Once upon a time, if you wanted to expedite your progress in a video game you'd slyly enter a cheat code. Nowadays, you cough up your cold hard cash. So is the case in Middle-earth: Shadow of War, which will allow you to buy things like loot chests and XP boosts if you couldn't be bothered earning them the normal way.

"An important aspect of the Nemesis System now comes in forging, customizing and leading your own army of unique Orc followers against the fortresses of Mordor," the announcement reads. "There are different ways to do this, including dominating Orcs by exploring the vast open-world and encountering them as part of Orc society, or players can acquire Orcs and other items through the Market (in-game store)."

You'll be able to purchase loot chests, war chests, XP boosts and bundles of all of these. Loot chests contain gear "of varying rarity", while also sometimes containing XP boosts. War chests reward with new Orc followers, again "of varying rarity" as well as Training Orders which can help customise the Orcs in your command. So it looks like most of what you'll be "buying" with  real money is reliant on RNG anyway.

There are two in-game currencies: Mirian and Gold. The latter is awarded in game, but can also be purchased with real money. The announcement stresses that "no content in the game is gated by Gold".

You can read the whole breakdown over here. It's not unusual nowadays for microtransactions to feature in singleplayer games: the first example that comes to mind is Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.

The team behind Middle-earth: Shadow of War have re-imagined the ginormous spider Shelob as an attractive woman with a posh English accent, in a new trailer for the Shadow of Mordor sequel, which you can watch below. The trailer later shows Sexy Shelob turning back into a big arachnid, so there is some continuity with the books and films.

When she's not wrapping Elijah Wood up in silk, or getting stabbed up by one of the Goonies, Shelob likes nothing better than turning semi-undead rangers against their elvish ghost pals—the above trailer showing the spider queen sowing seeds of doubt in protagonist Talion's mind.

The uneasy relationship between the ranger and his spectral buddy Celebrimbor seems to play a large part in Shadow of War's narrative, which you'll be able to experience for yourself on October 10th.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor didn't have the greatest story, but it did feature some excellent voice acting, especially when it came to the dozens of orcs you'd make nemeses out of. Well, Warner Bros. has revealed who'll be lending their voices to its sequel, Shadow of War, and the cast this time around features some excellent actors (via GameSpot).

Of course, Troy Baker and Alastair Duncan return as the protagonists Talion (the human ranger) and Celebrimbor (the grumpy elf wraith) respectively, while Laura Bailey returns to play a brand new character in the assassin Eltariel. Silicon Valley's Kumail Nanjiani and The Walking Dead's Pollyanna McIntosh also have roles, but it wasn't revealed exactly who they'd play.

Warner Bros. will be holding a panel for San Diego Comic-Con, which is likely where we'll learn more about some of the actors' roles. We'll also see some "never-before-seen content" from creative director Michael de Plater. The panel takes place on July 21 at 2 PM.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War launches for PC on October 10. The first game, Shadow of Mordor, is free to try out on Steam right now, but not for long: the Steam free weekend lasts until 1 PM Pacific Sunday. However, you can pick up the entire package, DLC and all, for $6 US until July 10 at 10 AM Pacific.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's "Nemesis system" was great—so great that we wondered why it hasn't been more exhaustively ripped off by other games. Monolith revealed earlier this year that the system, which personalizes the game's procedurally-generated enemies to give it a greater sense of connection and continuity, is being expanded for the upcoming sequel, Shadow of War. 

Today it announced that it's also going to let players take the worst of their enemies (and the most stalwart of their allies) with them from the old game to the new one, thanks to a Shadow of Mordor update called Nemesis Forge. 

To use it, just fire up up Shadow of Mordor and select the Nemesis Forge game mode. Assuming you've played it enough to have some bad blood, the game will automatically sort through and select your highest-ranked Nemesis, and also your most loyal Orc follower, and make them available for import into Shadow of War when it comes out.   

The Steam listing states that Nemesis Forge is "available only with purchase of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War on PC," but that appears to be a poor bit of phrasing rather than actual exclusivity, since the Nemesis Forge is in fact available to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 players as well. 

To mark the release of the update, and maybe convince a few newbies to give it a shot, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is free to play until July 9. The Game of the Year edition, which includes The Lord of the Hunt and The Bright Lord missions, the Trials of War challenge series, and additional Warband Missions, Runes and Skins, is also on sale for $4/£3/€4 until July 10. 

When our James got to grips with Middle-earth: Shadow of War at last month's E3 he described it as a "violent Tolkien fan-fiction generator" whose "new tools at every level make for unpredictable, dramatic, and memorable encounters." Developer Monolith held a livestream this weekend that showcased some of the above, and also offered a glimpse at the Shadow of Mordor follow-up's PC settings. 

Within the section of in-game footage featured below, Talion is hot on the heels of the forest-dwelling Carnan—the spirit of nature—which sees our hero battling a number of powerful otherworldly beasts, each of which is powered by Carnan's evil soul. 

Some of the battles look pretty neat as QA analyst Ellie Knapp adopts a range of attacking strategies that include a mixture of hands-on melee and at range bow and arrow fare. Most interestingly, the stream offers a quick peek at Shadow of War's PC graphics settings around the 2.35 mark. Check it out: 

It's the briefest of glimpses, however we can see the demo above is running on an Nvidia Titan X at 4K at 60FPS. Likewise, graphics settings are set to 'Custom' whereby Lighting Quality is 'high', and Mesh Quality, Shadow Quality, Texture Filtering and Texture Quality are set at 'ultra'. 

Blink and you'll miss it, but it seems Shadow of War is shaping up pretty nicely ahead of its October 10 launch later this year.

Thanks, PC Invasion.