A Death By Any Other Name

Beneath an ashen-stained burlap canopy I linger in the shadows, crouched with a dagger gripped in my right hand, eyeing an Orc slavemaster making his rounds. All alone in the pit, he is my next target, and soon enough my blade will be slicing through his neck. He chides a slave and lifts his foot to kick, but pauses and instead spits on the slaves neck, releasing a laugh as he lumbers down the line.

I make my move, darting out from the canopy and tracing my open hand along the side of a wall, following the Orcs path, maintaining my poise with each footstep on the dirty sand. Creeping up to the first slave, the man spots me and keeps his head down. I cut his hands free from the binding and he collapses to the grounding, muttering his thanks.

I pursue the Orc ahead. I find him talking to himself as he takes a piss on a wall, his back to me. I breeze forward with a dagger open and ready, only but a few feet away now, and lift my arm to strike. And then I stop. Wham! I get slammed in the shoulder by a bolt. I turn around and see a larger Orc in the distance with a crossbow, aiming it directly at me, snorting in laughter. The Orc relieving himself then turns around and wails as loud as he can, raising an alarm. In an instant a second bolt slams into my leg, pinning me to the floor. I made a mistake, I didn't check for the Orc captain with the crossbow, and now I'm going to pay for it. Orcs descend from the ranks above with a scurrying of boots, and suddenly I'm surrounded.  My health bar depletes rapidly and the game comes to an end.

Well, sort of.

The game I'm playing is Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, a game where killing (and being killed by) Orcs is a common occurrence. It's a fun, hearty, kill-or-be-killed kinda game, and from the outside it doesn't seem to be any different than the next monster-slaying videogame lining the market. It takes place within TheLord of the Rings universe, the main character is a mysterious assassin, and the entire plot is basically that of a revenge story.

Ah, yes, and it also features one of the most dynamic implementations of the consequence of dying I have ever seen in all my years of gaming. As I was explaining to my girlfriend, someone who loves TheLord of the Rings but was utterly perplexed at how I could derive so many hours of enjoyment out of this game, on the surface Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor looks generic, but underneath that veil lies a really clever system of player reward and punishment.

In Shadow of Mordor, when you die, you don’t just take a moment to breath while you wait for the loading screen to place you back where you began. No, this game shows you how your death means bad things moving forward. Instead of a black screen bellowing “GAME OVER” you’re taken to a panelled-web of the Orc army and its ranks, whereupon you get to watch in humiliation as Orc captains grow, rising up in rank, and become more powerful because you messed up. Some Orcs get promoted, some gain new followers, others gain new strengths, and some even turn into Legendary Warchiefs. All of this occurs before your eyes simply because you died. No--I said no--this isn’t Mario. You don’t lose a life and come back and nothing has changed. You get to watch as the enemy rises up in the place where you have fallen. And it’s beautiful. And it’s your job to face these Orcs once more and show them no matter how strong they get, you’re stronger.

I’m the kind of person who loves a challenging videogame, and in some regard is happy to see a game approach the concept of death in a different light. Sometimes it’s not enough to just face a black screen and wait for your pixels to reload--sometimes you have to suffer the consequences of your poor performance too. I play Super Mario and death is trivial, I play Call of Duty and death is frivolous, I play Dark Souls and--well, no, that’s actually a bad example.

I bring this up because I believe there’s not enough respect shown toward the act of dying in videogames, and likewise there is almost no impact left on the player once it occurs. In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor you get a dollop of consequence with no cold beverage to wash it down. You live with your mistakes and you move forward learning from them, facing them in the representation of adaptive Orcs on a constant basis. It’s both personal and challenging, and for me that’s exactly what I love in a videogame. There are several other games that produce similar effects on me that I could name, but none that I recall have done it like Shadow of Mordor.

My biggest hurdle of an Orc over the past 28 hours has been one eagle-eyed crossbow-wielding thug named “Muggrush Black-blade”, and unlike the many other pox-faced brutes in the hierarchy of ranks, a victory over him would only taste the better. "GAME OVER" screen be damned, my mysterious assassin is revived past death, I mutter words of justice under my breath and press onward.