Mordor, We Wrote

When the creator of Bioshock fired up Shadow of Mordor, he didn’t expect Tolkien meets Arkham City meets Hamlet—or to discover a radical new kind of narrative form.

By Ken Levine
Illustration by Victor Kerlow

IN REVIEW:
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
(Monolith Productions)

I’ve directed two video games whose themes tangentially touch on a lie writers like me tell our players: that, when it comes to what they do in a game’s story, they have a choice.

When it comes to story in video games, at best there’s an illusion of choice. At worst, there’s no choice at all. In our work, we tried to say, Well, pal, you really don’t have a choice. So let’s see if we can use that concept to mess with your head. And hence was born the “Would you kindly” moment in BioShock, a moment in video game history primarily remembered for reminding us that, when it comes to player choice in narrative, our medium is limited indeed.

Don’t get me wrong. I think lots of games have choice. They just aren’t the games you think of as story games…