Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor originally featured a giant, climbable beast

It’s interesting to hear what gets cut from some triple-A games.

Monolith Productions, the Washington-based developer behind last year’s surprise hit Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, recently shared a development post-mortem with Gamasutra. And design director Michael de Plater revealed that the open-world action game nearly featured a giant, climbable monster, which sounds reminiscent of the PlayStation 2 classic, Shadow of the Colossus. Cutting it was painful for the team, and it shows how ruthless the game development process is.