Slashdot Mirror
On Visualizing A Virtual Middle-Earth
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the Middle-Earth Online website's new developer diary, in which the PC MMORPG's production designer Marc 'Taro' Holmes talks about the "epic responsibility" of visualizing Tolkein's world. He discusses some of the visual controversies: "The debates go back and forth, seemingly without end - does the Balrog have wings or is he made of living flame? Do dwarven women really have beards? How tangible are the Nazgul? How beautiful are the elves?", and shows some early concept art for the barrow-downs at Tyrn Gorthad.
just think of all those sexy bearded dwarven women. Can't beat that. You can keep your scrawny PEF elves. Human women are so boring. Gimme a nice stout, hairy she-dwarf any day.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Yeah, I know they're saving Rohan and Gondor for expansion packs, but still. I want my City of Stone to be really, really big. And not at all like Camelot in DAoC.
The possibilities of this game are endless. Ents, Orcs, goblins, hobbits, trolls, humans, elves, and dwarves would be the starting species. You could farm potatoes or craft rings(at max level) or even go looking for loot. Imagine farming potatoes for some cash, then being invited by a group of elves to hunt for loot.
For a lot of people now, the LoTR movies will have defined exactly what many of the aspects of middle earth look like. Previously it was mostly about imagining it yourself from the books, but now elves, dwarves and even balrog have a certain look. This would be especially true for the Masses who didn't even read the book. but saw the movie and now know what a nazgul steed looks like...
This is what happens when you try to create your own idea of something that was written down. Sometimes every detail isn't clear, and you shouldn't dwell on this, because nobody except the author himself can confirm that anything's right.
Jonahweb.com has stuff.
From the article (emphasis mine):
> Middle-earth is not just an alternate history
> of Britian - it's a world of its own -
> something that is a distillation of all of our
> myths and cultures. There is definitely
> something Egyptian about the careful
> preparation of the hobbit bodies.
See, that is just the kind of cultural-relativist drivel which, taken to its extreme, will spell the end of all critical thought in Western society.
I am all for artistic license, believe in cultural synergy and admire the guy's artwork, but claiming to recognize anything Egyptian in Tolkien's resoundingly occidental barrow downs is the effluvium of a mind untethered by any historical knowledge or critical literary faculty. Discerning readers will appreciate the difference between 'This reminded me of Egyptian burial rituals' and 'There is definitely something Egyptian about this'.
In very general terms, in LotR 'west' means good and 'east' means bad. I am not saying that Tolkien was a racist, but he was certainly a cultural supremacist and quite clear about exactly which cultures he was idealizing/commemorating.
Maybe I'm overreacting to the poor choice of words of someone whose main competence is in the field of the visual arts, but I wish people would stop equating cultural conventions based on superficial similarities. Pace Oscar Wilde, aesthetics are not the same as ethics.
Sentimentality is merely the Bank Holiday of cynicism.
- Oscar Wilde
The art for this game is sure to be spectacular. However, I wish that the designer would spend less time resolving which art is more true to the books, and more time figuring out how to keep the PCs more in character with the books.
As a thread above this points out, the real problem with MMORPGs is that they much less to do with RPG and more to do with the O. I would prefer art that didn't quite smack of my recollection of the books, if the designers found a way to eliminate 'leet speaking gamers, and OOC gaming in general. That breaks my sense of involvement with an MMORPG more than the dubious art ever will.
--
$tar -xvf
...that most of Middle Earth was conjured in the imaginations of creative readers.
In fact, Tolkien was criticized by some of the literary "experts" of his day for including so much detailed description (which had gone out of style and continues to be out of style among the even-more-attention-challenged generations spawned by TV and MTVJ). While Tolkien himself may have adopted this style to mimick the description-rich epics he was trying to evoke, he also professed a strong dislike for the visually impoverished prose of his critics.
And for those who skimmed the books too quickly to notice the lavish descriptions Tolkien even offered paintings and drawings to make clear exactly what he was talking about.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
...does not emerge from cultural relativists alone.
Some of what this poster says is easy to agree with: Tolkien was not attempting to evoke Egyptian culture in his description of the hobbits prepared for some eternal sleep in the barrow-downs. And the author of this piece deserves to be taken to task for it.
But stardeep commits the same crime of which he accuses the artist when he confuses "This reminded me of cultural relativism" with "There is definitely something relativistic about this." Then he goes way out of bounds when he says Tolkien was "certainly a cultural supremicist." Tolkien's clear-headed denunciation of the Nazis in the late '30s made it absolutely clear what he thought of cultural supremacists as well as racists.
What is particularly insidious about this particular brand of drivel is that we know precisely why Tolkien deliberately limited the cultural influences from outside Britain when he created the images he sought to portray in The Lord of the Rings. He felt the British Isles were culturally deprived by the lack of depth (in the historical sense) of their literary traditions. He actually wrote the books out of almost a cultural inferiority complex (or to overcome such). He was quite clear on this subject. The only sense he was expressing a feeling of cultural supremacy was the sense that he felt the culture he was concentrating on deserved to have a deeper tradition. It was not "supreme" but good enough to have more than it had (he associated the truncation of that tradition with the Norman invasion).
The truth (and we can talk about "truth" here...as least in the sense of the truth as Tolkien expressed it) is that Tolkien tried very hard to control the way that different cultures (such as the Egyptian and Greek cultures) influenced The Lord of the Rings. Greek myths (particularly the myth of Atlantis) had a direct impact on the stories, but he tried to keep the cultural impact limited as much as possible to the cultures most likely to have had a direct impact on the culture of the British Isles. Cultures such as the Greeks and the Egyptians were deliberately used as models as to what an historically deep culture would be like, but not as models for how bodies might look prepared for burial.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
...the eternal debate about Gollum.
Almost every artist who has ever portrayed him has made him the color of a blind cave fish. This directly contradicts Tolkien's unequivocal descriptions in numerous places, where he is always portrayed as completely black, with glowing green eyes.
The translucent grey is just easier to do.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I think it depends on how well you visualised Middle-earth to start with, and how closely the films conform to your ideas. In my case at least the plot of the films hasn't affected how I imagine Middle-earth at all as far as I can tell. For example ,Peter Jackson' Shire wasn't, and still isn't, how I've imagined the Shire (too 'Celtically', not enough like the English countryside Tolkien based it on), though Bag End is. The films, which I like with reservations, came close at a few points, but that was it.
Where they have had an effect, as far as I'm concerned, is the faces of some of the characters. My Gandalf now looks like Sir Ian, same with the characters playing Eowyn, Theoden, Bilbo and Boromir. This isn't necessarily anything to do with how they are played in the film, particularly with Theoden who was never possessed by Saruman, simply that they looked right, and when they spoke sounded right as well. On that basis the film have enriched my ideas of the books, which I think is the mark of good casting and adaptation.
Maybe it's because I read a lot, and a lot of the books I like have been made into films of TV series, so I'm used to enjoying films for what they are, but still knowing they aren't the real thing. For example David Lean's 'Great Expectations' from 1946 is one of my favourite films, but compared to the book, misses out huge chunks, and changes characters all over the place.
That's different than saying, "This scene reminded me of Egyptian burials, so I decided to use an Egyptian artistic motif."
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
They have beards. Didn't you know?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
People who are worth listening to, stand on their own and build their own reputations.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.