Shadow of Mordor Was Originally Meant to be a Batman Game!?

I’m a big fan of the Shadow of Mordor game, it’s a fantastic take on the open-world beat em up. Of course, there’s another big hitter in that genre; Batman. Well, it seems the two worlds have a lot more in common than first thought.

Shadow of Mordor

The game is brilliant in its current format. However, the developer wanted to try something new after their F.E.A.R franchise. They started building a game featuring The Dark Knight. The aim was to get approval from Nolan and tie that into the series. Unfortunately, at the time, that didn’t happen.

Around the same time, they were also pushing to get a Lord of the Rings game plan in place with a focus on Co-op. That didn’t happen either.

Batman: Isengard Knight

They started a the Batman game, had to cancel that later down the line. However, they then got some approval for a LOTR licence and changed gears to make their Batman system fit the Middle Earth theme.

Of course, we gamers won on both fronts. We now have had a truly fantastic Batman series anyway, plus a superb Lord of the Rings gaming series. However, a Nolan universe gaming trilogy would have been fantastic.

Video

Check out the interview below, where Liam Robertson, a video game historian and journalist, revealed this fun fact.

“Today on Game History Secrets we talk about the cancelled Batman game that became Shadow of Mordor. The project was worked on by Monolith Productions, and was intended to be based in the world of Christopher Nolan’s Batman. Although cancelled, concepts from the game found there way into Shadow of Mordor, and Batman was even a placeholder main character during the game’s development.” – DidYouKnowGaming