At the Bafta Video Game Awards in London Monolith Studios were awarded the Best Game Design prize for Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and after picking up their prize they spoke to IBTimes UK about their game.
The game's success is down in large part to the nemesis system, which creates a branching narrative and relationships between the player and the many orcs of varying power they meet in the game's world.
""Still Wakes the Deep", the narrative horror from genre masters The Chinese Room and independent publisher Secret Mode, has been honoured at the BAFTA Games Awards 2025 ceremony with three awards, the second-highest number of wins for a single game at this year’s ceremony." - BAFTA Games Awards 2025.
Today BAFTA has announced SEGA’s open-world action-adventure title Shenmue (1999) as the Most Influential Video Game of All Time, receiving the most votes in a public poll.
How does Street Fighter 2 not break the top 21? Literally spearheaded a litany of clones for years and cemented a genre that continues to be relevant to this day. Some were such a blatant rip off that it led to lawsuits (See Fighters History).
Also I agree that BG3 is one of the greatest games of all time and the game with the most depth that I have ever experienced. In fact, it’s probably my favorite game of all time. That said, I have not seen its influence on the industry yet because there is nothing that’s been introduced that is truly comparable to the breadth of the experience imo. I anticipate and hope that it will become one of the most influential games of all-time because playing it has spoiled me.
I don't get it I just played the first game on the ps4 about six months ago and for its time it was probably well regarded for bringing a cinematic feel to gaming but I feel like there were far more engaging RPG's and titles that deserve it more.
For example I find Doom is likely the most influential game of all time for shooters, Mario for platformers the list goes on.
I'm not saying shenmue doesn't deserve praise just was it honestly that good there's a ton of moments in the game where you have to sit the controller down and walk away from the game for an hour for the in game clock to get to 8pm or something there's only so many times I can play space harrier as a distraction
Did Shenmu 3 not end the series? I have the all of the games on PC, but I haven't played them yet.
It did not. It needs 2-3 more games he said to finish, I believe. Heard rumors of 4 but that’s as a little while ago.
Very good point. So influential that the 3rd entry had to be funded by fans (sarcasm). I really enjoyed Shenmue 1 and 2 in 99 and early 2000s, but by the time the 3rd entry was released, I had moved on.
Shouldn't the first shooter to use the standard dual analog control scheme be on the list? As far as I can tell that was Medal of Honor on the PS1 in 1999, although I'm open to correction if someone knows of an earlier game that had it (and no I don't count N64 games where you had to hold two controllers, haha). That control scheme, which was apparently far from obvious to devs at first, has become a default for essentially every 3D game that doesn't have a fixed camera (assuming you aren't using M/K).
My understanding was Alien Resurrection on PS1, but that’s literally me not googling before answering m and just pulling random facts I had stored in the ol’ noggin’
That came out after Medal of Honor, but yeah it was among the first, and it may have been the first to have that as the default (in MOH 1999 it was one of like 6 control scheme options).
Released on September 30 2014, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is 10 years old today, and it's still the best blueprint for the LOTR franchise.
Honestly, just a fantastic game/series (aside from the blunder of Microtransactions/grinding). The system with the orcs was amazing.. which it would be implemented in more games.
They patented the system, sadly. What that means legally I am not sure. But people don’t want to test the water.
I feel you bro. The experience got better once I tried it on PC, but I'm still probably only going to finish the Galadriel DLC and not the main campaign.
Me too lol. I beat Mordor, never beat War lol. I have it though so I could always go back and play it. I genuinely think the time will come that I can beat my backlog. Maybe when I hit the lotto and can just play video games all day, on my yacht.
This game convinced me to buy a new console. There was a huge difference between the previous gen (Xbox360/ PS3) & the latest gen (Xbox One/ PS4) . The Nemesis System was only available in Xbox One/ PS4 . That was how a generation shift should be.
A very well deserved award, for a great game and great system. Now please work on the boss fights for the sequel, so we actually get to fight them and not just do QTE's.
Edit: It's a travesty the Destiny won the BAFTA for Best Game. That should have gone to either Dragon Age Inquisition, Far cry 4, or Shadow of Mordor. IMO