Middle-earth: Shadow of War is the recently announced upcoming sequel to Shadow of Mordor, and Monolith Studios' vice president of creative Michael de Plater and art director Phil Straub recently spoke to OXM (via GamesRadar) about the game, revealing that the ambition has certainly been raised with this sequel.
"One of the reasons it's Shadow Of War and not just Mordor is that we've expanded beyond Mordor," de Plater explained. "So the Dark Lord is growing his armies, and his forces - led by the Witch-king - have come out of Mordor and attacked and assaulted the human city of Minas Ithil. They've conquered it and turned it into Minas Morgul, which is the tower of the Witch-king. That actually brings the front line of this war out beyond Mordor and all the way forward to the kingdom of Gondor."
Straub added: "the first thing to recognise is that we aren't just in Mordor. That's a big, cool step up from the previous game." Talking about environments, Straub also said there will be "a fair amount of geological variety [...] we can say that there are forests; we can say that there are snowy mountainous areas; we can say that there are other locations. I don't want to divulge too much. But there is a greater variety."
Summarising, de Plater said: "we've really focused on just massively increasing the scale of the game, making something truly epic. And that applies to the story and the villains, but it also applies very much to the world itself."
Does the size really matter in regards to Shadow of War's world, or is it more about other aspects like story, and mechanics such as the nemesis system?