Immediately after Warner Bros. shut down Shadow of Mordor studio Monolith this year, amid condolences and anxiety for the future of the video game industry, people worried about losing the developer's patented Nemesis System for good. Excitingly, it seems that Black Panther developer Cliffhanger Games – formed in 2021 by a team of Monolith leads – has been toiling on a workaround to the System's patent rules… the only problem is, EA just closed Cliffhanger and canceled its game, too.
Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier shares in a new report that those familiar say Black Panther would have pit the Marvel heroes against each other in a bid to become the supernaturally powerful Black Panther; the player would control one of these characters, and the rest would become their adversaries.
This rivalry infrastructure indeed sounds similar to what's found in 2014 Lord of the Rings game Shadow of Mordor, in which Uruks battle with both each other and the playable ranger character to attain hierarchical status and make longterm enemies.
Schreier says that Black Panther would have elaborated on this original Nemesis System, too; Strange Scaffold studio lead Xalavier Nelson Jr. predicted studios would get creative like this while the Nemesis System waits out the remaining 11 years on its patent in a recent issue of Edge magazine.
In addition to squabbling with each other, Black Panther's protagonists would have had to take on the humanoid Skrulls, a fleet of shapeshifting aliens, who could have cunningly presented themselves as friends, or held grudges against the player like the Uruks in Shadows of Mordor.
Overall, it sounds like Black Panther could have presented a fascinating reincarnation of the Nemesis System – if only publishers had let any version of it live.
