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It has been 6 years since Shadow of Mordor came out and 3 years since Shadow of War. Back in 2014 when Shadow of Mordor first launched, the nemesis system was seen as a revolutionary breakthrough in gaming technology.
If you aren’t familiar with what the nemesis system is, Game Informer does a good job of summing it up in their review of Shadow of Mordor.
Shadow of Mordor’s most fascinating feature is its nemesis system, in which many missions and conflicts arise from earlier combats and deaths. An army of named Uruk soldiers patrols beyond the Black Gate, each one vying to rise through the ranks and grasp greater power. Die in battle, and your slayer may be promoted and recall that early battle upon your next meeting.
Horribly burn a foe and let him escape, and he screams for a rematch if he catches sight of you again. Dominate a puppet and turn him to your cause, and opportunities arise to move him up to warchief status. Many of these encounters happen naturally as you explore, but an equal number show up as new missions on the map. The dynamic makes for a remarkably engaging and custom experience.
Gameinformer.com
What makes the nemesis system so intriguing is that it is an emergent gameplay creating machine. Playing a Shadow of game is much like playing many other open-world objective-based games, the big difference is that through the nemesis system, your AI opponents in the game are always unpredictable and your relationship with them is ever-evolving.
This one system helps carry these two games, they turn a fairly average action-adventure game into something that is much more interesting and dynamic. Your story is your story, it’s personal with your own unique set of villains.
Back in 2014 when this mode was first introduced to the world, I thought it was a new beginning. Something that was so big, so fresh; it was so absolutely erupting with potential that we would surely see many copy cat versions and iterations on the idea. Well here we are 6 years later, and we have hardly seen anything like it at all.
If you need further proof about how convinced I was that the nemesis system was something revolutionary here is an excerpt from a blog post I wrote on Cheapassgamer.com when Shadow of Mordor came out.
I don’t believe I have seen a system quite like this on any other game of this scale. It is a remarkable feature even in this stage of infancy. This is an example of the type of Gameplay evolution I had hoped for when the next generation of consoles was announced.
We all expected better graphics and bigger worlds, but the nemesis system is the kind of thing that gets me excited, the kind of feature that makes me feel like a kid again when I play a game because I wonder “what if?”.
I no longer feel like I have total knowledge of what behaviors the characters in the game I am playing are capable of. The game takes on a life of its own and that is something I crave more and more as I become an increasingly seasoned gamer, unpredictability; one of the rarest and most treasured experiences in a single player game.
An old blog post by me on Cheapassgamer.com
If that sounds like lofty praise to you I assure it was, I was in fact over the moon about such a development. It was early in the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 console life cycles and I truly believed we would see developers expand upon this idea and iterate it to levels so big, it would change the way we play games.
In reality, we got a few games that took some less sophisticated cracks at it (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with its mercenaries and Xcom 2: War of the Chosen come to mind). We did get Shadow of War which did add some more depth to the nemesis system but didn’t go as far as I had hoped.
The Nemesis System seems like a great fit for so many games
One argument I have heard for why we haven’t seen the system more is because it doesn’t fit in a lot of games. I can see that being true in some cases, after all, the Middle-Earth games specifically feature things like character death, and enemy permadeath to help facilitate the nemesis system overall.
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There aren’t many games where that specific sequence of events could take place but developers could shape or mold the system to fit the needs of their game. Think of all the possibilities something like this could bring to the games we know and love or new gaming IP’s.
A Game of Thrones or Medieval game
Imagine a Game of Thrones game that takes place over centuries. A strategy action game of sorts where you have a house and you try to help them thrive over the years.
There will be wars, battles, and political moves that use a variation of the nemesis system where other houses and individuals will remember past actions and they can come back to haunt or help you down the line.
Maybe you destroyed a great house in a battle 50 years ago and now the grandchild of that house has risen in the ranks and they are now your political enemy.
Maybe as the leader of your house, you do some terrible wrong and get found out, you lose all reputation and have to spend decades rebuilding your good name and status.
Developers far more creative than me could craft a compelling, dynamic gameplay loop and deliver a game that dives deeper into relationships and decisions than we are accustomed to playing.
The Nemesis System could Thrive in Sports Games
This one feels like it’s out of left field but think about what a custom made nemesis system would like in something like Madden Football or NBA 2K. You could develop rivalries with other teams and players, commentary could be recorded that brings up past matchups, past issues, dating back seasons that could evolve over time.
Think about it in mixed martial arts or boxing game where you could have a rival you face many times. Each fight they adapt their style and gameplan to counter how you fought the last time.
The fights between you two have bigger purses, generate more buzz, the commentary during the fight references things that happened in your last contest.
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They talk about how you pulled off the last win with a surprise knockout or how you two have fought twice before and you lost both times but this time you have prepared like never before.
It would be extra dressing around the fight to help build the excitement of the clash and the fights themselves could incorporate elements of the system as well.
Any open world game could use it
The mercenaries in Assassins Creed Odyssey are like a very light version of the nemesis system at work. Games like this could push them to the next level by creating mercenary like enemies who may not always die. Maybe you kill them, maybe they get you, maybe you run away, in either scenario a dynamic relationship may be formed.
A mercenary may come back to haunt you later in the game with some new abilities that counter some of the skills you used last time. Maybe through repeated battles you could win one over to your side and they can become a companion you can use on missions.
Maybe the final boss of the game is a rival you have been building up since the early hours, they have grown and evolved through several battles between the two of you and now at the end of the game they have ascended to the position of the big bad and you have to finally put them down once and for all.
I sincerely hope that in the next generation of gmaing the Nemesis System makes a big come back
So here we, on the verge of entering a new generation of gaming consoles. Games are going to take another big technical leap, prettier graphics, more processing power, deeper memory.
So far what we have seen of the next generation looks pretty enough but I wouldn’t say anything has stood out to me as looking next generation. My hope is that true next-generation games won’t be something that I can just easily see with the naked.
I hope the true next-generation games have systems and AI in a place like the nemesis system, they bring something to the table that evolves games beyond what we have been accustomed to for the past 20 years.
I want to see the nemesis system back or something like that majorly shifts the industry and shows developers that we can open the box that is gaming and still have plenty of room to explore it in new fascinating, emergent, ways.
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