Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor's Orcs Are Dumber on Last Gen Systems

[Cognimancer]

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor's Orcs Are Dumber on Last Gen Systems

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor's impressive Nemesis system might need to get slimmed down if the game's going to come to last-gen consoles.

We've seen a lot of cool stuff in the previews for Monolith's sandbox assassination game, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. The game's overarching structure is shaped by its unique Nemesis system, which simulates Sauron's entire procedurally-generated chain of command. It's a fascinating idea that turns organic gameplay decisions into mission-spanning objectives - and if you want to experience it, you'd better have a current-generation console. It's apparently too much for last-gen platforms to handle.

"We're very focused on the PS4 and Xbox One," says design director Michael de Plater. Features are designed for those systems first, and while most of them can be safely ported to older hardware (albeit not quite as pretty-looking), some of it will have to be cut out. "The story will be the same and the core gameplay will be the same, but [the Nemesis system] is just so huge in terms of content, calculations and AI we'll just have to try and get as much of it in as we can."

So, on the up-side, PS3 and Xbox 360 players still get to be a Middle-Earth assassin and use all the same climbing and combat techniques, but their enemies won't react as intelligently to the player's personal campaign. It's interesting - the Nemesis system is certainly advanced, especially considering the scope of the game's open world, but last-gen consoles were still plenty powerful. You would think that there would be other systems that could be ditched instead of the game's most attention-grabbing innovation.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is headed for the PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, and (let's not forget) PC sometime this year.

Source: IGN [http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/20/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-focused-on-ps4-and-xbox-one]

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[Quantum Glass]

"...You would think that there would be other systems that could be ditched instead of the game's most attention-grabbing innovation."

Um. Not to be overly cynical, but I think the decision might have something to do with the fact that they really want people to buy Current (Post Current?) Gen systems.

 

[Alpha Maeko]

I suppose the bleed over effect couldn't last forever. Eventually, the large difference in resources would cause more complex/consuming features to not be doable on the other gen hardware.

 

[rofltehcat]

I just watched a video of "gameplay" footage of this feature and while it sounds very nice indeed, I simply don't understand how it can hog up the amounts of processing power needed for an announcement like this. I'd be very surprised if all those calculations are really done in real time (and why would they need to be?) and I'll be even more surprised if it actually works as awesome as advertised.

In the end, it'll probably just end up assigning attributes and skills (as well as set certain triggers needed for the dialogue etc.) to the orc officers and these attributes are taken into consideration for deciding their course of action. Low courage, slightly damaged and a hand full of mooks just died in combat with him -> choose (generic?) fleeing sequence. And why can't the writing and loading of these (and upgrading of orc mooks to officers) be done in loading screens between missions? Of course the loading times would be longer for the old systems but compared to the loading of textures etc. I'd expect it to be just a drop in the bucket.

 

[DEAD34345]

That's... odd. Nothing I've seen of the "Nemesis System" sounds particularly demanding in terms of hardware. Cool and interesting sure, but I really don't see anything that wouldn't work on an Xbox 360 or PS3, or even earlier consoles. Is there some big feature of the system I'm unaware of?

 

[Flutterguy]

Well PC version will have it, no cut content on my platform, once again.

 

[sir neillios]

"...You would think that there would be other systems that could be ditched instead of the game's most attention-grabbing innovation."

Um. Not to be overly cynical, but I think the decision might have something to do with the fact that they really want people to buy Current (Post Current?) Gen systems.

A point, this guy has it.

I won't pretend to have much knowledge of coding. But I am currently enrolled in a software development course, and to be perfectly honest, the code required for that kind of AI changes would be baby simple compared to the other coding you would have to be doing anyway. A couple if and booleans for each character, link to different behavior patterns, done.


The only realist disadvantage I can think of is longer loading times, unless they want to come out with more technical information than these I'm calling BS on this.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

When I first heard of the Nemesis system I wondered if this was going to be the case. I knew it would be impossible to achieve on the last-gen systems, mostly because of their RAM problem and the aging CPU. Mass Effect 3 for example had to ditch the freakin' holster function because the consoles didn't have enough RAM to handle the extra animation it required. I just wasn't sure if they were going to dumb this down just for the last-gen or simply overhype the entire thing. This is good news.

 

[TallanKhan]

So how much do we think these guys have been bribed to come up with a feature to temp people into buying next gen consoles?

 

[Elijah Newton]

the whole "SimCity needs Online only to handle its amazingly complex calculations!".

My brother from another mother! ( or sister, as the case may be ) you beat me to the punch. It sure smells like the same vague excuse. Part of me wonders what the incentive (or risk / reward analysis, or whathaveyou) looks like for intentionally dumbing down older console ports of games. Not that I have anything but blind cynicism to warrent such a comment but still.

That being said, I have some high hopes for this - what I saw of the gameplay suggested they were very interested in working with the assumption that everyone was familiar with Assassin's Creed (being the engine on which it was developed and all) and instead of simply reskinning it were actually figuring out what the next evolution might entail from a gameplay perspective.

 

[Rad Party God]

Well, obviously AI needs a lot of RAM and 512 mb just doesn't cut it anymore.

This will be more akin to the old ports of "360/PS3 being good, Wii/PS2 being shit".

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Well, obviously AI needs a lot of RAM and 512 mb just doesn't cut it anymore.

This will be more akin to the old ports of "360/PS3 being good, Wii/PS2 being shit".

A good example would be the dramatic difference between "The Force Unleashed" on the PS3/Xbox 360 vs PS2. It had almost all the gameplay elements, but shittier graphics and no advanced physics. Or Mercenaries 2. Or Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Although the last example was a better game on the PS2. More true to the original formula and with a better story.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

Sorry, but doesn't the Nemesis system just involve keeping track of a few dozen Orcs and what they think about you? That doesn't sound like it would take very much processor power.

 

[Starke]

Well PC version will have it, no cut content on my platform, once again.

I didn't actually see that. I looked, but they're only talking about the PS4 and XBONE getting this. I could certainly see them classing the PC as "Last-Gen" just to try to drive sales on the consoles...

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I didn't actually see that. I looked, but they're only talking about the PS4 and XBONE getting this. I could certainly see them classing the PC as "Last-Gen" just to try to drive sales on the consoles...

Compared to the PC, the PS4 and Xbone qualify as last gen.

I really hope this Nemesis system is as cool as it sounds, and not some scripting they wrote specifically for the tech demo.

 

[Daemascus]

Well PC version will have it, no cut content on my platform, once again.

I didn't actually see that. I looked, but they're only talking about the PS4 and XBONE getting this. I could certainly see them classing the PC as "Last-Gen" just to try to drive sales on the consoles...

I sure hope not, considering how stupid it would be to think that. But you can never underestimate a gaming companies opinion of PC gamers and their PCs. Cough Infinity Ward cough.

 

[sXeth]

Well, at least they're using the next-gen hardware for something better then rendering characters nosehairs. It remains to be seen whether this system is any good, but if you can't run your program due to memory/processing/etc on hardware, you really can't do anything about it unless its grossly inefficient (and then you'd still probably need outside consulting to figure out why you made it that way)

 

[Starke]

I didn't actually see that. I looked, but they're only talking about the PS4 and XBONE getting this. I could certainly see them classing the PC as "Last-Gen" just to try to drive sales on the consoles...

Compared to the PC, the PS4 and Xbone qualify as last gen.

I really hope this Nemesis system is as cool as it sounds, and not some scripting they wrote specifically for the tech demo.

What I saw in the demo was a system where you have a string of possible modifiers that could be applied to any boss grade NPC. Which sounds really cool, but the demo was trying to make it sound like it was a lot more emergent then the system could actually be.

So you encounter an NPC, and kill them, all of their subordinates now get the "player has killed my boss" experience. Then you encounter one of them and burn them, and they get the "player has hurt me (burned)" experience. Then you blackmail them, and you get the "player is blackmailing me" experience...

Also, remember, all of those experience modules have associated recorded dialog, so while there could be a couple hundred, it is still a finite supply.

It sounds really cool, and in implementation it could be great, but, it shouldn't be any more processor intensive than, say, Skyrim or Diablo 3.