I’ve been replaying Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War (quite regularly on sale!) and I am, once again, taken with the Nemesis System they have.
If you’ve never played, the nemesis system works like this:
You play a wraith. A cursed captain from the Black Gate. Any death you experience is only temporary… whenever you die, you come back.
There are thousands of Orcs. You fight them all the time. They tend to attack in groups.
You die. A lot.
When an orc kills you, he gets a name, a backstory, and some special powers.
So you will regularly find yourself in the middle of a dozen orcs who all pile on you and you can’t get away and, wouldn’t you know it, you catch a spear in the chest and the spear-thrower stands over you laughing. Then you watch him get a promotion and now he is your Nemesis.
The first time I played through the games, there was a particular nemesis I was given that killed me multiple times. He showed up while I was fighting other orcs. A couple of times, I found myself in a battle that I was pretty sure I’d win and, whammo, he’d show up and ruin everything. I would specifically say “I’m going to hunt him down” and something would go wrong. He’d manage to run away, maybe. A caragor would show up in the middle of the fight and I’d have to deal with it *AND* the guy’s bodyguards and, suddenly, he’d succeed at running away or killing me *AGAIN*.
I got so frustrated that I eventually said “no more of this, he is now my main goal” and I ignored all sidequests and collectibles and other captains. He became my main priority and, when I finally beat him, I put the controller down and ran upstairs to tell Maribou about it. She smiled and nodded and was happy that I had a fun gaming experience and I ran back downstairs to get back to the rest of the game.
The game had an emergent part of it that became more fun than the stuff that the developers deliberately wrote to be in there.
And since those games came out? No game has used the nemesis system.
I mean, part of that might make sense… one of the reasons it worked in the Shadow games was that the orcs killed you. The Batman games had similar dynamics but the plot of the story would stop working entirely if a low level mook succeeded at taking Batman down. The game pretty much has to come out and say “that didn’t happen” and send you back to a checkpoint.
You pretty much need a game where your opponents either have no reason to kill you after they defeat you *OR* you have to be a character who is only slowed down (but not stopped) by death.
So you can’t do superheroes, I don’t think, unless you’re one of those superheroes that can regenerate and come back. Maybe Wolverine could pull it off.
Perhaps you could have something like a “World of Kung Fu!” where the point is just to win any given interaction and then, once your enemy has established that his Kung Fu is the best, he wanders down the road.
Or something where you are remote piloting a human mech and when your mech gets beaten, you just get a new one. (You’d have to figure out how to make this mechanically sustainable, though).
I’m mostly just shocked that this is one of the best and most fun things that a game has done in the last decade and it’s the only game that has used it. Ah, well. Back to it.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is Grom the Rogue. Screenshot taken by the author.)
While waiting for Starfield to arrive, I’m replaying Witcher 3 to experience the next-gen update – better graphics, new Netflix-related quest, improved UI (quick signs FTW!), alternate looks for some of the principals, and cool gear.Report
I was unimpressed with the Netflix gear, but I’m a Cat School guy. The quest in the Devil’s pit is good though.Report
*Warframe* actually has a nemesis system, but it’s rather awkwardly implemented (you have to go out of your way to create a nemesis, performing particular “rituals” in certain levels to cause a prospective nemesis to spawn, at which point *you* must kill *them* over and over. The *Warframe* devs did specifically name the Mordor games as what they were trying to emulate.Report
I did not know that! Lemme check…
Oh. Free to Play.
OH! MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER!!!
Welp, that’s enough of that.Report
Warframe’s great. I reviewed it [here](https://www.edwardsedition.com/game-review-warframe/) and I’ve covered updates since then in my newsletter. It’s a bit overstuffed (it’s been running for a decade and the devs keep adding to it as they have new ideas) but it’s a lot of fun and has the best core combat loop of anything I’ve ever played.Report
Huh. Interesting.
Dang! That was a long post!
I am turned off by anything MMO, though (I mean, I *REALLY* wanted to play The Old Republic but, seriously, I can’t get past the MMO thing).Report
Warframe isn’t an MMO. There’s a few trading post areas where you interact with other players but it’s a 4-player co-op shooter otherwise. It’s not even open-world, really, although it has a few “open-world” jumbo maps. The game it most gets compared to is Destiny, if Destiny was less aggressive about shaking down their players for more money.
I’ve screenshot a few videos of myself playing, which give an idea what it’s like to play. It’s not like The Old Republic at all (which is sad. I always wish I could move like a Tenno whenever I’m playing as a Jedi in a game.)
Main gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_W8tnnhkJg
New Open-World released a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUHmxs_ODVMReport
Do you have to play it with others? You could play Left 4 Dead by yourself on normal but if you wanted to play it on hard, well, hard cheese. You needed at least 3 people.Report
It depends on the mission type. Yes, you can play solo, but allies can revive each other without spending limited self-revives, and certain missions will have you running all over the map to tend different checkpoints that can be divided up between a full squad.Report
Batman is always getting out of certain-death situations, though! Robin jumps in as a distraction, or he manages to throw a smokebomb in the guy’s face, or the cops show up, or he yanks out a Batarang grappling-hook at the last second, and he manages to stagger back to the Batmobile and get away. That could be how they handle the mechanic in these video games, like when you get taken down there’s a cutscene where the guy stands over you and gloats (another Batman staple) and then something happens and you get away.Report
I suppose they could massively tweak the “death” animations. Batman falls, Nightwing swoops in, we see Bruce sitting in a chair with Alfred applying iodine to his cuts saying “you must be more careful, Master Bruce”, then drop him off at a load point.
And then you could try to fight Bane on the rooftop again.Report
You know, if you were doing a Batman 66 game, you could be put in an elaborate and easily escapable death trap every time you went down in combat.Report
And you could make it a quicktime event to escape the trap, like “press B at the right time”. If you fail the event you still escape, but the storyline is different (like in “Metal Gear Solid”)Report
Roguelikes and Roguelites are popular, and they are based around dying repeatedly. Seems like a nemesis system could be a perfect fit.
I have been exploring Season 1 of Diablo IV. I finished the new story stuff, and now I am working to level up my new Necromancer. I got darn close to unlocking the Nightmare World Tier, but I could not get past the Cathedral of Light final boss. I was only level 46, though. I think I will just push through to 50 and try again.Report
I have heard only bad things about the new Season. Do you have a take?Report
More of the same, which isn’t too bad for me, because I didn’t burn myself out trying to get a preseason character to max level. I finished the campaign on my barbarian, got him to level 49, and decided to try something else. I rolled up a Sorcerer, got her to level 28, then decided to play some other stuff until Season 1 started.
I don’t really care about cosmetics, which is one of the things I hear the most complaints about. The new mechanic is okay. You occasionally run into Malignant monster. If you kill them, you can revive them to kill them a second time, and they drop the new seasonal jewel which can only be socketed into rings and amulets. It is nothing to write home about.
It adds some new story content, which doesn’t take too long to play through, where you learn about the origin of the Malignancy.
If you already burned yourself out since launch, there probably is not anything new to really bring you back. I want to get a character to the higher world tiers, so I plan to take the opportunity to do that. Future seasons will probably need a more interesting mechanic to lure me back. Besides, I am neglecting my sushi shop and the Sea People in Dave the Diver.Report
I’ve been playing Dredge and find myself charmed. That’ll probably be next Saturday.Report