In the wonderful realm of fantasy, there are few settings that inspire such palpable feelings of awe as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. It’s a rich and sprawling universe that served as inspiration for Monoloith Productions’ recently-released RPG, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, which just received an in-game Photo Mode.
Available from today across the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game, the novel setting is similar to that found in The Last of Us and inFamous: Second Son, allowing players to pause the action instantaneously simply by clicking the left thumbstick. From there, budding photographers can apply and adjust a variety of editing features including crop, depth of field and even filters for the Instagram generation.
The patch that heralds the aforementioned Photo Mode weighs in at around 600 or 700MB depending on platform, and while the feature is currently limited to current-gen consoles, we assume it will arrive for PC players sooner rather than later.
In hindsight, we loved our time with Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, stating that while Monolith’s RPG certainly borrows from existing franchises, the in-game Nemesis System elevates the game to a must-play.
“Despite borrowing some of its more prevalent mechanics from both Assassin’s Creed and Batman, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor manages to be a very solid and memorable game.”
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is available now across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC, and though the Photo Mode is only available on PS4 and Xbox One at this time, we expect Monolith to bring the show-stopping app to PC in the near future.