Monolith Can't Reproduce Orc Resurrection Bug in Shadow of Mordor

Shadow of Mordor has been out or a few weeks now, and, bluntly, its pretty fantastic.  Gamers around the world have been having a gay ol time hunting down Orcs and killing them en masse, and a great deal of hype has been raised around the Nemesis System: a tangled web of Orcish politics that you can manipulate through assassination and control, as well as build relationships with the big orcs you hunt and slay. 

Its a well-known fact that while your character in Shadow of Mordor will come back from death, the same rule applies to many of the Warcheifs and Captains you find yourself killing: on occasion, theyll come back from death with fresh scars from your old battles, which is a neat and interesting system to keep you from getting too complacent and, possibly, to bring back and old friend you especially enjoyed.

The problem was, while no one can argue the enemies in this game are resilient, they probably shouldnt be coming back from the dead after being decapitated.



Its a problem gamers have been having with the game since day one, an often-issued complaint online on the official forums and Reddit, when Orcs return from the dead after what should have very much been a completely fatal blow.  At first, when made aware of the issue, developer Monolith assured players that decapitation and the execution command was a 100% surefire way to kill an orc with no risk of him returning, yet despite that assurance, players continue to report Orcs screwing their once-removed heads back to their bloody necks and continuing to antagonize them.

Heres where things get interesting.  Monolith has once again issued a statement talking about the issue of resurrecting orcs: Ill let you read the interesting bit below.

The only way to ensure an orc does not return is to decapitate him in battle, which occurs using certain combination moves. If an orc is not decapitated, despite having the appearance of being killed, he may survive the fight and return to battle later on in the game.

The Monolith team has received player reports of decapitated orcs returning from death but in internal testing have yet to be able to recreate an instance of a decapitated orc surviving.

That last bit is extremely fascinating: the fact that so many players could report this problem, yet Monolith is unable to find it themselves, is quite the pickle indeed, especially since there doesnt seem to be any videos showing off the decapitation-resurrection in practice.   It could be that Monolith hasnt tried hard enough, or that it simply doesnt believe the problem is real and its merely trying to make concessions, but either way I think its going to be interesting to see how they react if players can prove that decapitation isnt the end-all its supposed to be.

Or maybe its one big conspiracy.  Who can really say?