TheMiddle-earth: Shadow of Warmarketing campaign is heating up, and today’s contribution is a brand new trailer introducing the voice talents ofKumail Nanjiani. Nanjiani will be voicing an orc known as The Agonizer in the game. The Agonizer is a startlingly intelligent orc that appears to struggle with confidence issues. As such, he’s more than willing to stick players' heads on a pike, but he might struggle delivering the quip telling them he’s going to do so.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War’s Nanjiani is an increasingly popular actor in Hollywood these days, starring in five different movies this year including his self-written autobiographical filmThe Big Sick. Yet while many may recognize his voice from cartoons likeAdventure Time, where he voiced Prizmo, Nanjiani is also well-versed in video games. And not just in terms of acting. Ninjiani’s voiced Reggie in Telltale’s second season ofThe Walking DeadandJarun Tann inMass Effect: Andromeda.Nanjiani’s greatest experience, however, may come from from simply being a player.
Going back to Nanjiani’s stand-up comedian days, he was well known for dropping commentary on the latest games into his sets. In one set he breaks down howCall of Dutyset a level in the Pakistan city where he grew up, but put the wrong language on the street signs. In another set he talks aboutHeavy Rain, because just explaining that game’s premise is good for a few laughs. The guy loves games, and that’s one of the best parts of this trailer. It’s easy to tell Nanjiani is genuinely excited to be voicing this ridiculousMiddle-earth: Shadow of Warorc.
Nanjiani, fittingly, gives his thoughts on the orc he’s portraying inMiddle-earth: Shadow of Warin the video. In a weird sort of way, real life Nanjiani and The Agonizer are surprisingly similar well beyond just their voices:
“I hope being in the game doesn’t ruin the game for me, because I really want to play it. It’s gonna be tricky, right? ‘Cuz I’ll be like this guy doesn’t look like me, but he sounds like me, so I don’t want to kill him. Or maybe I do want to kill him? Maybe I’ll just murder myself.”
The Agonizer is an example of howMiddle-earth: Shadow of Warorcs will feature much richer personalities than those fromShadow of Mordor. Warner Bros. describes him as just one orc of many that players may or may not encounter through the updated Nemesis System.Bruz the Chopper, introduced during E3, is another example of these more interesting orcs that players can face in the open world. There’s clearly a goal here for players to have opponents worth battling against, rather than entirely RNG orcs that can often be underwhelming.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Waris coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC starting October 10.
