The gameplay looks fine, hope it doesnt get tedious like assassin creed after a while,
but the story is messed up, how the hell is one guy so powerful in middle earth, he seems on the save level as sauron.

LEGO The Hobbit

Caleb killing Orcs on Middle Earth. Awesome!

Lol, I said it:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=756968

So I discover this BEFORE Neogaf :D

Let's see how this will evolve.

Apparently every game is contractually obligated to have some sort of "detective vision" thing that highlights enemies.

I also strongly suspect that this concept of enemies escaping revolves around cutscenes where the player is forced to watch them flee (since otherwise you'd just kill them on the first encounter). Having some amount of randomness could make it interesting.

One of the big problems there is that Middle-earth's magic isn't marketable. Gandalf is one of the most powerful wizards of the era and even he doesn't use fireballs and lightning on a regular basis. Magic items are similarly rare and even Sting's glow enchantment is the exception rather than the rule (with most magical effects being invisible, e.g. the barrow-blades' Nazgûl damage bonus), and some legendary items are not enchanted.

The hand-waving explanation for this game is that Talion has a wraith bound to him and apparently this means it can do all sorts of flashy magic-like things the Nazgûl never did (if the Nazgûl could have switched to Wraith Vision when hunting for Frodo it would have been a rather short book).

BUMP

I love how the start of the gameplay videos voiceover sounds like "you are Italian" and I'm just thinking "Well of course, I'm playing Ezio Auditore!"

I don't know about "best", but Return of the King was a very decent action game.

That said, I agree that a Middle-Earth RPG would be fantastic if it was done right. It's a shame that The Third Age was apparently a huge clunker, since I really like the idea of a turn-based RPG set in Middle-Earth.

You forgot to mention that the few wizards there are practically qualify as demi-gods, so it's not like a member of the mortal races could really become one.

So yeah, it's a very low magic setting. Honestly, though, I think that has its own appeal, since it makes it that much more, dare I say, magical when you do see anything of such nature. I think it could be made to work, you'd just have to completely prevent the players from being able to play a spellcaster and you'd have to make anything magical in nature extremely rare.

Ah yes, not having magic as an everyday career also makes things difficult. Having a setting where magic use and magic items are rare and/or unknowable is certainly appealing to those that are already interested in RPGs but it wouldn't be considered marketable for a game that needs to sell to as wide an audience as possible. Shadow of Mordor's entire progression seems to revolve around this minion-domination mechanic

Of course the worst lore contradictions have not yet revealed. They have already hinted at a secret regarding the identity of Talion's wraith buddy so I'm expecting something absurd like Talion being a wraith the whole time, or the wraith being the Witch-king (or even Sauron), or Talion turning into some sort of secret ringwraith apprentice minion never mentioned in the books (like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed), or possibly all of the above.

I'm actually excited for a Middle Earth game.

Would a ME rpg work better with the witcher mechanics/developer, or dragon age origins mechanics?
Thinking about it, I don't know what game frame could work for ME. I like the idea of magic being very rare.

I think this game looks like it may not be terrible despite the misuse of the license, lofty ambitions of procedural conflict, and general feeling of "Assassin's Creed with Arkham Asylum; oh god why must these be the only style of somewhat good looking games nowadays?". I actually find myself interested in playing it, if not for the world so much as the way you can approach these conflicts. It seems to take at least somewhat of an advantage of open world possibilities, and if it can live up to that behind all the marketing crap, it may be worth a go.

After seeing that gameplay. it has rise my interested in the game a fair bit and controlling orcs like minions, lovely evil.

however as they say looks don't tell the whole story. so i will wait and keep a eye on this. to see if it turns out to be fun and a good game. that and to see if there is a drm free release of the pc version.

Jesus, this looks like poo. The Hollywood-ization of Tolkien continues I guess. It's ridiculous because Middle-Earth, compared to much of the fantasy that followed it, especially modern fantasy, is very downbeat, magic is extremely rare (hell there's only 3 Wizards in Middle-Earth during the war of the ring, more I guess if you count the Blue Wizards who went to the East or whatever). It's very much low fantasy and it's about mundane things, even if the overall struggle against Sauron was huge, the "moral" of LOTR, if it had one, is that help (and ultimately salvation) can come from the lowliest and most unlikely of places, ie the smallest and weakest race of them all, Hobbits.

Either IGNs plot summary sucks or this games' plot was written by a 5-year-old. I would never expect anything this cringe-worthy from Monolith, so Im guessing its the former. Also, just before the trailer ends, you can hear a different voice,, which strongly suggest that the protagonist is actually two characters.

My guess (and hope) is that Talian fell near ruins of one of Dunedains cities, a battlefield or a grave from ages past. When the battle ended one of the spirits swarming the place, craving for revenge on sauron, found him dying, and confined himself within Talians body, saving him but also cursing him to a path of solitude and bloodshed.

This would create an awesome dynamic between the two personalities striving to achieve the same goal AND fit the LOTR universe. And then the trailer shows Talian teleporting... not sure what to think about that.

The "nemesis system" is just a pretty way of saying that some portion of the game is procedurally generated. When it works, its amazing, when it doesnt, it feels forced. Mostly positive about this.

About gameplay: don't like it. Also - cut-scene overload. The game shouldnt pause just because the boss is spouting some gibberish about a previous encounter. Hearing it during battle should be enough. Same when it comes to executes. A sword slash to upper body, should have a chance of cutting an artery without entering an over-the-top execute animation - just change the swing arc to show the cut. NEWSFLASH - QTE and cutscenes/executes break action games into stupidly short segments that you repeat over and over again until the game ends. Make it more tactical, remove most of the QTE and pauses. This game's combat should be frantic. The damage model is also lacking - needs more pain, gibs, crippled limbs and blinding - its feels like batman:aa model applied to swordplay.

These preview writers haven't actually played the game hands-on; they were invited to an official screening where they watched the same presentation seen in this trailer. Whatever plot details they have are what has been fed to them by PR and inferred from the presentation. They don't know much more than anyone else does at this point.

The wraith's separateness isn't a secret but its identity is. This must be crucial to the plot since otherwise they could have just gone with the simpler option of having Talion himself slowly turning into a wraith while struggling to retain his humanity (which also fits better with established lore, albeit with loss of humanity leading to super-cool wraith powers rather than pain and suffering).