Monolith Productions, the game developer that made "F.E.A.R." and "F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin," revealed some insightful information regarding the highly-acclaimed title, "Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor."
During the development of the game, which took approximately three years to complete, the studio ran into more than just a few problems. According to GameSpot, game design director Michael de Plater stated that the studio was overly ambitious about developing the game and did not take enough care against the obstacles that it would have to scale over.
"During pre-production, we didn't have good metrics on our production capacity," de Plater said. He also stated that when, later on, he and the staff started realizing this, it "required us to make some pretty big and painful cuts."
Due to the amount of features that were cut, the studio had to come up with strategies that would allow them to compensate for whatever features were taken out of the game. In the end, these strategies took an even bigger toll on the company in terms of time consumption and delivering the final project.
In addition, the game uses a unique gameplay element called the "Nemesis System," which allows gamers to initiate a chain of attacks on their AI enemies through a free flow combat system, similar to the mechanics in games like "Batman: Arkham Asylum" and "Batman: Arkham City." Critics consider this as an innovative gameplay feature, but de Plater pointed out that this particular system turned out to be more complex than what the studio initially expected. Eventually though, the developers were reportedly able to bring it close to what was initially intended.
However, while the game director has not mentioned it and neither has anybody in the Monolith staff, the reduced features could pave the way for future improvements which could then be assimilated into the sequel. At this point, Warner Bros. has not yet stated whether there is going to be a successor to the title or not.
