Warner Bros Discovery recently shut down a trio of game studios, including the well-regarded Monolith Productions. This has put one of the coolest game mechanics of the 2010s in limbo. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's excellent Nemesis system is locked behind a patent owned by Warner Bros all the way until 2036, according to reporting by Eurogamer. The Nemesis system was featured in both 2014's Shadow of Mordor and the follow-up Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Simply put, it's a gameplay mechanic in which enemies remember previous encounters with the protagonist.

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Monolith Productions, the studio responsible for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, is working on a new game in the Wonder Woman franchise. It features an original storyline where players will "become Diana of Themyscira in the fight to unite her Amazon family and the humans from the modern world," Monolith says. Publisher Warner Bros. Games showed off a teaser for the new project during The Game Awards. Wonder Woman is being billed as "a new third-person, open-world action-adventure" game, according to Monolith, and really, that's no surprise. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was a third-person action RPG with the Nemesis System, a clever orc-management mechanic, tacked on top of it.

I haven't finished Assassin's Creed: Odyssey ($60 on Humble), nor will I for a while. I've been playing it for days now, over 30 hours and counting. "Surely I must be closing in on the end," I keep thinking. Then I check the map and find I've explored less than half of it. Everywhere I go, there's more stuff.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor was excellent. While the combat and stealth gameplay was very Assassin's Creed -- just with some added ghostly powers -- Mordor had something truly unique: the nemesis system. Players would almost forget the main storyline as they were caught up battling with other Orcish leaders who had become sworn enemies. With Shadow of War, little has changed. Again, the nemesis system forms the most intriguing part of the game, offering more variety of Orc thanks to an increasingly diverse voice cast.

"Two rings to rule them all, two rings to find them, two rings to bring them all and in the darkness bind them." Thus opens Middle Earth: Shadow of War, or at least that's how it would open if there were any justice in the world. See, 2014's Shadow of Mordor ended with our half-ghost/half-man protagonist Talion née Celibrimbor [Three-year-old spoiler] defeating Sauron in hand-to-hand combat and announcing his intention to paradoxically forge a second One Ring. And he does just that to open up this bigger and better sequel. I've played the first six or so hours of Shadow of War ($60 on Amazon) so far--enough to reach Act 2 (of 4) and start dominating orcs.

A lot of time and effort will be spent discussing Middle Earth: Shadow of War's improved Nemesis System between now and probably about a month after release. And for good reason--the Nemesis System was the only thing that elevated predecessor Shadow of Mordor from another me-too Assassin's Creed clone into a technical wunderkind. Leaning into that aspect for the sequel is probably a good call, especially since we've failed to see similar tech make its way through the industry. The dynamic characters that made Shadow of Mordor such a joy are still, three years on, a novelty. But I had 20 to 30 minutes of hands-on time with Shadow of War during E3 and to be honest, the Nemesis System was the least of my concerns.

You know, I really did think we'd have more games with Shadow of Mordor's "Nemesis System" by now. It was the standout feature! Procedurally-generated orc enemies who, through tech wizardry, remembered your last encounters and even bore the physical scars. Cool stuff, and while I assumed there'd be a grace period before it showed up in other games, we're nearly three years on and there's been nothing at all. So perhaps it's not surprising that for Shadow of Mordor's sequel, Shadow of War, all that's required is "…More Nemesis System."