Originally, The Shadow of Mordor was to be a Batman game inspired by Christopher Nolan's films

© Warner Bros.

Between the desires of developers and the reality of the industry, there is often a world. The proof is the Monolith studio, which is revealed today that his very good The Shadow of Mordor was originally a Batman game in the open world. 

new episode of Liam Robertson's YouTube channel, journalist and video game historian, looks back at Monolith's initial plan to bounce back in after FEAR

An agreement difficult to obtain

If the studio had good views on a game inspired by the work of Tolkien, the first prototype (a dungeon crawler in cooperation) did not meet a great success within the team. Monolith has decided to continue to search for the Warner Bros. catalog. , who had just bought the studio after the success of FEAR, to design his project success. 

Their sights quickly shifted to Batman, which Warner-owned through Christopher Nolan's trilogy. The idea was finally to adopt the director's Black Knight in an open-world video game which, from the description which is made, resembled furiously what Rocksteady proposed with his Arkham series. 

Unfortunately for Monolith, the project was never able to see the day, lack of green light granted by Christopher Nolan himself. After a year and a half of prototyping and early development, the team had to turn their project into something else - The Shadow of Mordor.

Christopher Nolan cooled by the adaptation of Batman Begins

One of the reasons cited by the developers for the lack of interest of the British director for a new Batman game inspired by his films comes from the resounding bide that had experienced the adaptation of Batman Begins in 2005. 

Involved directly in the creative process, Christopher Nolan had even conceded to the studio Eurocom (the origin of the adaptation) to contact the original actors to resume their respective roles in the game. 

Unfortunately, the critics have been unresponsive and the game s is badly sold. Obviously showered to see his work distorted in this way, Christopher Nolan would not have deigned to grant the green light to the Monolith teams who, in fact, had to trade Gotham for Middle-earth.