11 Ways Monolith Should Have Made Shadow Of War

The first few hours of Shadow of War's campaign are an absolute slog.

Throwing players directly into the action, the sequel doesn't put its best foot forward, focusing on repetitive tasks that don't involve any of the game's best features.

Showing up long after the tutorial has finished, missions that require you to tick boxes and kill X amount of orcs or defend a location against X waves of enemies are far too common in the early hours. Even when quests do get a bit more complex, they're still repeated ad nauseum, with large-scale battles in the city being reused virtually beat for beat across the first act.

Rather than being the main draw, the story missions in Shadow of War feel more like a distraction from the real meat of the game: the Nemesis system. Monolith needed to find a way for their campaign to capture the dynamism and excitement of its open world, then channel it into structured and compelling quests.