Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor will be a singleplayer only game, it seems. Monolith, the developer behind the game recently clarified the matter, stating (clearly, I might add) that the game will be a singleplayer experience only, and won’t have any sort of multiplayer or cooperative.
@Not_STM Shadow of Mordor is going to be single-player.
— Monolith Productions (@MonolithDev) January 24, 2014
As far as launch platforms are concerned, we knew that Monolith was developing the game for the Playstation 4, Xbox One, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC/Mac. What we didn’t know was whether or not Wii U users will get a version of their own or not. It seems “no” is the answer, as the company has no intention of porting Shadow of Mordor on the Wii U.
@Gamer_Allen Yep, Shadow of Mordor will launch on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and PC.
— Monolith Productions (@MonolithDev) February 3, 2014
The most plausible explanation for the lack of a Wii U version is the console’s hardware limitation. Shadow of Mordor looks good enough to be pushing the limits of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 as it is. Monolith hasn’t given any specific information about why it skipped the Nintendo console, but it certainly seems like they have no intention of working on a version for the Wii U.
Shadow of Mordor is the second Lord of the Rings title from Monolith, after the company released Guardians of Middle Earth in 2012, a MOBA that didn’t prove to be popular enough. With Shadow of Mordor, they are bringing an exceedingly well-known formula to Middle-Earth based games. If you’re not sure what that means, it’s probably because you haven’t seen much of the game’s gameplay yet. We’ve previously analyzed an 8 minute long video of Shadow of Mordor, and it’s seems that Monolith drew heavy inspiration from the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
In any case, at least we now know that the developers are focusing on the singleplayer experience, which hopefully means that the story-line will be solid and memorable. Being a singleplayer-only experience, that’s one field Monolith can’t afford to fail in with Shadow of Mordor!