Friday 24 February, 2017

In this play session I didn't do much. The main quest is now to kill four Uruk warchiefs in a variety of manner. I killed one pretty easily by brutalizing an orc, thus scaring off most threats, leaving me with a one on one battle. Another one wasn't so easy, as he had two uruk guards with him. I butted heads with him several times before giving up for the night.

The nemesis system provides an interesting insight into uruk culture. Throughout the course of the game, the player is increasingly intimate with the personalities of many uruks- its the driving motivation as well as the most interesting mechanic of the game. However, I still feel strangely about how such wanton open disdain for an entire race of beings is portrayed. If we assume that uruks are an analogue for black people, the dialogue becomes much more sinister. This is reinforced when one realizes that there are only white humans. Another interesting omission is the lack of female uruks. I guess tolkien wasn't intersectional.

Do the mechanics of the game make the violence more or less compelling during your play experience?

I think it attempts to. When I first played the game back in 2014, the combat mechanics were pretty fun, if reductive. It's structurally similar to most Warner Bros. published games. The animations are hyper stylized gore factories, which seem compelling at first, but start to drag as the game progresses.