Shelob is one of the most terrifying beings in all of Middle-earth; the gigantic spider nearly finished off Sam and Frodo as they approached Mordor near the end of the Lord of the Rings saga. A newly released trailer for the upcoming Middle-earth: Shadow of War shows off the horrible monster, reimagined in a new light: this Shelob can transform into a sexy British woman because of course, she can.
She isn’t always a sexy British lady; it looks like Shelob will assume her gigantic arachnid form and will be a nasty battle at some point in Shadow of War as well.
Shelob’s role in Shadow of War seems like a fairly important one – protagonist Talion and his elf ghost buddy Celebrimbor had formed a pretty solid alliance at the end of the first game. Shelob looks like she will be moving in to sow doubt into their minds and try to ruin their alliance. Her ultimate goals seem much more sophisticated than her goals in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (where she basically just wanted to eat things).
Middle-earth: Shadow of War looks to build on the strengths of Shadow of Mordor, which brought Tolkien’s world to life with a beautiful open world, fun, combo based fighting. The original won a huge amount of awards, mainly due to its “nemesis system,” which helped develop and strengthen the enemies you fought and added personality to what would otherwise be faceless goons to slaughter. Shadow of War looks like it will enhance that system, even more, allowing the player and enemies to recruit multiple allies in order to wage huge battles against one another.
Shadow of War was originally scheduled to release August 22, 2017, but was pushed back to October 10, 2017. It will be released on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.
