We still don’t know what’s going on with “Fallout 4”, and whether we’ll get to see the long-awaited game this year or not. Fans are still speculating about it wildly however, trying to figure out what kinds of changes Bethesda might have planned.
A journalist from “Gaming Bolt” recently brought up an interesting point – the game could potentially learn a few things about its combat from “Shadow of Mordor”, including about the way its world works.
Combat in particular has been praised a lot in “Shadow of Mordor”, as the game successfully combined features from several popular titles, putting them together in one spectacular package that has been enjoying a lot of attention so far. This isn’t the first time it’s been noted that “Fallout 4” could borrow some ideas from that game, but there is one particular feature that people seem to have missed in these discussions – the Nemesis system.
The way it works in “Shadow of Mordor” is that the player can occasionally fail to kill an enemy, leaving them for dead. Subsequently, that enemy can gain strength and evolve along with the player themselves, eventually facing them in the worst possible moment, making the player regret not finishing off the opponent in the past.
This could add a lot to the world of “Fallout 4” and it can really work well with the game’s mechanics as a whole. The universe of the franchise definitely does predispose to that too, as it’s not rare that the player would face an old adversary that they considered to be dead. On the other hand, as the “Gaming Bolt” writer mentioned, it could also clash a little with the way the player’s enemies are presented. It’s one thing to leave a super mutant half-dead and have it chasing after the player, but something like a bloatfly would be a bit sillier.
In addition, “Fallout” already has certain mechanics in place that mimic this system. Enemies scale up their levels according to the player’s experience, and typically the challenges the player faces are in line with their current progress through the story. Still, actually attaching those encounters to the plot in some way could definitely improve the game as a whole.
It’s probably safe to assume that Bethesda are watching/listening, and they’re keeping an eye out for any potential improvements to the game that the community wants to see. Whether they would acknowledge their inspiration if they eventually decided to implement one of those suggestions is a different story, but that’s the way the industry works in the first place. In the end, most fans would just love to see the game starting to include successful features from other titles.