Middle-Earth: Shadow of War won't let you retry failed missions - you live with the consequences of that loss
Monolith Productions, developers of Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, have made an extremely interesting design decision - you cannot retry missions that you fail.
Shadow of War was announced back in February, and is looking good.
The video above features Monolith's Michael de Plater playing the game alongside voice actor Troy Baker. It goes into the extended nemesis system, which we heard a lot about during Microsoft's Xbox presentation. This 23 minute presentation shows off some of the game's expanded map, and discusses how it will improve on the (already beloved) first game. Talion looks incredibly flexible here, flipping and sprinting around the map like a superhero.
You have a lot of choices how to deal with your enemies - you can recruit them to your army, you can make them inside agents who infiltrate enemy ranks, you can flat-out kill them, you can shun them into the wilds. There's a lot going on here, but the most interesting piece of information about Shadow of War's structure comes towards the end of the video.
Eventually Talion makes his way into an arena for a boss fight against the lovable Gubu Skull Crusher, who does as his name suggests and crushes Talion's skull. At this point, Plater informs Baker and the audience that he can't simply try the mission again. "We can never replay that mission. Time's going to move forward, the world's going to evolve, the guys that are dead are going to stay dead."
Apparently, you never have to replay the same mission twice, which is super interesting. The world will remember your actions - and your deaths - and it looks like Gubu will continue to rule in this particular playthrough of the game.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is due on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on October 10, 2017.