For Monolith's Shadow of Mordor, Middle-earth has always been a bit of an odd setting. While it was great fun to expose the game's orcs as a one-man guerrilla army to harrowing physical and psychological battles, it did not always match the lofty, mythic tone of Tolkien's original story or Peter Jackson's film.

Perhaps the reason for this is that this game was once upon a time a Batman game. Codenamed "Project Apollo," "What Became Mordor" was initially intended to be a Dark Knight thing set in the Nolanverse of Batman movies. However, thanks to a post by Twitter user Dageekydude (via IGN), we got a glimpse of the original.

It looks, well, pretty Arkham-like. That's just as well: the combat and movement in Shadow of Mordor feels very Rocksteady-inspired as is, and wrapping it literally in Batman's skin only makes the comparison more obvious. We see an open world, upgrade trees, glide-based movement, and countless quest pop-ups.

There's also Arkham-style stealth and detective work, which will probably spur your perp-pounding. In fact, judging by what we see in the tweets (which, admittedly, are far from the full game), it was probably for the best that Project Apollo was reworked into a Middle-earth game. The similarity to "Arkham" in many other aspects would have obscured the genius of its true innovation, the "nemesis system".

Because, let's be honest, none of us would remember "Shadow of Mordor" as fondly as we do if it were not for its handcrafted Orc Trauma Simulation System (OTSS). It is my eternal regret that few games have tried to take this game down. Sure, there is the fact that Warner Bros. applied for a patent, but game developers are smart. They could incorporate a loyalty and rivalry system into the game and not risk being reported by hordes of lawyers.

If not, we'll just have to wait and hope for Monolith's next Wonder Woman game.