If you were looking forward to Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, the wait just got a little longer as the game has been delayed. While it's disappointing that the next chapter of Talion's story will arrive later, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
War Will Have To Wait
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War has been delayed two months. The announcement came as part of a blog post on WB Games' community site by the game's developer, Monolith Productions.
"Middle-earth: Shadow of War expands gameplay in every dimension, including the massive open world, the story, the RPG systems, and personal player stories of the Nemesis System. As with Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Monolith is committed to delivering the highest quality experience. In order to do this, we have made the difficult decision to move our launch date to ensure that Middle-earth: Shadow of War will deliver on that promise," Monolith stated in the blog post.
It continues, saying "We understand that it might be disappointing to have to wait a little longer for the release and are sorry for the delay, but we are working hard to make an amazing game. We're excited to show more at E3."
Originally announced in February for an Aug. 22 launch, it will now launch on Oct. 10.
Quality Is Valued
Delays seem to have become a normality within the games industry in the last few years. As production on these triple-A scale games has gotten bigger, release dates seem to have gotten harder to hit. While there are games like the Call of Duty series and the EA Sports games that release every year like clockwork, those titles have gotten the general features, and systems are generally the same year to year. This makes development much easier and allows for yearly iterations.
And while it's disappointing that the game will be delayed, it is only a short delay. A game of this scale could use all the time in the cooker that it can get, so having an extra two months only helps. Between the multiple fortresses and the expanded nemesis system, there is a lot to get right in this game and it's better to be safe than sorry.
In most cases, delays are usually a good thing for games. Another example recently is Destiny 2 on PC. With a release date for the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, Bungie has been a bit coy about giving the PC version a date. The rationale behind this is that the team wants the game to be in best possible shape when it launches on PC.
Granted, here and there is the occasional game where delays didn't help. A perfect example is the first Destiny, which got delayed nearly a year from its original 2013 release date. The game ended up being drastically different from what was planned, the story was overhauled, and content got divided up into the first few content packs. But that was more a case of interference from Activision pushing Bungie to make the changes and Bungie rushing to get everything done.
Either way, for Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, a two-month delay isn't a big deal and, in this case, should only be beneficial.
