Shadow of War to Feature Nazgûl as Bosses, Complete With Backstories

Last month we got a look at gameplay for Middle-earth: Shadow of War, and from that video, it's very apparent that the sequel will be much larger scale. It's set to feature dragons, Sauron himself, and the Nazgûl AKA Ringwraiths.

The Nazgûl are men who were corrupted and enslaved by Sauron after being given rings of power. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, they hunted Frodo endlessly, as they are drawn to the power of the One Ring. In Shadow of War, they will play the role of bosses, each with a unique detail about them. In an interview with IGN, Monolith Vice President of Creative, Michael de Plater says:

"They are bosses. You are competing with them throughout Mordor and as you get in there and start to conquer Mordor and you’re facing them. Different weapons that relate to who they were historically. We’ve added specific gameplay to each of the individual Nazgûl in relation to their different boss fights as well. So whether you’re fighting them singularly or as a group.

One of the things we really enjoyed in Shadow of Mordor was getting to show the backstory of Sauron and seeing Sauron in fair form and seeing the history of that. So now we get to do that same thing with the Nazgûl, so we actually get to reveal the history of who some of them were, and of course their relationship to the rings of power, which of course means their relationship to Celebrimbor and Sauron, so it all kind of gets twisted up in that. But the identity of some of them, we were also able to weave into the lore of Middle Earth in some really interesting ways."

Tolkiens epic trilogy only mentions two Nazgûl by name: Angmar the Witch-king and Khamûl the Easterling. This means Monolith has a sandbox to play with in terms of background stories for the rest.

More characters from the books may also make an appearance. de Plater was asked about "weird" characters like the Barrow-wights and the spider Shelob and whether or not they'll make an appearance. He responded with a tease.

"We've definitely got more stuff to show at some point."

Middle-earth: Shadow of War hits stores on August 22 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.