How Batman Could Use The Nemesis System

Recently I have been playing Warner Brother’s studios’ Shadow of War and I’ve been thinking about it’s Nemesis System. This system was greatly improved for Shadow of War but has been well received and talked about since debuting in Shadow of Mordor a few years prior. When Shadow of Mordor first released there was a lot of talk about where the Nemesis System would show up next but it has yet to show up aside for in this series. However, that looks to change soon since Warner Brother’s has recently received a patent for the Nemesis System. With that in mind I thought it would be fun to look at some of Warner Brother’s franchises and speculate where else we could be seeing the Nemesis system, starting with a Batman game.

The success of the Batman Arkham games and the aforementioned patent makes a Batman game with Nemesis System features seem inevitable. Yet I’m not sure how well the system would fit such a game. In the Mordor games much of the system is driven by death in that any time an orc kills talion or another orc they get stronger. This wouldn’t work as well in a Batman game. In most cases Batman shouldn’t be killing his enemies and vice versa.

Obviously villains will try to kill Batman, but they shouldn’t be successful like the orcs. When talion is killed the game uses supernatural elements to make it part of the story, but using similar elements wouldn’t fit Batman as well. Plus Batman should only get beat by villains as part of the scripted story, not at random times when players make mistakes. In Shadow of War’s Desolation of Mordor DLC they adapt the system to suit a new character named Baranor who does not have supernatural powers like Talion. The biggest changes leads to are that Baranor hires mercenaries instead of possessing orcs and when he is killed the player loses a lot of progress because Baranor is mortal. These are clever adaptations but I think they would fall short in a Batman game. Batman games have had modes where one death makes you restart the whole game but this is a niche mode for expert players it should not be a default for a full game that is much longer than Baranor’s DLC. Similarly the option to send mercenaries would not translate to a Batman game. True, Batman sidekicks sometimes get captured or killed but Batman should not be sending out the likes of Robin or Batgirl the same way Baranor sends out expendable mercenaries

I think the best way to adapt the Nemesis System for Batman would be to have Batman knock out henchmen and decide whether to intimidate them to be an informant or to have them locked up in different sections of Arkham or Blackgate. Each villain could have traits that make them more or less likely to escape from certain sections or grouping too many henchmen from the same gang in one spot could lead to a large jailbreak where multiple henchmen will escape and become stronger. The ways the henchmen get stronger should be mostly gear based depending on which supervillain the henchmen serves. For example lower level henchmen could earn different body armours and weapons but a higher level Bane henchmen might get venom injectors that give him super-strength. Joker’s men could get Hyenas, Penguin’s men could get trick umbrellas, there are a lot of ways henchmen could be outfitted depending on which supervillain factions are present in the game. As for this game’s equivalent of killing Talion I think that when Batman is defeated the game should just reset to an earlier checkpoint but there should be missions where Batman can fail without getting knocked out. For example if Batman fails to stop a henchmen escaping from a heist, the henchmen will level up but it can stay part of the story without undermining Batman the same way getting dropped by a generic henchman would.