Creed II was to the first AC. The game reminds of combination of Assassin's Creed & Batman Arkham, character looks like Prince of Persia abit.

I want to see how improved the Nemesis system has become.

Well, it seems that i gotta give it a chance, i admit i got a little bit hasty and some other games released so i moved on...maybe close to the release of this one i play it again.

Same here. That was the best part of the game, really hooked me.

What did you think of the setting? i guess they can do a better job in that department as well, i liked the setting but there was nothing special about it ...and even that got repetitive for me.

I had the exact same thoughts. Still have to finish the game one day.

At first I loved every moment of it. Thought this game totally captured me... but then it all started to feel so shallow and boring.

At the end I was only having fun with those beasts you could ride and attack enemies with. But I had no intention to play the campaign more.

The movies had all these beautiful scenes and locations. (so many shots in the LOTR movies spinning around a location) While the world in Shadow of Mordor has to have been one of the most boring worlds I've ever seen in a game. Middle earth was totally lame !

I really wish the Nemesis system wasn't wasted on a fucking Lord of the Rings game. SoM was awesome as hell and the weakest part was by far the setting and story. Lord of the Rings sucks.

Yeah exactly my thoughts, i hope with the second installment they take some cues from the movies ...i mean LOTR is one of the best movies ever and they should leverage that.

Been waiting for the first game to drop enough in price for a go, looked interesting but far, far too easy to be fun for long. Wonder if they will include scalable difficulty this time?

Great game... Adored the nemesis system to pieces. Still one of the only true next generation ideas of gen 8. I'm willing to give a second game a go, but that'll probably be that afterwords. New stuff please.

I only played the tutorial...

Not a huge fan of LOTR.

E.g. Túrin's era and he himself would be joy to play in. I'll be interested to see what further stories they explore, hope they delve deeper into Lord of the Rings lore because I thought they played it too safe with the first one for fear of pissing off fans. There is just so much LoTR lore out there that is generally defined, but not fully explored, they could be pretty flexible in developing those stories out.

@mjorh:

Reading this thread actually made me realize all the positive stuff from the game too. I really liked slicing off enemies heads. And I really liked the photo ability.

I'm sure I'll finish the game one day. But like you I moved on to different games that required my attention more ^^

One thing is for sure: Shadow of Mordro was good, but let's hope they do make a sequel, as there was still a lot of room for improvement.

No, it was nothing more than brainless button mashing.

And no one even talks about the first one anymore. GOTY my buttocks.

I played the first one it was "ok" at best, some cool ideas like the nemesis system but overall it was quite bleh

The nemesis-system alone cant make a boring/bad game good

This shows how disappointing 2014 was.

Sure Shadow of Mordor was easy but that's not the point, it was fun. That, to me, is far more important in a game that's made to make the player feel like a killing machine. It's the same with Assassin's Creed, it's a simple game but it's fun to murder lots of bad guys.

But whats the point with this game when there is no challenge, I could just as well watch a movie instead.

Sometimes I just enjoy games to be mindless, sometimes I like them to challenge me. I was happy with Mordor because it was easy and mindless, just like Assassin's Creed, it's not hard but it is good fun. A game doesn't need to be challenging or difficult to be fun.

If I want a game to challenge me I'll go play an RTS on hard or Total War on Legendary.

This type of game better suited for Conan; Lords Of The Rings is about Hobbits singing with elves in the woods as opposed decapitation simulator 2016 with right gruff beard man.

I'm still scratching my head about how much people loved the first one. I got bored before the ten hour mark. There was very little sense of permanence to anything you did.

much rather see Monolith work on something else

Didn't enjoy SOM at all, Boring. Still left Unplayed :(

I played all the way through the first one. I liked it a lot. A similar game to Assassin's Creed but with some great twists on the formula. I loved assassinating and infiltrating the Orc warlords

Oh man, if they build on the Nemesis system, that would be amazing. I'd also like a more fleshed out world, considering this is Lord of the Rings, which has a huge amount of lore.

The Nemesis system was original, but it was irritating how you had to "Kill" enemy officers by decapitation or end up fighting the same guy infinitely with recycled dialogue. Given the combat system made it easy to miss the decapitation opportunity, the seemingly invincible horde of Orcs undermined any sense of accomplishment.

It was definitely a foundation, but the game was ultimately hampered by repetition

THAT was exactly one of my main gripes , it just made me rage quit a lot lol

oh c'mon it was charming as hell to fight the same guy over and over. Each time he'd have a new set of scars. It was even better when one of them killed you, because they would have all kinds of taunts and things for when you came back. I don't know what the canon explanation was for it all but I figured that sometimes orcs came back to life in the same way your character did.

Ultimately that system succeeded beautifully in making a truly non-linear challenge perfectly tailored to the open world genre. That's also the tragic thing about the people in this thread who stopped playing after a little bit. If you can get into the game, it's mainly the middle and end that have the real meat. It's not a hard game to beat though, but it's way above most open world games in that regard. I liked the intel system a lot, and then using that intel to kill powerful orcs by attacking their weakness.

Another strong part of that game is that the collectibles feel meaningful. Most open world games fail in this regard.