One of the biggest features of the upcoming open world, Middle-Earth centric RPG, Shadow of Mordor, is its Nemesis system, which helps generate unique enemies every time you play. That means all of the orcs be they grunts or lofty warchiefs will be generated at the start of the game and it will never play out the same way twice. Except with regards to the few crafted characters still in the game, like Ratbag.
We met Ratbag once before when Monolith first showed us how the orc society evolves as Talion, our protagonist, interacts with it. Orcs die off and get replaced, or war with one another creating interesting opportunities for players to take out two birds with one stone. In seems however, that Ratbag, like Gollum, is destined to play a bigger part in the story, since he clearly can last a long way into the game if you let him. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq16MaIjMYs']
In the above video, we see Ratbag becoming a chief informant of Talion, giving him the knowledge he needs to manipulate the orc hierarchy, though this does lead to our little stunted follower from gaining in power and prestige himself, which is the Mordor equivalent of painting a target on your back.
Naming orcs is always fun
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KitGuru Says: While I think a few people are miffed that Ratbag isn't (or at least, wasn't) a randomly generated character, he seems to provide both a story progressing role and a little comic relief. He should give us an interesting insight into orc society as well.
I think it would be difficult to tell a story with only procedural characters… I’m glad they have a mixed bag, and I hope that it turns out to be a great mix.