War Of The Ring - Tolkien RTS Previewed

Thanks to Blue's News for pointing to a new RPGVault interview with Liquid Entertainment about their forthcoming Tolkien-themed PC RTS, War Of The Ring. This Vivendi-published title, which we first mentioned a while back, is from the developers of Battle Realms, and is intended to be the first in an ongoing series. Topics commented on include setting - "..we will be focusing on the time of the Fellowship, most of the battles will occur in and around Rohan, with some battles in Mirkwood, The Iron Hills and Northern Gondor", and the developers also mention they want to "..please the hardcore Tolkien fans and RTS fans without alienating the casual Tolkien fan" - a tricky task?

Comments

A book?

[termos]

Now there is a game and a movie! Does anyone know when the book will be out?

Re:A book?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you people ever get tired of this fucking joke every time there's a LotR post? Christ.

Great!

[swat_r2]

Now that we'll have the RTS, the FPS should soon follow, because God knows they are both dying genres! Here's hoping that The Matrix Trilogy is granted the same honour - you thought bullet time was slow..

Bleh

[*xpenguin*]

Might as well just rename it to "Warcraft III"

Re:Bleh

[bedurndurn]

Oh my gosh yes... I think Blizzard's going to be suing somebody in the near future.

Re:Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

As an insider in the industry, I have a little anecdote that might prove interesting to those so quick to accuse Liquid of copying Blizzard.

A few years back, a friend of mine was a tester at Blizzard. One day, a new RTS came out called Battle Realms by some no-name developer kicking out their first title. Blizzard took notice because at the time, this title mopped the floor with their working version of Warcraft III (one of the many reasons it kept getting delayed?). They sat their testers down and had them play Battle Realms and make lists of what they liked and didn't like about the game. All of a sudden you have heroes in Warcraft 3 that you can train who have special abilities!?

How innovative!?

Every single unit in Battle Realms has a Battle Gear, as well as the heroes you can train. Warcraft 3 has another attribute which allows the heroes to use their special abilities . Battle Realms focused on smaller armies where your troops actually counted for something - notice how Warcraft 3 attempted to do the same (but didn't pull it off).

If you haven't checked out Battle Realms, I would recommend doing so... It was released in 2001.. well before Warcraft 3..

bleh...

[ceejayoz]

Judging from the single screenshot on that page, it's not going to be a game I buy.

If there's going to be a LOTR RTS, I want epic scale - something like Shogun: Total War. Thousands of units battling it out, not 10-20 units.

Warcraft III made that same mistake. :-/

Use the Preview Button?

[Bagels]

Perhaps the person who posted the article should have used the preview button, to avoid embarassing typos like "Tolkein," which appears twice (once in the title, another in the description)? As for the game itself... unfortunately, it looks uncomfortably like a WarCraft III clone using the land of Middle Earth as a draw. I'm also a tad concerned about one aspect of the interface - some of the screenshots would seem to indicate a limit to the number of units selectable at once? This makes it a bit hard to order your thousand-strong horde of Uruk-Hai to attack Helm's Deep as one unified, screaming mob.

Re:Use the Preview Button?

[d3kk]

Not if they implement any kind of hotkey grouping system, as many RTS games have. How many units you can select at once really isn't a big deal. Hit 1, Hit Attack, Click. Rinse and repeat.

Re:Use the Preview Button?

[simoniker]

Thanks for the pick-up on the Tolkien thing - unfortunately, there's no sci-fi authors in our spellchecking software, and also no accounting for mental aberrations on my part.

I think this game definitely has smaller amount of units than, say, the Total War series (which they seem to mention, a little defensively, in the interview.) Not necessarily a bad thing, I guess, as long as you can control the units you do have properly.

Re:Use the Preview Button?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to say props to simoniker for being an editor that:

1. Acknowledges typos (even gracefully!), and
2. Bothers to read and respond to comments in his section.

Thanks. If they were all like you, this would be a much, much better site.

Possible

[Song for the Deaf]

I think it's definitley possible to please both the casual and hardcore fan. Just be true to Tolkiens' history and geography and keep the gameplay simple, well paced and fun.

Anyone played LOTR Risk? That game accomplishes pretty much what the devolopers of this game wish to achieve. While that game had its faults (no Mordor territories), every LOTR or Risk fanboy I've played it with has enjoyed it completley.

With Warcraft III doing so well and the copycat nature of the industry there's gonna be a billion RTS games anyway. Might as well have them in interesting, fun universes.

Looks just like Battle Realms!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks just like Battle Realms! Funny That!! ;-)

Oddly enough, a little blast from the past.

[Monkeylaser]

War in middle earth. A strategy game from way back in the EGA days of gaming. Quite fun, and quite true to the books. Amusingly, I don't think it was possible to beat that game by gathering a large army and whooping on Sauron's ass. Why? Because you had to get the ringbearer to Mount Doom together with Gollum. It was quite a time killer back in the day, but there was an easy cheat for the game. This cheat was amusing. Ents and Huorns could kill virtually anything, and the Dark Tower's forces ALWAYS attacked Minas Tirith and Helm's deep, so if you got control of the Ents and sent them there, well, let's just say it was all over for the Dark Lord. Heck, you could even invade Mordor with the Ents and Huorns if you felt like REALLY abusing the game.