TOM FRANCIS
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What Works And Why: Sauron’s Army

Game: Shadow of Mordor

Third-person open world action and stealth game, with Assassin’s Creed free-running and Arkham Asylum combat. You’re in Mordor, it’s full of orc-like Uruks, and for reasons that were probably explained in all the cut-scenes I skipped, you have to use them to get to the Black Dark Lord Hand – who I gather is a ruffian.

What Works?

A menu of minibosses called Sauron’s Army. They’re Uruk captains with randomly generated looks, names, strengths and weaknesses. You select one from the lineup, interrogate lesser Uruks to find out which of your many modes of attack they’re weak to, then track them down in the open world and decide how to go about taking them out.

Why?

Well, that’s cool for starters. It’s cool having to find a source who’ll have information on your target, extracting that from them in a telepathic way that looks frightening but does not appear to be harmful, memorising these secret weaknesses, hunting your mark through the open world, and looking for a way to combine what you know with their situation. Weak to explosions, but nothing flammable around. Weak to stealth, but can I get past his lackeys? Maybe if I distract them over there…

In most cases, this secret info lets you take them out swiftly. And having intel inform your strategy and pay off so decisively in a non-scripted scenario makes this more satisfying than any of my kills in Assassin’s Creed.

But Sauron’s Army gets much more interesting when, in the second half of the game, you upgrade your telepathy to a sort of mind-control. The result seems to be that they see you as their Warchief: they don’t attack you, but nor do they attack their fellow Uruks unless you order them to. And they even mutter about looking for ‘the ranger’ – you.

With low-ranking Uruks this is just a cooler version of every game’s ‘Charm’ spell: it’s permanent, and they work like sleeper agents, waiting for your go-word when you’ve covertly turned enough of a stronghold’s guards to take it over.

But when you flip a captain in Sauron’s Army, you’re essentially becoming part of it. Now you have commanders. They’ll raise their own armies, they’ll fight with other captains, and they’ll try to become Warchiefs. You can step in at any time and send them after a particular target, and whether you micromanage them or not, you can show up to each of the important events in their lives to make sure they go well.

My man Blorg the Poet has been captured by a bigger captain and is about to be executed. The bigger captain is vulnerable to ranged. A spectral arrow whizzes from the bushes and thuds into his cranium.

His men run, Blorg runs, all the other prisoners run. Blorg is promoted into the power vacuum.

In the first half of the game you study their weaknesses, in the second, you suddenly care about their strengths. Not because they matter that much, but because these are your guys. I find myself selecting them for their quirks, cultivating an Uruk sub-faction of freaks and weirdos. Blorg speaks in rhyme. Glabkuk has a claw for a hand. Ukbuk just has a really fancy red-feather headdress I like. This is my team.

All this links into the dynamic, unpredictable business of the captain encounters themselves, which can sometimes run into each other as your fights lurch around Mordor. The first time I faced Ukbuk, I lost control of the situation. I’d stealth-flipped most of his henchmen to make the fight swing my way, but then one of my own captains blundered into the fracas and joined in.

Ukbuk was already weak enough for me to turn him, but I was caught up fighting his remaining loyal subjects as my captain closed in to finish him off. I’d never much liked the guy, so I did the only thing I could to save Ukbuk and his fancy headdress: Dispatch. This detonates the heads of all my mind-controlled soldiers, captain included, rather dramatically ending the fight.

Their bodies dropped, I finished off Ukbuk’s henchmen, and… he killed me. Or rather, he downed me. You get one last chance to come back from the brink of death by completing a quicktime event. But I’d just upgraded that ability to also kill my assailant if I succeed. Saving myself would kill Ukbuk. In easily one of the dumbest things I’ve done for a hat in a videogame, I let myself die.

Ukbuk got promoted for that. But that just made him a more valuable asset when I eventually turned him to my side.

So that’s what’s cool about it. The game has just added a screenshot composition tool that’s so good I almost wish I still worked in magazines. It really shows off how characterful and distinctive the Uruks are – they’re all generated by the same system, footsoldiers and captains alike. Not least because any of the former can be promoted to the latter for killing you.

Here are some other shots I took tonight:

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