[SPOILERS] The ending is incredibly dissatisfying.

[Caaros]

[Edit: This post was made like, two years ago. I don't really hold much of these ideas anymore, but someone thought they would respond to them regardless. If you want to jump in, fine, just read through the replies first, plz ]

The Celebrimbor & Talion dynamic is destroyed.
The whole idea of "The Bright Lord" is destroyed.
You're basically strong-armed into being a bad guy.
Becoming a Nazgul and serving Sauron at the end pretty much means you failed.

I understand about the whole "Mordor civil war for 60 years giving middle-earth time to prepare" thing, but I can't help but feel that the ending is incredibly dissatisfying and demoralizing. Even if Talion was required to fail, there would likely be a much better way of organizing that in a way which doesn't result in you having to be evil in the end.

A better way of doing it would be to not even have the whole "freeing Isildur" situation, and just having him be "defeated" like Suladin and Helm. At this point, Celebrimbor and Talion would confront Sauron, nearly defeating him before realizing he could not be properly killed. THEN, the whole Civil War in Mordor for 60 years thing happens, the Bright Lord holding the forces of the Dark Lord in stalemate until eventually Sauron found a way to separate them and kill Talion. This would achieve the same result as the current ending, without seeming like a failure.

Plus, the ending kind of devalues any further re-playthroughs of the game, as the player knows they are doomed to fail fighting evil spectacularly. This just demoralizes the player.

This is really a worse-off situation for an ending than the last game.

[Demon of Razgriz]

Well, Talion was kind of required to fail, we knew that going into the game. It's like the Halo: Reach game, anyone who knew anything about the Halo storyline knew what happened to Reach and knew you were doomed right from the get go.

The only thing that kind of bothers me about the ending was Eltariel accepting the ring after chastising both Talion and Celembrimbor about it for the entire game. Hopefully, her DLC explores why she did that in more detail since it seemed too sudden.

[Caaros]

Originally posted by -SG1-Shadowscall:

Well, Talion was kind of required to fail, we knew that going into the game. It's like the Halo: Reach game, anyone who knew anything about the Halo storyline knew what happened to Reach and knew you were doomed right from the get go.

The only thing that kind of bothers me about the ending was Eltariel accepting the ring after chastising both Talion and Celembrimbor about it for the entire game. Hopefully, her DLC explores why she did that in more detail since it seemed too sudden.

As I said, they could have had the Bright Lord fail in a much less demoralizing and spectacular way. It could have been done without forcing you to be evil in the end.

[Demon of Razgriz]

Originally posted by Caaros, The King of Chaos:

Originally posted by -SG1-Shadowscall:

Well, Talion was kind of required to fail, we knew that going into the game. It's like the Halo: Reach game, anyone who knew anything about the Halo storyline knew what happened to Reach and knew you were doomed right from the get go.

The only thing that kind of bothers me about the ending was Eltariel accepting the ring after chastising both Talion and Celembrimbor about it for the entire game. Hopefully, her DLC explores why she did that in more detail since it seemed too sudden.

As I said, they could have had the Bright Lord fail in a much less demoralizing and spectacular way. It could have been done without forcing you to be evil in the end.

Yeah, I could see that, and I probably have even preferred it. But, I mean it does end up being a good ending with Talion not having to fight anymore and seeing his family again.

[Frank]

edit: deleted my post as looking at OPs achievements, he has not actually finished the game. after act 4 the shadow wars you get the real ending, cinematic to wrap up talion's story, credits, and an achievement.

[Caaros]

Originally posted by franktheparamedic:

why? talion basically died without celebrimbor (the first game tells you you die if you two are ever separated) so you have to take isildur's ring to live. even though it's a lost cause, shelob tells you talion held off the forces of sauron for decades, giving the fellowship time to come together and do their quest. and the final cinematic shows talion being freed from his nazgul form after frodo destroys the ring and talion walks off into the distance happily ever after. it was an okay story for a non canon lotr spinoff

I honestly can't see how that would be your response if you read the entire post. Also, I wouldn't say that it's happily ever after seeing as it's heavily implied that Talion is now proper dead AFTER having been a servant of Sauron.

[Chocbomb]

Originally posted by Caaros, The King of Chaos:

Talion is now proper dead AFTER having been a servant of Sauron.

And if you remember, nazgul can;t die.. so proper proper dead.

[Metadragon]

Originally posted by Caaros, The King of Chaos:

As I said, they could have had the Bright Lord fail in a much less demoralizing and spectacular way. It could have been done without forcing you to be evil in the end.

"Less Demoralizing" My friend you have clearly not read the books.

I like both endings. If you can call the cutscene at the end of the act 3 the ending. I mean once you come to terms with keeping book and Movie/game lore seperate its pretty nice.Talion and Celebrimbor were doomed to fail from the moment you installed Shadow of Mordor. The whole part where Talion put on one of the Nine was genuinely cool especially since I didnt get the ending spoiled.

[Caaros]

Originally posted by franktheparamedic:

edit: deleted my post as looking at OPs achievements, he has not actually finished the game. after act 4 the shadow wars you get the real ending, cinematic to wrap up talion's story, credits, and an achievement.

I watched the after Shadow Wars cinematic on YouTube after completing act 3. Haven't gone through Shadow Wars yet, but I actually know how the game ends.

[Metadragon]

Originally posted by Caaros, The King of Chaos:

Originally posted by franktheparamedic:

edit: deleted my post as looking at OPs achievements, he has not actually finished the game. after act 4 the shadow wars you get the real ending, cinematic to wrap up talion's story, credits, and an achievement.

I watched the afterShadow Wars cinematic after completing act 3. Haven't gone through Shadow Wars yet, but I actually know how the game ends.

Well something to keep in mind is the Shadow Wars takes place over an extended period of time. That ending is achieved after Talion had been fighting of Sauron and the Ring's influence for a LONG time

[Caaros]

Originally posted by Metadragon:

Originally posted by Caaros, The King of Chaos:

I watched the afterShadow Wars cinematic after completing act 3. Haven't gone through Shadow Wars yet, but I actually know how the game ends.

Well something to keep in mind is the Shadow Wars takes place over an extended period of time. That ending is achieved after Talion had been fighting of Sauron and the Ring's influence for a LONG time

Yeah, as I said earlier, I realize that it's 60 years between the end of act 3 and the end of act 4.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Talion falling to evil was accauly fun in my eyes.
He has always been a puppet.
It would be fun if we could help conquer middle earth as nasgul before being defeated.
And he looks awesome.
No more stupid puppy eyes.

The thing i hated was that Celebrimbor manage to defeat sauron.
We are talking about a wraith taking down a necromancer.
Necromancers specilize in controling the freaking dead.
He shoudnt have been able to so much as move without sauron commanding it.

[Casper]

The only dissapointment in the ending is that it didnt leave any room for anything else. They just made it KIND OF tie into the movies. We never got to leave mordor. Other than the first act with some humans we didnt run into anything but orcs. I want to leave mordor and run into dwarves, elves AND men. Minas Tirith is on the map taunting us but we are stuck where we are.

This could have ended with a grand RPG traveling across middle earth, meeting different races, and just using your army to make a path for frodo in the end. They killed enough of the original story might as well go 100% into it.

It leaves so many branches open. What happened to the elf chick? Why didnt she just pick the ring back up and pimp smacked a weakened sauron/cele? Elves have 10 fingers and she only lost 2, while she had the light still to fight as well. Why was an elf who was specifically trained to fight people who were corrupted by wraiths so willing to become the host of one? What happened to the gondorians? Why werent they involved in the final fight if they were in mordor, and we had basically dominated most of the orcs to not kill them on sight? Why would the fused sauron and cele still focus on dominating middle earth together instead of putting all their attention on dominating the other? What the hell happened to cele in the final cutscene, since you could see his spirit fly off in the direction of the mountain?

Its not enough for another game, but enough to feel kind of crappy after playing that much of it. I didnt actually finish shadow wars, since after like 30 hours to get to that act I kind of felt drained, but it looks like theres no other story content except for a 2 minute cutscene after another 20-30 hours of play.

[Metadragon]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

The thing i hated was that Celebrimbor manage to defeat sauron.

He doesnt. The Lord of the Rings happened and Sauron was killed with the Ring.

[Demon of Razgriz]

Originally posted by Casper:

The only dissapointment in the ending is that it didnt leave any room for anything else. They just made it KIND OF tie into the movies. We never got to leave mordor. Other than the first act with some humans we didnt run into anything but orcs. I want to leave mordor and run into dwarves, elves AND men. Minas Tirith is on the map taunting us but we are stuck where we are.

This could have ended with a grand RPG traveling across middle earth, meeting different races, and just using your army to make a path for frodo in the end. They killed enough of the original story might as well go 100% into it.

It leaves so many branches open. What happened to the elf chick? Why didnt she just pick the ring back up and pimp smacked a weakened sauron/cele? Elves have 10 fingers and she only lost 2, while she had the light still to fight as well. Why was an elf who was specifically trained to fight people who were corrupted by wraiths so willing to become the host of one? What happened to the gondorians? Why werent they involved in the final fight if they were in mordor, and we had basically dominated most of the orcs to not kill them on sight? Why would the fused sauron and cele still focus on dominating middle earth together instead of putting all their attention on dominating the other? What the hell happened to cele in the final cutscene, since you could see his spirit fly off in the direction of the mountain?

Its not enough for another game, but enough to feel kind of crappy after playing that much of it. I didnt actually finish shadow wars, since after like 30 hours to get to that act I kind of felt drained, but it looks like theres no other story content except for a 2 minute cutscene after another 20-30 hours of play.

There is DLC coming out about the Elf girl.

[Casper]

The DLC cant do anything impressive though. Any DLC that comes out needs to be a prequel since they pretty much just tied everything up in the end. That elf chick certainly had to die off screen, and thats even more annoying since she basically just was a waste of time. Sure she saved talion, but it all felt like just a pasted on reason to give her value, which I did not value her at all by the time she betrayed talion.

Also its worth mentioning that a lot of abilities talion has doesnt make sense once cele leaves him. The insane dexterity of many of his abilities are tied to cele's elven talent, as well as his elven wrath literally being based around cele. A standard wraith wouldent have this crap.