LOTR - Treason Of Isengard Cancelled

Thanks to GameSpyDaily for the news that Vivendi's Lord Of The Rings game sequel, The Treason Of Isengard, has been cancelled. The PS2/Xbox title, a Surreal-developed follow-up to last year's disappointing Fellowship Of The Ring, was apparently "not going to achieve the strict... standards for our Tolkien games", and so the book-licensed game was axed, despite a number of public showings and the newly-unveiled ability to play as Treebeard. In other LOTR game news, EA has announced the ability to play online for its forthcoming, non-cancelled movie-licensed title, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King.

Comments

It's probably a good thing...

[Matias D'Ambrosio]

I played, or tried to, the Fellowship of the Ring game, the dialogs were boring (and to make it worse, I played the Spanish version, worst voice acting I've ever heard), the gameplay was ridiculous, when the ringwraiths first appear you are supposed to hide... only the three times I tried it they caught me before I even had time to read the instructions! Plus a couple of very obvious bugs, like when you first see a platform and you are instructed on how to jump and grab (the tree), if you try to do it it has a clipping error and pushes you down.
The LotR book deserves something much better, my bet is on fans getting it right (as a mod, most probably).

Originality and Gaming

[Txiasaeia]

...'The PS2/Xbox title, a Surreal-developed follow-up to last year's disappointing Fellowship Of The Ring, was apparently "not going to achieve the strict standards for our Tolkien games"...'

Well, hmm. I would argue that any game based on an already-existing property (be it a film, novel, or what have you) is not going to live up to the expectations created by the original product. A book is meant to be a book; the ideas, characters and plot contained therein are created specifically for the literary medium. Attempting to transfer these ideas to a radically different medium (i.e., a non-interactive literature ported to an interactive game) is going to result in loss of quality. The same is true for the movies; non-interactive literature to non-interactive film is better, but the films are not going to convey the books as they were originally intended.

In the case of Tolkien and *any* game based upon his works, it's like playing Beethoven on a $5,000 stereo system, and recording it to a tape deck with a microphone held up to one of the speakers. Ya, it *sounds* like Beethoven, but what's with the guy opening a bag of chips in the background?

I think that I speak for the majority of gamers when I say that we prize originality, not spin-offs from movies, books, card games or whatever, when it comes to video games.

TO WIT: Of course gamers' expectations are going to be dashed by the majority of games which have been transfered from a different medium. Then again, show me a RPG based on Rushdie's _The_Satanic_Verses_, and I'll gladly eat my words.