I was brought onto Middle-earth: Shadow of War as a contractor to fill the world with content as the team approached their ship date. While most of the game's framework was already in place, I made my mark in the implementation of 18 missions including both main story missions as well as side quests.
My favorite mission I worked on was 'Tirith', where the player flies around on a dragon defending a fortress against waves of enemies.
The concept given to me had players fighting boulder-throwing trolls ontop of towers. I implemented this mission as designed, but it had one major problem – it wasn't fun.
The trolls did not move and had enormous health pools, so our playtesters ended up hovering in place while spamming the attack button and occasionally strafing to avoid boulders until all the trolls were dead.
After several iterations it became clear the design wasn't working. I proposed redesigning the mission, leaning into the power fantasy of flying on a dragon.
My new design felt closer to a one-man tower-defense, where players leverage the speed and power of their dragon to rush waves of weaker enemies approaching the keep, wiping out large hordes with their dragon's powerful fire attacks.