I'm not sure what to expect from Shadow of War. On the one hand, I’ve little interest in Lord of the Rings, and no desire to spend any more time with returning protagonist and charisma vacuum Talion. On the other hand: the orcs seem fun. I decide to give it a shot, in the hope of encountering a potential nemesis.

Once I’m let loose on the starting area of Minas Ithil, I go hunting orc captains. Some ambush me while I’m in the middle of a fight. Others are big, tough and difficult to dodge away from. All, eventually, go down. I’m good at Shadow of War’s combat—at least this opening version of it—because I’ve played three Arkham games and it’s basically the same. 

I start ticking off sidequests and missions. It’s as I’m running between these that I aggro Koth, the “poisonous dark beastmaster”. Koth’s specialties include multiple things I haven’t seen before, all of which are bad. Poisonous means his weapon deals damage over time, which is bad. Beastmaster means he’s flanked by giant Caragors—also bad. I’m unsure what the “dark” refers to, but I doubt it’s his favourite type of chocolate.

He gets in some good hits, and soon I’m close to death. I attempt to rally, and even manage to take off a chunk of his health, but then I’m ambushed by yet another orc captain. Koth uses the distraction to finish me off. Finally, I have a nemesis.

Nowadays, Sun Tzu is only referenced by overachievers on TV shows about lawyers or CEOs or crab fisherman, but I’m starting to think that knowing my enemy might be a good idea. Every orc has strengths and weaknesses, but they’re hidden until I extract them from the mind of a subordinate. I do so, and discover that Koth is vulnerable to executions. So we have that in common.

Koth runs away every time I go in for the kill. This cat-and-mouse game gives me time to get to know him better. I’m pleased that my nemesis is no stereotypical warmonger. Yes, he’s adorned with skulls and piercings, and his face is stained and messy—all orcish traits. But his received pronunciation accent gives him an almost regal bearing. The overall effect is of a Shakespearean thespian playing a Mad Max bandit, who also happens to be four plates deep into the backstage buffet cart. I like him.

Together forever

Finally I get the drop on him. As we fight, my combat meter charges up. When it’s full, I unleash an execution attack. Koth goes down. He’s dead.

I return to the objective grind for another hour, but my heart isn’t in it. Shadow of War is less interesting without a nemesis. But as I sprint towards my next objective, I’m interrupted by a familiar accent. It’s Koth. He’s cheated death, and is now explaining in detail all of the things he’s about to do to me. My nemesis is back, and I couldn’t be happier. 

With every Steam sale, our piles of shame grow to new, unsurmountable heights. If you've got a job or a family or some other responsibility, chances are your allocated gaming time is limited. Games can demand a lot of us, these days—whether it's an overload of sidequests, backtracking, repeat playthroughs to see every ending of a story, or because you're playing a multiplayer game with progression in mind.

Here, the UK team discusses whether games are too bloated, and where we draw the line with what we consider good value content versus filler. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, too. 

Long journeys ahead

Samuel Roberts: Over the holiday, I finished Nier: Automata, capping off the fifth optional ending after 41 hours of total play. That game was mostly fantastic, but it also felt too long to me. It made me repeat the same story beats in a slightly exhausting second playthrough, which shed some new light on the characters but not enough to justify the hours invested. It finally ended properly with a mostly-great third playthrough, after which I had no desire to go back and mop the sidequests I'd missed. 

At this point, I'd seen the same grey boxes and washed out greenery that make up its world so many times. I then looked at the other games I'm yet to finish from 2017: Divinity, Shadow of War, Assassin's Creed Origins, which are all pretty lengthy as well. Many of our favourite games are long as heck, now. Some of them earn it, but others don't. 

Taking something like Arkane's Prey, which I mostly enjoyed, I felt like the last third of the game sent me back-and-forth to the same locations for the sake of it—which wore down the magic of its excellent setting for me. Shadow of War, meanwhile, is a game we called out specifically for being bloated. I wonder if our readers feel this way, that games longer than 20 hours can be more intimidating than exciting. Thoughts?

Andy Kelly: I don't mind if a game is bloated, as long as it's fat with interesting things to do and not just obvious filler. Shadow of War's problem is that the distractions that litter its map, whether it's revealing Shelob's memories or purifying Haedir towers, all boil down to following an icon on a map and pressing a button to interact with it. It's design like this that makes a game feel like a checklist, rather than a collection of fun things you feel compelled to do. Watch Dogs 2, on the other hand, features some really fun, unpredictable side quests that I enjoyed as much as the main game, which I wrote about here.

Phil Savage: Yeah, the best open world games don't feel bloated, just full of options. But the line between meaningful diversion and tiresome padding can be fuzzy. Shadow of War was the latter for me. I played through the opening area—a small, mini sandbox that offers a small sampling of its sidequests and structure—and couldn't bring myself to continue when I was faced with that but on a much larger scale. Seeing the size of the full map just made me feel tired. I quit out and uninstalled it soon after. 

Mandatory sidequests—we can live without them

Andy: Although I loved Assassin’s Creed Origins, it's guilty of a particularly egregious example of padding. Whenever I finished a story mission, eager to tackle the next one, I'd hit a brick wall. The mission would be two or three levels higher than me, forcing me to complete side quests to get to the appropriate level. Which would be fine if 80% of these quests weren't dull and repetitive. I lost count of how many people I didn't care about that I had to rescue from caves and bandit camps. It's a stain on an otherwise superb game, and really tested my patience towards the end. It took me 28 hours to finish Origins, and I'm sure at least eight of those were spent completing side quests against my will.

Samuel: Assassin's Creed is an interesting one, in that I feel almost trained to ignore the majority of the series' side content—ever since those collectable feathers in the original game. Would it have been a great loss to make the level gating leaner in Origins and lose that extra eight hours, leaving it to the player to decide if they're worth it? I don't necessarily think so. 

Phil: My only hesitance in criticising this stuff is it must appeal to someone, and that someone is essentially me 15 years ago. I used to scour RPGs like Baldur's Gate for every scrap of story, and 100%'d Grand Theft Autos III, Vice City and San Andreas. I even collected those damn feathers in Assassin's Creed II. It wasn't because I enjoyed collectibles—I didn't—but that I wasn't ready to leave these cool worlds. I felt compelled to stay until everything was done. Since then I got a job, and realised there were more games than I could theoretically play in a lifetime—both things that have made me more discerning with how I spend my time. But I recognise that even collectibles, as pointless as they usually are, can add value for some.

Samuel: Thing is, I played both San Andreas and GTA III before I had a full-time job and I still didn't 100% complete them. I played them until I'd seen the credits, then just messed around in the open world until I felt done. I accept collecting the hidden packages has value for some people, but as a player, I feel like I've become pretty savvy about breaking down the higher value and lower value content in a game. I know the difference between a sidequest that starts with a cutscene and a three-minute race that's slightly too tricky to be enjoyable. And for me, it doesn't matter how much I love the world of a game—it still has to give me slightly more back in reward (the entertainment value of what I'm playing) than it's asking in time investment.

To offer a slightly different example, this week I thought I'd start one of Obsidian's two recent RPGs, which I've been considering for a while. According to my favourite games utility site, How Long To Beat, Pillars of Eternity comes in at 36 hours to beat the main quest line, while Tyranny comes in at 23 hours. Knowing that, I started Tyranny—it's unlikely I'll ever get through both, and even if our reviewers preferred Pillars, I'd rather start something where I know I'll see the ending. That 13 hours is potentially a whole other game I could complete. 

Good sidequests vs bad sidequests

Tom Senior: I agree with Phil to the extent that I remember enjoying sidequests and working towards secrets in games like Final Fantasy VII. Finding Vincent, breeding gold chocobos, fighting the weapons—that stuff didn’t feel like second-tier content. Sidequests and secondary activities in a lot of current open world games feel like an afterthought by comparison, and I think that’s because, in open world games, technology has outpaced design for years. Game engines can do huge, beautiful worlds, but we don't exactly know how to fill them with interesting activities. 

There are exceptions, obviously, like Skyrim and The Witcher 3, and on consoles last year Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn. All of these games are full of fun, meaningful side activities that, crucially, don't delay your movement on the critical path. Assassin's Creed Origins' levelling system forces you to engage with the busywork to progress, which is the worst.

There are two big honking problem games I'd pick out: Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age: Inquisition. The critical paths in both games are exciting, full of twists, drama, the stuff that BioWare is good at and known for. The open world side missions were drivel that got in the way and stopped you getting at the best parts of the game. Those games, and Shadow of War, define 'bloat' for me, though at least there is a point to Shadow of War having an open world. I reckon Inquisition and Andromeda could have been great relatively linear rollercoaster single player RPGs.

The Witcher 3 did it best, obviously

Samuel: I can see why open world seemed like the right route for both of those BioWare games. Dragon Age got to show you what felt like its whole world for the first time rather than just snapshots (and it's incredibly impressive to look at), and Mass Effect hadn't really done big explorable planets since the original game. But it's hard to dispute that one reason Mass Effects 2 and 3 were so great is that the busywork was kept to an absolute minimum. Pretty much all of the sidequest content was story-driven. Everyone remembers their favourite loyalty quest(s) from Mass Effect 2.  

That's one solution, then—linear games are totally okay by us, even if some publishers have seemingly convinced themselves otherwise. And open world games can be long, but that scale shouldn't ever get in the player's way. The more of these games that exist in the market, though, the less attention we can conceivably pay to each one—and the less likely we are to try and do everything. Sidequest design is more important now than ever. 

Tom: Statistically, looking at achievements, you can see that not many people ever finish games. Games seem more determined to tire us out than to leave us wanting more. Every hour you're spending in a game is an hour you're not spending with one of the game's competitors, and the games-as-service trend allows games to become platforms for microtransactions that can generate long-term revenue. 

Basically, there are incentives for big-budget games to be massive, but luckily smaller developers are able to create small games that don’t need to meet those big business aims. I wonder if there’s a space halfway for games with big beautiful worlds, minus the giant to-do lists. LA Noire and Shadow of the Colossus spring to mind, focused games that use its open world to create a mood rather than burden us with fetch quests and endless resource collection exercises. I think games are gradually getting better at this, though. The Witcher 3 showed that sidequests can be rich, self-contained short stories that don’t feel like filler. I hope to see more of that sort of thing as open worlds continue to get bigger with each passing year.

The Nemesis System first turned up in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. Defeated Orc heroes could return in future missions to shout insults and seek revenge. They had strengths, weaknesses, and defined personalities. Some were cowardly and sneaky, some were huge, brawny brawlers. It's a great system that generates great stories, and more game series should steal it. But which games would benefit from the system most? The PC Gamer team has a few ideas...

Chris Livingston: Cities: Skylines

I'd love something like the Nemesis system in a game like Cities: Skylines, where an unhappy citizen (I always have many, many unhappy citizens) could stand out a bit. Since you already get citizen complaints on Chirper (Skylines' version of Twitter) it would be cool if one citizen would really step things up if he was unhappy with garbage collection problems or that fact that his home was waste-deep in sewage and corpses. They could stage protests, wave angry little signs, write petitions, refuse to pay taxes, maybe even attempt to oust you from office. Bulldoze his house and maybe he'll return after buying a skyscraper or taking over one of your town's biggest businesses. I tend to get obsessed with NPCs as it is, so it would be nice if one of them would get obsessed with me from time to time.

James Davenport: Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag

Because I'm an idiot and chief of all Moby Dick fan-fiction, I'm thinking a whaling sim set in the Dick Universe that uses something like Black Flag's sailing tech would be a fin-tastic use case for the nemesis system. First, you spec out your mad captain, pinning down their particular fears and origins, from which Nemesis Whales™ will be generated to harass them during the workday. I have no idea what you'll do between whaling ventures, but in combat scenarios, I imagine something like Shadow of the Colossus encounters, but with a Mass Effect party system in which you can stop time and switch characters to queue up specific attacks. Queequeg might be in a smaller boat circling the big bugger with handheld harpoons, while the Ahab archetype stands behind the wheel and issues dodging or ramming commands for the Pequod. 

Whales will resemble the colossi in that they'll come in all species and sizes—everything from porpoise to those big blue ones I've come to fear—and they'll require unique tactics to take down. Also, the name generation system will combine short adjectives indicating size with simple nouns. Tremble in fear, for Great Forearm swimmeth.

Jarred Walton: Fallout

The Nemesis System is such a great tool, and it generates some awesome stories, so it's difficult to imagine a game where it wouldn't improve it in some fashion. Imagine dropping it into just about any true RPG world and the results would be glorious. Fallout with Nemesis could end up with battles against raiders that actually mean more than yet another generic shootout. You go into a city where the raiders have been happily picking off passersby for years, wipe them out, and discover one of them lived and now holds a grudge against you and your settlements. Or what if one of the thousands of ants, radscorpions, or bloatflies was to come back with his friends? Even better, a deathclaw nemesis that comes back stronger and uglier each time you defeat it would be terrifying! Please, Bethesda, make it happen.

Tom Senior: Metal Gear Solid 5

I would say XCOM, but War of the Chosen did a nice job of giving us bad guys to hate last year. The Nemesis system is great for giving faceless goons the illusion of agency, and in that sense I think that Metal Gear Solid 5 could actually benefit from of that. The series has very good supervillains—wouldn't it be great to see them emerge from the rank and file soldiery that you're evading and assassinating every mission? 

Imagine a captain who, having all his prisoners stolen by Snake, embarks on a journey to thwart him, turning up at inopportune moments in future missions to ruin Snake's day. And imagine that with each appearance the captain's dress and mannerisms become more erratic until they fit in right alongside The End, Vulcan Raven and Revolver Ocelot. They could also receive procedurally generated alter egos with randomised, Metal Gear Solid names like Hornet Dark, Mona Lisa, Bad Giraffe—plus suitably gimmicky weaponry to match.

Austin Wood: Dark Souls 

Someone had to say it, and lord knows I'm game for a tailor-made Dark Souls nemesis. Death is very much baked into the Souls recipe, which could be a good opportunity to play up the "You thought I was dead!" side of the Nemesis System and iterate on returning nemeses. I was ecstatic to see Shadow of War expand on that, and Dark Souls' black phantom system is the perfect MacGuffin.

I'm reminded of Patches the Hyena, the merchant who's been kicking hapless players into pits for, what, three games now, Demon's Souls included? Imagine if, instead of an annoying bastard chasing you through the series, you had a tenacious bastard chasing you through the world. They would get harder each time you defeated them, and you'd never know when their phantom would spawn in and throw a wrench in otherwise simple fights. Similar things have been done with NPC questlines already. My mouth waters at the thought of personalized bastards.