Shadow of Mordor DLC The Bright Lord promises a throw-down in Sauron's town

Celebrimbor

The Bright Lord, the final DLC release for Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, will set players off as the Elf Celebrimbor, in the days when he was still flesh and bone. The DLC picks up immediately after his flight from Mordor with the One Ring, and ends with a climactic battle with Sauron.

Design Director Michael de Plater told GameSpot that The Bright Lord will be "quite a lot tougher" than the original campaign. Orcs of this era are tougher, more heavily armored, more disciplined, and they'll actively hunt players, making ambushes more likely. But Celebrimbor has been upgraded as well, with greater speed, agility, and more powerful abilities.

"[The Bright Lord] has enabled us to go into Mordor at a time when Sauron’s power was at its height," de Plater said. "In Shadow of Mordor he’s just returned. It's all pretty much in chaos, Orcs are running around rioting, it’s very untamed. We were able to go back and forge the Orcs into this more disciplined and elite war machine."

The DLC will end with a battle against Sauron himself, which de Plater said will be "the most epic, momentous final boss fight" the studio could create. It's not likely to go well for Celebrimbor, but it will hopefully be a better experience for players: de Plater said the developers are aiming to "make up for the final [Shadow of Mordor] boss fight against the Black Hand, which wasn't so momentous."

One spot of caution for gamers playing Shadow of Mordor on a borderline system: The latest update on Steam warns that the Bright Lord DLC "requires slightly higher system specs than the Main Game Campaign," so players experiencing performance problems will need to lower their settings. The Bright Lord will be out "soon," but a solid release date has not yet been announced.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.