 The game has a standalone plot . Early in development the team consulted Peter Jackson , director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies , who advised them against a film tie @-@ in . According to de Plater , the story is character @-@ driven to be " authentic " relative to Tolkien 's themes . The game was written by Christian Cantamessa , who was lead writer and lead designer for Rockstar San Diego 's Red Dead Redemption . According to Roberts , the story is designed for accessibility by all players ( regardless of their familiarity with the franchise ) by creating natural interactions and believable relationships among the characters . Its protagonist is Talion , a half @-@ human , half @-@ wraith inspired by Boromir . Although Torvin was originally proposed as the game 's playable character , the idea was scrapped , as the team wanted to follow the philosophy of featuring standalone characters . The wraith is later revealed as Celebrimbor , creator of the Rings of Power . The development team picked Celebrimbor because they considered his backstory sufficiently interesting to expand the canon 's authenticity , allowing the team to write a story around power ( a major theme of the game ) . Another important component was Mordor 's tone . The team created a dark atmosphere with humor , reflected in dialogue and voice acting . This was handled by Dan Abnett , who previously worked on books related to Warhammer 's " dark and gritty " universe . The team hired David Salo , a linguist who worked on the Tolkien 's languages for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy , to develop the Orcs ' Black Speech . The game 's narrative was also inspired by BioShock , which according to de Plater , has successfully incorporated systemic stories with players ' choices . 
