Middle Earth: Shadow of War PC Performance Review

4K Screenshot Graphical Comparison

Graphically, Middle Earth: Shadow of War is very scalable, offering graphical options that will allow gamers to easily scale the game to work well on most modern systems.  

We can see that when this game is scaled back to its lowest settings that the only word that can be used to describe it is awful, with distant buildings losing almost all of the game’s texture detail and details like the portcullis looking patchy and almost invisible at this distance.  

Moving up to the game’s medium settings we can see that texture and shadow details make a significant leap forward, with lighting also making a significant improvement. 

High settings take things another step forward, increasing the quality of the game’s environments significantly with towers and the fortress walls themselves making a significant leap forward in graphical quality. Texture detail takes another step forward, delivering sharper details on armour, scenery and characters. 

Moving up to high and Ultra we see much more subtle improvements, with increased shadow detail being the most noticeable. At Ultra (with the 4K Texture pack installed) details on the environment are improved significantly, though the most notable changes in detail come when looking at Talion and Orcs, which is especially useful given the number of Orc captain monologues this game has. 

(Lowest (Left) vs Medium (Right))

(Medium (Left) vs High (Right))

(High (Left) vs Very High (Right))

(Very High (Left) vs Ultra (Right))