Like they were in a doomed romance, it seemed like players were fated to part with Monolith Productions' patented Nemesis System for 11 years after WB Games shut the studio down this winter. But industry experts say there's still hope for the genius combat structure to thrive in the meantime.
"The Nemesis patent still gives other designers significant space to operate around," Strange Scaffold studio lead Xalavier Nelson Jr. tells Edge in its new magazine issue 410.
"I think you can see some similar design language in the Mercenary system in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and some other things Ubisoft has done since then."
Introduced by Lord of the Rings orc extravaganza Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor in 2014, the Nemesis System makes it so enemies exist in a bustling hierarchy; vulgar Uruk-hai remember you and seek constant revenge, vying for more power but sometimes losing it in a a perpetual battle up and down enemy ranks.
2018's Assassin's Creed: Odyssey doesn't use every intricacy of this system for its own Mercenary design – it can't, not with a patent in place – but it does borrow the Nemesis System's core concept with a tiered enemy list. Kill the ranked mercenaries, and gain notoriety.
For this reason, Nelson continues to say that "the language and specificity of the [Nemesis] patent is not so significant that, if I had a game concept that would benefit from similar ideas, I would be scared away from doing it, personally."
Patent attorney and partner at law firm Banner Witcoff Scott Kelly agrees with the sentiment, telling Edge that "our whole video game industry is built on the shoulders of what came before us."
"I think people can keep this in mind," he continues encouragingly, "and can find a way to use the parts that they like that will make a really good game, without infringing the specific technology that Warner Bros. patented here."
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