Shadow of Mordor

Shadow of Mordor generates unique Orc captains that hand-crafting could not match. The game builds its Orc captains procedurally, so each player meets a different set of enemies. Algorithms give near infinite variety that hand-crafted content cannot.

It is cited alongside Minecraft's endless worlds as an example of randomness used for variety. The wider point is that procedural content is rarely as good as handmade, but regenerating it stops players memorising content and pushes them to master the underlying mechanics.

Orc captains remember who killed you, so failure becomes content. If an Orc captain kills you, he remembers you and refers to that history in a later encounter. Failure leads to a meaningful outcome instead of something to undo.

The design principle behind it is to make failure as interesting as success. When perfect play has no tactical advantage and imperfect play changes the story, players are happy to let events play out. Quote: "Perhaps a better approach is to try and make failure as interesting as success."

Shadow of Mordor's stories react dramatically to what the player does. Its reactive storytelling is named as an idea immersive sims could borrow from other genres.

The suggestion sits in a broader argument that sim-driven design can combine modern simulation tech with ideas from elsewhere, such as reactive stories and more believable worlds.