Monolith Productions’ creative director Michael de Plater ran through a presentation on the topic of player-led narratives at this week’s DICE Summit event.
Discussing his company’s work on the well-received Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its clever ‘Nemesis System’, de Plater revealed that the initial concept was inspired by multiplayer games and pro sports.
”Sports are designed as systems which generate stories every year,” explains de Plater. “They start with the early play-offs, they’re designed that if there’s a failure through the mid-season you don’t rewind to the last save and start playing again from that point, as much as you potentially wish you could. You embrace that and move forward.”
Much like how getting stabbed in the head and neck by some kind of invulnerable super-orc is just something you have to accept in Shadow of Mordor. Accept, and then immediately set out to find Warlord Uthrug the Flatulent and kick his stupid face in.
”Players are no different from us, they also love telling and creating and sharing stories, it’s just such a fundamental innate human need,” de Plater continued. “But it was more important for us to worry about empowering their ability to tell stories than it was for us to worry about telling them our wonderful stories. This was really the secret sauce of how the Nemesis system worked.”
De Plater also revealed that Monolith is keen to revisit the Nemesis system in future titles, refining and improving the way by which it creates unique stories for players.
