A Shadow of War developer who died of cancer has been immortalised as an orc slayer in the game.
Monolith executive producer Michael Forgey, who died from a brain tumour last year aged just 43-years-old, appears in Shadow of War as DLC character Forthog Orc-Slayer.
If you have the £3.99 DLC, Forthog will on occasion appear to one-hit kill whichever enemy the player character is up against. Think the Mysterious Stranger from the Fallout series.
Forgey, who was married with three children, was a music enthusiast who played in a band made up of Monolith staff called Orc Slayer. Accordingly, Forthog Orc-Slayer wields a devastating guitar axe, which you can see in the video below. (The song was written and performed by Forgey himself.)
WB Games will donate $3.50 of every Forthog Orc-Slayer purchase to the Forgey family through 31st December 2019, Monolith said.
In the video below, Monolith studio head Kevin Stephens and director of art Phil Straub remember Forgey, celebrate his life and explain how Forthog came to life.
"Mike was larger than life," Stephens said. "Mike was an incredible inspiration to our team. He was our front man in many respects. Everybody loved Mike."
"Mike was a fantastic guy," Straub added. "He was a guy who always wanted to help people. He was a great manager of people."
The cinematic trailer created by Monolith staff for the Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC was designed to represent Forgey's personality, Straub explained. At the end we see Forthog smirk before running towards a number of enemies, the image eventually concealed by a blizzard.
"He's going to the Undying Lands," Straub said. "He's embracing that."
You can pre-purchase the Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC on Steam and Xbox One now. He'll be available to buy on PS4 when the game launches in October.
AngerIssuez on September 1st, 2017 at 14:06 UTC »
Can I just send them money instead of buying DLC in an always online single player lootbox game? I want to support them but not WB.
B0Y0 on September 1st, 2017 at 13:42 UTC »
Well, ~70% of US sales excluding some states. Nobody fucks with Steam's cut.
HoneypuffCereal on September 1st, 2017 at 12:50 UTC »
Just FYI, according to the Shadow of War twitter, only the US will have their $ go to the family(and that's limited to all states that aren't AL, HI, IL, MA, MS, SC). Until further clarified, people outside of the US will probably have their money go to WB.
EDIT: Just 1 family.
EDIT 2: Here is the tweet in case anyone wants to read it for themselves and ask developers questions on this.
EDIT 3: For future fans of the game, here is the closest thing to an official Discord(voice & text chat application) server. The devs visit this server semi frequently and we're currently getting in touch with them on setting up a GoFundMe page, so people who feel like can contribute.
EDIT 4: Got something more direct, you can donate straightup over here, or you can buy Mike's music over here. Monolith (the devs) used Mike's music for the trailer in the tweet, in case you liked it you can get an album that he finished for his bucketlist.