Improve Its Characters
Of the many praises that were thrown at Shadow of Mordor when it released in 2014, its characters weren’t among them. The world of Middle-Earth is typically known for being lighthearted and jaunty, but then Mordor came along looking like any generic dark fantasy game, and its lead characters, Talion and Celebrimbor, didn’t help. They both certainly start out interesting, but by the time you see some of the latter’s flashbacks when he was alive, you pretty much know that his backstory of a dead family is roughly in line with Talion’s, and they both sort of blend together as one mopey entity.
Shadow of War doesn’t look like it’s going to divert from the tone of the original game, but its trailer does hint that the game will explore a facet of its two leads by having them be separated from one another. After forging a new Ring of Power, Celebrimbor is whisked away by a shadowy force no doubt connected to Sauron, leaving Talion alone with the Ring. Maybe some part of Celebrimbor is in the ring, or perhaps they’ll still be bonded to each other even while separated such a long distance. Either way, it’ll hopefully make one or both of them interesting.
This also needs to extend to the side characters of Shadow of War as well. Mordor’s were fairly bland across the board, and not helping was how they functioned as quest givers or walking tutorials. They pretty much came and went the moment their purpose in the story ended, and with the improvements to the Nemesis system, that’ll hopefully be a change for the better.
