Shadow of Mordor dev responds to Assassin’s Creed comparisons

Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor design director Michael de Plater has responded to concerns that the upcoming third-person, stealth, action-adventure game is using lines of code from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise. Apparently, the notion was brought up even before Charles Randall, a former team lead on the Assassin's Creed series, made the claim.

Speaking to Eurogamer at an event earlier this week — before Randall's comments were even made — director Michael de Plater assured, "We didn't think much about [the comparisons] at all."

"We just wanted to do a third-person, open-world action adventure. And then now, just by the time you have stealth and melee combat and you're hunting guys behind enemy lines, the comparisons maybe come out at that point. It definitely wasn't something we were consciously going for," he explained.

Looking at the recently released Shadows of Mordor gameplay video, it's apparent the game's are quite similar, but that's something de Plater says is true of all third-person, assassin-like games.

"Clearly assassinating highly ranked enemies is a key part [of Shadows of Mordor]," he told Eurogamer. "And lots of games have that as well. It's not just Assassin's Creed. Lots of games have you hunt guys down from hierarchies of enemies."