Watch Talion ride dragons and battle Balrog in latest Shadow of War trailer

Orcs aren't the only nasties roaming Middle Earth, and in Shadow of War you're going to have to confront some real brutes. The latest video shows hero Talion face up to a fiery Balrog (you know, of the famous 'You Shall Not Pass' scene from the films), a tree spirit and what looks like an armoured, camouflaged Caragor.

To defeat them you're going to need more firepower that just a sword, and Talion has just the thing. The trailer shows him riding on the backs of two dragons as well as on the shoulders of a huge ice troll that can freeze orcs in a single breath.

There's no actual gameplay, which is a shame, but it all looks suitably impressive. The orcs are going to be the focus of the game but it won't hurt to throw in some larger enemies now and again, I reckon. What do you think?

Watch the trailer, first shown during Microsoft's Gamescom presentation, below:

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.