VIDEO TRANSCRIPT, if you don't want to watch;

IGN recently released a video talking about some of the new Abilities in Middle-earth: Shadow of War. These looked cool to me, and as a lover of stealth games and Shadow of Mordor, I thought I’d talk about why I think these abilities are interesting, and the ways in which they’re likely to affect the game.

Firstly, the video mentions a “Predator” Skill Tree. This is taken verbatim from the Batman Arkham games, which makes an amount of sense. Both series are published by Warner Bros, and Warner Bros are pretty heavily invested in the combat system they’re using across all their third-person action games. Why else this might be interesting is that in Shadow of Mordor, the Skill Screen was simply split into Ranger and Wraith, ability pools that governed Talion’s abilities, and Celebrimbor’s abilities. Throughout the video we see a lot more integration between Talion and Celebrimbor, so maybe the split between Ranger and Wraith just isn’t as important to highlight anymore as is the fact that these two characters have become such close friends, fighting and acting as one throughout their quest. 

Shadow of Mordor often made me feel like I was controlling two distinct personalities but it was done in a smooth way that didn’t break the flow or pacing of anything. Celebrimbor needs a host, a body. Talion needs spectral abilities. It’s a natural give and take, and not having the player need to “switch modes” between the two characters was a powerful idea. Placing all of their actions on the same controller without any character-swapping, only having the visuals change to reflect whether Talion or Celebrimbor were doing the slashing, the stabbing, the shooting or the sprinting, was the right move. As mentioned, in Shadow of War it seems likely we’ll see much more of that resonance and synchronicity between them.

Next what’s mentioned is that you no longer just pop the lock on an ability and that’s the extent of the decision; they’re now modular and can be altered by equipping “Active” Abilities onto the broader Ability Base. The closest thing this reminds me of is Diablo III’s Skill and Rune system. The overall Skill does one thing, but what Rune you equip for it in effect turns one Skill into five sort-of different ones. That’s really neat, and there’s a really great reason why I feel this was the right choice for Shadow of War’s ability design.

That reason has to do with core gameplay.

More than anything else, Shadow of Mordor was characterized by having an almost insanely obsessive focus on its core gameplay. There is nothing in that game that doesn’t belong there. Everything you do is about killing Uruks. Every mission you complete, every collectible you get, every Skill you unlock, everything. And I think that, with Shadow of Mordor having such a focus on fleshing out every aspect of the Core Gameplay, if Shadow of War tried to get way too fancy and introduce a massive number of never-before-seen abilities, it could dilute and water down the experience, and what made it so great to begin with.

Instead what they’ve done is realized how empowering and interesting the basic Skills from Shadow of Mordor were, and in Shadow of War they’re letting us tinker with them. This even extends to some of the new Skills, like Wraith Chain shown late in the video, which is a natural evolution of Shadow Kill from the first game. 

Elven Agility is the first Skill talked about. It was named Elven Swiftness in SoM and let you get a burst of speed after vaulting an obstacle or landing from a jump. In Shadow of War it does much more than that. The active upgrade talked about is Spectral Dash. I immediately found it interesting that abilities now drain Focus as a resource. So I guess it’s no longer just used for slowing down time, and is more or less a “mana” meter that applies to multiple contexts. That’s pretty cool, because it felt a bit clunky wasting Elfshot on abilities in Shadow of Mordor.

I questioned what the button for it would be, and it’s logically most likely to affect the function of tapping the Run button. Normally it would be a Dodge Roll. With Spectral Dash equipped, this short-ranged blink basically replaces the Rolling animation. It’s pretty easy to see how this could be effective for Stealth, since you can get out of sight very quickly, or if an enemy is about to turn around and spot you, you can blink up to them and mash out a fast Assassinate. Elven Swiftness from SoM was tied to the [Run and Dodge] button, and Elven Agility in SoW is clearly tied to that same button, so this is an easy connection to make. We don’t know about any other Active Upgrades for Elven Agility, but we’ve seen an animation of Talion Double-Jumping with the help of Celebrimbor taking control for a brief moment. I’d wager that Double-Jump is an active upgrade for Elven Agility as well, and that tapping Dodge in mid-air after auto-parkouring off of an edge is how it’s done. They’re both about Movement, after all, and that trade-off in options could be fascinating. 

Brutalize is next, and the active upgrade is apparently Terrorize. Nothing about what Terrorize actually does is revealed, so that makes me think it does exactly what the raw Brutalize skill did in SoM. I have no idea what Might is, could be something related to Damage or other special actions. And increasing your Hit-Streak probably means that Talion will take his sweet time stabbing the hell out of the enemy, even more times than usual. Maybe it’ll be called Eviscerate or something.

Poison Tendril is a totally new ability, created by blending together the Distract mechanic and the Poison Grog skill from Shadow of Mordor. Poisoning barrels of Grog from range could be really, really dirty, and I expect to see some Stealth players using this to eliminate an entire section of an enemy camp without even having to put their physical body there. Wink wink nudge nudge. The Contagion active seems to help with exactly that, as we hear that; (“Contagion bla bla spreading the poison.”) 

Wraith Chain is up next, which I mentioned earlier. This is probably my favorite skill shown so far, for the pure cool-factor it carries. I also like that it’s a natural evolution of the Shadow Kill ability from SoM (or, Lethal Shadowstrike, but who has the time to say that.) Unlike Shadow Kill, which was considered a Ranged Finisher, and made a ton of noise which would alert nearby Uruks, Wraith Chain seems to be tailor-made just for Stealth. Once again we hear that Wraith Chain costs Focus to use, not Elf-Shot, so now that’s got me thinking.

What if the different currencies, like Might, Focus and Elf-Shot correspond to the three different attack-types that Talion has access to? What if Might is used for Combat Skills, Focus is used for Stealth skills, and Elf-Shot is used for Ranged Skills? It might not work out that way in the end, but it’s an interesting thought and one I find pretty likely. 

The active upgrade for Wraith Chain that’s shown off is Shadow Blade, which cancels the Focus cost for the first enemy in the chain. So this could be a cool method of Chaining double-kills from stealth, without needing to drain your resources if you’re only taking down two enemies. Wraith Chain probably has another Active Upgrade that basically lets Talion double-assassinate people, by having Celebrimbor and Talion simultaneously stab two guards. Something like that was shown off in another gameplay demo, so who knows.

Deadly Specter is the final ability shown, and we don’t see an Active Upgrade for it, but I have strong suspicions that Celebrimbor (or the Deadly Specter skill itself) is upgraded with an Active that causes Brutalize. Why? Check out the footage. Celebrimbor doesn’t just assassinate the approaching enemy. He stabs them five times, raising Talion’s hit-streak as well. So that’s pretty intersting. I reckon you could use this tactically, by having Celebrimbor Brutalize an enemy you’ve Lured, while Talion waits near his actual Target, waiting for Celebrimbor to Brutalize the lured guard, which builds Talion’s hit-streak, letting Talion use a Hit-Streak Charge ability on the real target he wants to kill. Could be pretty insane. 

I like these abilities so far, they’re all pretty cool, and I don’t think they’ll damage the game in any way. They offer room for more creativity and the trade-offs Stealth players will have to make while modifying what each of their abilities do could pave the way for lots of genuine Builds in Shadow of War that all emphasize different strengths and weaknesses. I can see content creators, and makers of stealth-kill videos use the modular nature of the skill trees to create a Build that’s flashy and cool-looking for one mission, and then completely change things around with new items, new gear, and new skill mods for a totally different mission, because the enemy layouts and map design changes. I can also see a lot of replay value in replaying the same mission multiple times with subtly different builds, if a player is into that, and if Monolith actually gives us a Replay Mission feature this time around. Not including one in Shadow of Mordor was downright criminal, and I hope they don’t repeat that mistake in Shadow of War. So that’s it for me on Shadow of War’s stealth kills and stealth skills, thank you all for watching, and stay sneaky.