In the year 2017 appeared perhaps the coolest commercial ever released for a game. It has now reached nearly 8 million views.
What kind of trailer is this? The trailer released in September 2017 is a commercial for the role-playing game “Middle-earth: Shadow of War,” which was released in October of the same year.
To this day, the video has collected 7.96 million views on YouTube and has over 128,000 “likes.”
The commercial shows the player’s connection to an NPC named Thrak. He is an orc who has joined Brian through the game’s Nemesis system and supports him in battle.
You can see the commercial for Middle-earth: Shadow of War here:
What kind of game is this?
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War is an action role-playing game developed by Monolith Productions, released on October 10, 2017, for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam and the Windows Store.
- Shadow of War is the sequel to “Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor” and, like its predecessor, is based on the universe of J.R.R. Tolkien and takes place in the land of Middle-earth.
- The storyline of the game is set between the events of Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
- In Shadow of War, you take on the role of Talion, a man with supernatural abilities, and you confront the power of Sauron.
- One of the core elements of the game is the so-called “Nemesis System,” which was introduced in the predecessor and allows you to recruit your enemies to build your own orc army and use them in battle.
What happens in the commercial? Brian saves his companion Thrak in a fight with the words “Not today, Thrak,” to which Thrak thanks him with long-standing loyalty. The commercial shows how Thrak repeatedly appears in real life to Brian and saves his life again and again – always saying “Not today, Brian.”
The special thing about the commercial is that the video tells the story in reverse. The audience first sees Brian as an old man lying in a hospital bed, and a doctor wanting to turn off his life support machines. Then Thrak comes into the scene, grabs the doctor, and throws him out of the picture.
Next, we see Thrak catch Brian some years earlier when he falls off a roof and rescue him with the Heimlich maneuver when he begins to choke at a restaurant meal. It is only at the end of the commercial that we learn that Thrak is repaying his rescue by Brian.
“I celebrate the attention to detail”
Why is the commercial so cool? The commercial showcases one of the fundamental gameplay aspects of Middle-earth: Shadow of War with the Nemesis system and tells the story of Brian and Thrak in the process – a balancing act that the marketing team has managed to pull off. Different players praise this in the comments on YouTube:
- serendal9548: “This is the best ad I have ever seen. The essence of this game is that you should hate orcs, but when your bodyguard saves you two, three, or more times, you just want to keep him and his loyalty. Even if it’s just a mass of pixels in a game, you just want him by your side.”
- connorclemmons8698: “What I like best is that with each clip we go back in time and see how confused Brian looks compared to the moment in the hospital.”
- BlueShellshock: “Shadow of War really executed what they aimed for very well. I had many Thrak-like moments in my playthrough.”
- malickgerlach1494: “I celebrate the attention to detail when they jump back and forth in time. The fact that the orc ages along with the human and even his damn beard changes is something for which I give a big compliment to the person who made this [the commercial].”
Many of the positive comments under the video are 1-2 years old and were written a long time after the release of the commercial. This shows how much the clip can still excite fans of the game even today.
But not only the commercial for Middle-earth: Shadow of War manages to present a game well. Riot Games and League of Legends release videos year after year that excite fans and gather millions of views.
A spectacular video for League of Legends has now reached 138 million views – shows how huge LoL is
