By Quintin Smith on December 21st, 2010 at 9:38 am.
I mean it! It would be a tradgedy if you forgot that Lord of the Rings: War In The North exists, because it looks like it might be alright? Who knows. As we can see in the following trailer, the co-operative action game is certainly looking co-operative and actiony. There’s also a new website, where you can read that players will be able to “bloody their axes on a wide range of deadly enemies and traverse both established and never-before-seen locations,” while enjoying “impactful character progression”. Hooray! I hate limp, soggy character progression, me.
I like the troll that comes bursting through the gate at the end. He screams, doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself as the cameras are still rolling, so just screams again.
21/12/2010 at 09:49 Rich says:
Anyone who is more familiar with LotR than me may be able to answer: are these “never-before-seen locations” because they’ve made this whole “war in the north” up?
21/12/2010 at 09:57 Schadenfreude says:
It’s all in the appendices.
There’s more stuff in the appendices than in the actual book. Hell, the whole War of the Ring is explained quite concisely in about two pages in the Silmarillion.
21/12/2010 at 10:35 Merlkir says:
In theory, yes. There was a war in the north and it was important. It’s nothing like what they’re trying to do here in this pos game though.
21/12/2010 at 21:25 Daave says:
The LotR books centre on the fellowship and are told from the point of view of those characters, but the war was being fought on many fronts. Obviously Tolkien never wrote explicitly about what happened at the other places, but the new locations in the game all previously existed. There is a considerable amount of licence taken by the developers, but the game world gets bigger and there’s more content so live and let live :)
21/12/2010 at 10:20 Toby says:
Looks great. I wouldn’t mind to do some orc stomping with my friends.
21/12/2010 at 10:22 mlaskus says:
There was a lot of shouting and angry stomping in this trailer. I like that.
21/12/2010 at 10:33 Merlkir says:
How I would love to forget this pile of dung exists. -_-
It may be best if nobody ever made any LOTR games, because with a few exceptions (ROTK,some may say BFME) they all fucken suck balls.
It’s ugly, the designers are nowhere near the level of the movie ones and it shows. They talk about the northern war being in the appendices, but it’s clear they made most of it up. No easterlings anywhere, just trolls, orcs and some weird werewolves. It’s not as horrendous as Conquest, but it’s close.
Just cut the shit. Everyone knows you’re just trying to milk the LOTR teat before the Hobbit movies come out.
21/12/2010 at 10:42 Rich says:
Oh boy. I wonder how they’re going to squeeze third-person action games out of The Hobbit.
You know they’ll try.
21/12/2010 at 10:47 Oozo says:
Call me optimistic, but for me, this certainly has a Return of The King-vibe to it. Which I didn’t play so much because it stayed slavishly close to the holy Tolkien-canon (which I have read, by the way , Silmarillion and all). But because it was a nice co-op brawler with reminiscences to a fiction I was familiar with and liked.
And hey, playing as Bard-or-whatever-generic-soldier shooting Smaug-or-whatever-generic-dragon-crosses-your-path out of the sky will certainly make for a great game! You could even implement cover mechanics! And exploding arrows! And stuff! Or stomping orcs with Beorn the Bear (complete with photo-realistic fur textures!) The possibilites are endless!
21/12/2010 at 11:38 Ian says:
I did quite like BFME, though even I could have gone with it being a touch more complex.
Also: Legolas was the best unit in the game by about a squillion miles.
21/12/2010 at 10:48 mondomau says:
Ragefest!
OMG this games is rubbish its not even based on the books like the film was because all that stuff totally happened in the book. this games is rubbish even tho i haven’t actually played it ye i still kno because i am a proper tolkien fan. rarararar.
I dunno – I think I’ll wait until it comes out and I can, you know, judge it on it’s own merits?
21/12/2010 at 10:55 Merlkir says:
People who are not fans of the books will probably like it, if it ends up being a good hack and slash. I won’t, because it simply isn’t LOTR. It’s a generic action game vaguely resembling the movies a bit.
So, yes. I rage, because it’s called LotR: War in the North. And it’s not that. It can be a good action game, I don’t care. It has mages casting force fields, giant hammers and made up characters. I don’t care. It’s shit for me.
21/12/2010 at 11:00 Rich says:
This just in: Gamers presented with promotional material in an effort to drum up pre-release interest and maybe pre-orders. Gamers start to make judgements about whether they might actually want to buy it based on said material.
If you’re a fan of LotR, even if you’re not a fully paid up member of the Cult of Tolkien, you’ll be interested in how they’re treating the franchise. Where does the story come from? Is it the product loving modification of Tolkien actual words, or the spewings of a AAA-game writing hack?
21/12/2010 at 11:26 Xercies says:
I think no one has truly gotten the handle of LOTR in game form at the moment and its very simple to do basically, a kind of adventure/light RPG game where you travel as Frodo or Bilbo on his adventure.
21/12/2010 at 11:11 Edgar the Peaceful says:
‘Impactful’ is almost as bad a word as ‘Addicting’
21/12/2010 at 18:40 Shadram says:
It’s not as bad as “tradgedy”, though. But “addicting” is definitely the worst, you’re right about that.
21/12/2010 at 11:34 Doesntmeananything says:
That troll is certainly screaming for a bigger budget.
21/12/2010 at 11:59 The Hammer says:
That didn’t sound like Lord of the Rings at all.
Interest in this game… slipping.
21/12/2010 at 12:03 Jake says:
The fellow in that screenshot with the… combat oar, or whatever it is, looks a bit like Simon Pegg.
21/12/2010 at 12:21 Hmm-Hmm. says:
*sigh* I I thought they’d stopped looking for ways to exploit ‘the brand’ of Middle Earth.
21/12/2010 at 12:27 Gothnak says:
Wow, the advert in front of an action game set in Middle Earth is for women’s perfume?
That’s some mis-targeted advertising right there! It reminds me of a Flight of the Conchords song.. ;)
21/12/2010 at 14:06 Gurthang says:
God this is horrible! These people really like to use the LoTR’s name to make a buck.
This is the main reason why the only interesting thing Tolkien-related about gaming right now is the Middle Earth Roleplaying Project. That’s a proper Lord of The Rings game, or so it seems to be..
http://www.moddb.com/mods/merp-middle-earth-roleplaying-mod
21/12/2010 at 14:17 Merlkir says:
Subtle. :D
Should I talk about my LOTR mod as well?
21/12/2010 at 14:27 Gurthang says:
IF you’re implying that I work on this mod, than you’d be wrong.
I’ve simply been following development for a few years. :D
21/12/2010 at 14:43 Merlkir says:
A full Oblivion conversion is an insane task. I’m a bit sceptical, even though the trailers look nice.
We’re “just” doing a total conversion of Mount and Blade – much less work than making a full functioning world like there is in Oblivion.
21/12/2010 at 16:08 romanlevin says:
Was there a wizard there? Because it seemed like someone spelled someone aflame. I don’t need my LotR stuff to be very canon-conforming, but having a playable wizard character is just insane.
EDIT: Yup, there was a person shooting flame out of their staff. Also, I didn’t see the double-screaming troll.
21/12/2010 at 16:48 Jimbot says:
All I care about is Snowblind is making another coop hack n’ slash game. The Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games are among my favorite multiplayer games. There has been a severe lack of those types of games this generation.
21/12/2010 at 17:16 scottossington says:
I am not so interested in this game, but I have to say I larfed when the troll bit off that bloke’s head at the end. I also have to admit after viewing it twice I did not see this double roaring troll.
21/12/2010 at 18:09 ScubaMonster says:
Is that a Gamorrean Guard from Jabba’s palace in that screenshot?
21/12/2010 at 21:29 Daave says:
I would really like to get back into this as I bought the game on launch and renewed my subscription for Moria (which was a blast). But my attempts to reset my password have failed, as have my attempts to contact some sort of tech support. Could someone help me out? I can log into my page on codemasters and check the games linked to my account etc but when I try the same username and password in the Lotro client window it fails, and trying to reset it doesn’t seem to work :(
22/12/2010 at 07:21 Devan says:
At first glance, I too thought this was a Lotro article. I can’t help you with Codemasters since I’m from Canada, but I’m sure if you can access your account page then there must be a support link you can access from there.