Creative Director Discusses The Nemesis System

The Nemesis System was inspired by sports and multiplayer games.

Creative Director of Monolith Studios, Michael de Plater during his speech at DICE 2015, spoke about where he looked for inspiration for the Nemesis system in Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

According to de Plater, sports games have a large amount of personal story potential. There is no going back after a lost game, revenge against rival teams can help encourage better strategies and desire to win, and the individualized stories that can be forged by everyone's unique circumstances of failure and success breed a type of satisfaction de Plater felt could translate well into their open-world action game.

"There's so much innovation in games happening everywhere, and then, there's also - at the same time - so much convergence and borrowing [of ideas and mechanics]," de Plater said.

Lastly de Plater said that he and his team wanted to create something special, something that would stay with the player long after they put down the controller.

"As a team trying to make games, that's the one question [we keep in mind]: Are you doing something someone can think about when they're not playing the game?"