Kings of Pain: On Gender and Power in Shadow of Mordor

This post “spoils” the plot of Shadow of Mordor, insofar as it’s possible to spoil anything that is so tiresomely predictable.

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This isn’t what I wanted to write about Shadow of Mordor. I bought the game because I have an interest in Tolkien’s world and because, while the game is clearly lifting ideas and mechanics wholesale right out of other games, it also appeared as if it might have a few neat ideas of its own. I would love to be celebrating the game right now. But I can’t. It honestly never occurred to me when I started playing that it might be, in its treatment of women, the most exasperatingly cliche, troubling video game narrative I’ve encountered in some time. I assumed that women would be largely absent, which wouldn’t be great, of course. But instead I got a game that goes out of its way both to repeatedly use women as victims whose fates are really only tragic because they leave an enduring suffering in the hearts of men, and to suggest that those women who are foolish enough to think that they can play a part as leaders and people of action in realms that are largely the domain of men have another thing coming. 

But before I get into all that, let’s talk a bit about Tolkien. I am no Tolkien scholar. I read The Lord of the Rings a few times as a teenager desperate to escape from the anguish of my own reality, and Tolkien’s richly detailed world provided that escape. I loved the books then. I still admire the intricacy of the lore he created. Of course, Shadow of Mordor is not Middle-earth as Tolkien himself envisioned it. It is Middle-earth by way of Peter Jackson. The orcs all look as if they could have stepped out of scenes from his film of Return of the King, and stylistic touches, such as the chants of any orc warchief’s name on the soundtrack when he marches into battle, recall the energy that characterized some of the better moments in Jackson’s films.

But still, some of the values present in the game which one might rightly criticize can be traced back to Tolkien’s work. In Shadow of Mordor, you play as a dashing, brooding, somewhat Aragorn-esque ranger named Talion who lurks in the shadows of the crude Uruk society of Mordor. There is tons of orc chatter to overhear as you traverse the lands, and it’s all really well-acted and it lends character to your enemies. But I couldn’t help thinking about how the orcs, who are pure evil with no hope of redemption (so you can feel entirely justified in slaughtering them) almost all speak in accents one might tend to associate with lower-class members of British society, while your hero sounds as if he might have been educated at Oxford. So evil, chaos and savagery are associated here with both the physically unattractive and the less-educated (and, by extension, poorer) while goodness and order are associated with the beautiful and more well-educated. There is no nuance to any of this. Talion and his ghostly companion Celebrimbor frequently reiterate that the Uruks are pure evil. 

I had hoped that some of the themes I love in Tolkien’s writing might also end up in the game. But they don’t, or if they do, they’ve been twisted into a mockery of their original form. The Lord of the Rings is largely concerned with the corrupting influence of power. I believe that Tolkien intends us to be frightened of the allure of the Ring, to see what it has done to Gollum and to Frodo and to behold the sway that it is capable of exerting over the hearts of the simple and the wise alike, and to want no part of it. Shadow of Mordor also acknowledges the allure of power, but it intends for us to enjoy it and crave it, rather than be terrified of it.

This is a game about physical and political power and domination. One villain in the game, right before you kill him, says something like, “How does your vengeance taste, Talion? Is not the darkness sweet?” The game doesn’t mean for you to step back, examine the monster you are becoming, sheath your sword and walk away in horror. No, of course you are supposed to enjoy the act of killing this man. You are indeed supposed to find the darkness sweet. And at the game’s end, when Talion says with some lust for power in his voice, “The time has come for a new ring,” the desired effect is not for your heart to sink as you realize that Talion has been corrupted, but for you to think, “Badass! I hope there’s a sequel!” 

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Of course, despite all the money that’s been sunk into this game and despite it being published by Warner Bros. and having the Middle-earth license, it is not canon. Tolkien didn’t write it, so it has exactly as much validity in the world of Middle-earth as a piece of bad fan fiction would. And at times that’s what it feels like. There was certainly violence in Tolkien’s world but he never fixated on human suffering the way Shadow of Mordor does—there is imagery here that is far more in keeping with the brutality of something like Game of Thrones than with Tolkien. And Tolkien didn’t structure his stories around bloody personal quests for revenge. But Shadow of Mordor starts with some nonsense about a blood sacrifice in which Talion’s wife and son are murdered before his eyes (and yours).

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And this isn’t the only murder of a wife and child we witness in the game. Celebrimbor, the wraith who, after the blood sacrifice, is one with Talion, also sees his family murdered, and it is suggested that it is this anguish—the anguish these two men feel over the brutal murders of their families—that binds them together.

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“Murder. Perhaps this pain is what unites us.”

Two sad, angry men whose spirits are joined together because both of them saw their families murdered. That has to be just about the most hilariously video-game protagonist-y thing I’ve ever heard.

As lazy and standard as that is, I might have forgotten about it at some point over the next 25 hours that I spent playing the game, if that were the end of it. But Shadow of Mordor is relentless, repeatedly using women in the most tired and troubling ways. It’s as if these characters were all purchased on clearance at a video game character emporium. Eryn, the wife of a supporting character named Hirgon, has been captured, but of course she knows that her husband will rescue her (and, with your help, he does). 

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But wait, there’s more! Yes, Shadow of Mordor has one last stunningly predictable, shockingly regressive plot development in store for you. The game eventually introduces Ithariel, a warrior princess who has often led her people into battle. When I met her, I thought that the game was serving up one woman in the traditional “strong female character” mold in an attempt to balance out its earlier, more troubling uses of women.

Boy, was I wrong. 

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Unlike Hirgon and unlike the dwarf Torvin, Ithariel is not a character who fights alongside you. Instead, the game punishes her for thinking that she might be capable of leading men in battle; she is made helpless, and you have to rescue her, literally carrying her slowly to safety and putting her down on the ground when mobs of orcs attack you.

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I felt a rage I haven’t felt since seeing Moneypenny learn that she’s a total fuckup as an agent and that her proper place is behind a desk in Skyfall. The patriarchal order is restored. This shit is infuriating.

And it’s so sad to find that underneath all the Tolkien getup lies just another painfully generic patriarchal revenge fantasy because really, the Tolkien license is just about the only thing Shadow of Mordor has to differentiate itself. The combat is pure Arkham, the map and towers and collecting of stuff are pure Ubisoft game. In spite of all of the game’s problems, I enjoyed playing it; it’s all mechanically sturdy and reliable, if unoriginal. But it’s so disappointing that, rather than closely examining Tolkien’s themes—the frightening corrupting influence of power, perhaps, or the sacredness of the natural world—and creating a story that respected and elevated those themes, the creators of Shadow of Mordor seem to have looked no further than the most troubling and overused of video game tropes as inspiration for their tale.