8 Video Games That Wasted Genius Ideas

Taking the top spot is easily the most tragic example of a genius idea utterly wasted. 2014's Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor, while hardly a reinvention of open-world combat and stealth, introduced players to the Nemesis System.

This saw Uruk captains engaged in power struggles with one another, and as such the player was able to use this to their advantage, secretly allowing captains to rise through the ranks and then recruiting them as a network of sleeper agents.

2017's sequel, Shadow Of War, took this concept even further, with protagonists Talion and Celebrimbor amassing a personal army of Uruks to overthrow Sauron, bestowing each with unique abilities and hiring their most trusted soldiers as personal bodyguards.

Unfortunately, this was all undermined by a tiny little thing called micropayments. Yes, WB Interactive seized the opportunity to sell the best Uruks to players in paid lootboxes, ensuring that they'd all but have to spend extra money in order to reach the game's true ending (until said lootboxes were patched out, which must have been especially galling for the poor pillocks who had already been nickel-and-dimed).

Worse still, it was revealed in 2021 that WB had patented the Nemesis System, thus giving them the power to sue any developer who designed a game that featured any mechanic or system that even resembled it.

So many IPs, both existing and burgeoning, could have benefitted from the implementation of a Nemesis-like structure, but the greed of one publisher has ensured we'll probably never see it again. It's a tale as old as time, and a depressing one at that.