March 31, 2021
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Warner Brothers recently secured a patent for the Nemesis System used in the video game Middle-earth™: Shadow of Mordor™ and its sequel Shadow of War™. The games were developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros.
As IGN reports, “the patent covers a system featuring procedurally-generated NPCs that exist in a hierarchy and interact with and will remember the actions of players, have their appearance/behavior altered by players, and whose place in that hierarchy can change and affect the position of other NPCs in said hierarchy”.
The system is essentially a rotation of rivals that players fight throughout the game, which become more difficult to defeat as the game tracks and remembers players' actions.
Authors: Jay Piett and Larissa Fulop