Procedural Nemesis Hierarchy

Characters are assembled from parts. Each commander receives a name, a voice, a face, strengths, fears and a position in a hierarchy, and every encounter writes to their record: scars from a failed kill, promotion after a victory, a grudge that surfaces later in dialogue. Positions in the hierarchy are contested by the generated characters themselves, so the political structure keeps changing whether or not the player intervenes.

Monolith Productions built the system for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor in 2014, combining the generated activity of open-world design with the faction standing that role-playing games had used since the 1990s. Its insight was that memory, not writing, produces attachment: a randomly assembled orc becomes a character the moment he survives an encounter and mentions it afterwards, which authored dialogue cannot manufacture.

Personality generated by rules is the strongest case the medium has made against the assumption that character has to be written, and it remains almost unrepeated. Part of the reason is legal, since the publisher holds a patent covering the method, and part is practical, because the technique needs a large cast of expendable enemies, extensive voice work, and a game structured so that the player will lose repeatedly.