Frodo, the ring can wait!
If you were setting aside your August plans to jump back into Middle-earth, then I have some bad news for you; WB Games has announced that Middle-earth: Shadow of War has been delayed until October, 10, 2017. In a further bit of disappointment, it looks like New Zealand, Australia and Japan will have totally different (and unannounced) release dates.
The reason for the delay? I’ll just let WB’s words speak for themselves:
Middle-earth: Shadow of War expands gameplay in every dimension, including the massive open world, the story, the RPG systems, and personal player stories of the Nemesis System. As with Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Monolith is committed to delivering the highest quality experience. In order to do this, we have made the difficult decision to move our launch date to ensure that Middle-earth: Shadow of War will deliver on that promise.
It’s strange how we’ve entered a period of the games industry where polishing a game is seen as something to be sorry for. I’d rather developers give more ambiguous release windows (like saying Fall/Winter) instead of rushing products out to market. Thankfully, Monolith has always been pretty damn good with the quality of their work, so I doubt we’ll see Shadow of War launch with many bugs.
As for when we’ll see more of the game, it looks like E3 is going to have something for us. Hopefully we won’t forget about it.
Official Announcements [Monolith]