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Middle-earth: Shadow of War has Lord of the Rings’ first ever black character

Shadow of War Baranor

Monolith are doing their best to update the Lord of the Rings universe to suit a modern audience. With Middle-earth: Shadow of War, it seems like they’re going to be a bit hit and miss.

Check out our list of upcoming PC games for more future hits. 

Recently, we found out they were making Shelob – an angry, giant spider – sexy. That’s one bit of creative freedom that we can take or leave, to be honest. That’s probably a miss.

In better news, the developers are using Shadow of War as a platform to introduce the first ever black character to Lord of the Rings. Not only that, but he’s going to have an entire DLC set around him. That’s a hit, baby.

As Waypoint report, the character is called Baranor and we’ll find out all about his story in a DLC called The Desolation of Mordor.

Monolith say adding a black character wasn’t a conscious decision, it was just “obvious.” It makes sense. I mean, there’s a lot more than just floppy-haired white dudes on our planet.

“I’m not sure if we looked at [Baranor’s creation] as a choice, but it was an easy one to make,” community manager Andy Salisbury tells Waypoint. “I don’t think we thought twice about it when we were writing the story and when we wrote Baranor. It was just kind of an obvious character for us to write.”