In 2014, Warner Bros and Monolith Productions released “Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor,” a fun pastiche of “Assassin’s Creed” style open-world gameplay and “Batman Arkham”-esque combat in a “Lord of the Rings” wrapper. The game was met with critical and gamer acclaim, so it’s no surprise to learn the publisher may be gearing up to release a Game of the Year edition.

A newly added rating on the official website of the Australian Ratings Classification Board has revealed the listing, though few additional details are provided. The entry carries the same “MA 15+” as the original game, along with the “Strong Violence” consumer advice label.

As noted by LazyGamer, if a Game of the Year Edition for “Shadow of Mordor” does see release, it’s likely to bundle all, or most of the post-release DLC published thus far. The four major DLC packs released include “Guardians of the Flaming Eye,” “Trials of War,” “Lord of the Hunt” and “The Bright Lord.”

While the majority of the DLC packs focused on combat variations and new character skins or hunting quests, “The Bright Lord” DLC pack made Elven ring-maker Celebrimbor a fully playable character. The DLC focused on Celebrimbor before his death, as he defended Eregion from the hordes of Sauron.

In a post-mortem with Gamasutra in January, Monolith Design Director Michael de Plater noted that a tough development cycle meant that a great deal of content was cut from the version of “Shadow of Mordor” that shipped to retail.Though it’s unlikely that any newly developed content will be added to the Game of the Year edition, de Plater stated that the team had only scratched the surface with regard to what was possible with the franchise.

“During pre-production, we didn't have good metrics on our production capacity, this led to the specification of the game being over-ambitious, which, as we started to get a clearer picture of reality, required us to make some pretty big and painful cuts. Firstly, there was the lost work on the features that were cut, secondly, we created quite significant amounts of new work to replace the cut features or content including some large wilderness areas and epic creatures such as the Great Beast,” he said.

As noted by IGN, the highly ambitious Nemesis system at the heart of “Shadow of Mordor” also suffered extensive cuts on PS3 and Xbox 360. While the basic combat mechanics and core gameplay remained intact, the number of AI calculations, content and depth featured in the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions was stripped down. “Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor” was released on Xbox One, PS4 and PC in September 2014 and holds a score of 84 on Metacritic.

(Credit: YouTube/IGN)

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