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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 1:16 pm 
Elven Warrior
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Sir Richard wrote:
Wait... A forcefield door? What is this game anyway? Middle-Earth future? :roll:

I think it looks so stupid. I don't much like devs making up their own stories when there are stories already out there. I played through Third Age and in the end didn't like it. It was weak. It was a waste of the LotR brand name. I'm tired of devs trying to make LotR more generic and accessible to all. Okay, PJ already did that. So the nonsense pulled in Conquest was just ridiculous. This just looks like more of the same...they're putting us in the north, but instead of letting us play as Elladan and Elrohir, instead of giving us some Rangers of the North as allies, or Halbarad, they have given us three very unrealistic characters to develop on our own: a female elf mage, a human ranger (the only acceptable of the lot), and a dwarf warrior (what is he doing with them??). Its a magical circle of friendship from all three main races, yay! The over-the-top gratuitous violence is the killer. What's the need? There's a difference between the violence from the movies, and the violence we see in this game--and the violence we see in this game is ridiculous, and merely done to grasp for a Mature rating and boost sales.

This fall, I'd rather purchase Battlefield 3 and Halo Anniversary.
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 5:45 pm 
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In-depth 1hr gameplay preview:
http://www.gamespot.com/shows/now-playi ... Btitle%3B1
It looks alright in my opinion. I'll get it because I'm a Lotr fan but from what I see this game looks just above mediocre, meaning good, but there are other greater RPG games out there. I pre-ordered it just today, I'll see how it is once I play it, though my PS3 just went bust today also, so I'm going to have to get that repaired next week.

And about the lore behind the "Forcefield" door; my memory of the books are pretty sketchy at best, but in RotK did Cirith Ungol had these statues that created an invisible forcefield that Shagrat couldn't easily escape with the mithril shirt? As for the gore it's about time because I'm tired of these PG13 games that has no blood when you're dealing with piercing and hacking weapons. If PJ had his way and wasn't limited by the movie industry, he would put a lot more gore into his film trilogy. Even in Tolkien's books it's not like the Children's "The Hobbit" book, you have severed human heads being flown by catapults, not a PJ movie idea but a Tolkien one.

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 6:07 pm 
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Jamros wrote:
instead of giving us some Rangers of the North as allies, or Halbarad, they have given us three very unrealistic characters to develop on our own: a female elf mage, a human ranger (the only acceptable of the lot), and a dwarf warrior (what is he doing with them??). Its a magical circle of friendship from all three main races, yay!


I agree with your statement. I would rather have self-made heroes rather than pre-made or have existing lore characters, but if we have the latter you know that purist will go off the bench screaming about the abuse of lore in a video game. Though having control of Elrond's sons would be nice, Glorfindel, Halbarad, or King Dain + many others. The trio that they present to us seems pretty generic. If we're going to be given a Ranger, Dwarf Warrior, Female Elf support; then why not just give us the original trio of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas respectfully? They're just the same except Legolas uses a bow instead of a staff.

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 4:17 am 
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Sacrilege83 wrote:
And about the lore behind the "Forcefield" door; my memory of the books are pretty sketchy at best, but in RotK did Cirith Ungol had these statues that created an invisible forcefield that Shagrat couldn't easily escape with the mithril shirt?


Yep: The SIlent Watchers. They stopped Sam as well until he loudly shouted the name of Elbereth to break the spell. Good memory mate 8)

And with this game, its a lot like the films, they have to make money so they're not just going to cater for us 'proper' Lotr fans, so they include some weird stuff. I'm not keen on this deal about an eagle always swooping in and saving their skins though, which is kinda what it looks like... :?

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 11:58 am 
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Ok im sorry but this is a video game, which is a market almost completely dominated by one genre and online gameplay, the fact that a lord of the rings game is being released in the same month as giants like battlefield, call of duty and skyrim is nothing short of suicidally brave, but it is still a video game, it is designed to be a game which is great fun to play, so what if it isn't following every word of tolkein lore, it's a familiar environment and your still supporting the franchise if you play it. You never know the game could be great, they could also poke fun at some of the non-linear elements of the game, maybe Radagast will walk in, look at the elf and say "I thought there were only 3 wizards?" As a sort of apology to hardcore tolkein fans. Im really pumped to see how the ettenmors and mount gundabad are gonna look, its the first time we will get to properly see them.

There has been a true to the books lotr game, it was the first one, the fellowship of the ring game, and tbh, it wasn't nearly as good a game as the others, which are much less tolkeiny. Tbh no-one threw a hissy fit when the elf stormcaller model was released, whats wrong with having one in this game? Also about the dwarf, i can think of many logical reasons why he is there, maybe he was one of the 3 dwarves who helped carry bilbo's stuff to rivendell, maybe he was one of gimli's mates who went to rivendell with him.

Im so glad that there is gonna be another great lotr game to keep the franchise alive, even if it aint following every word of tolkein lore, it's still a product of love and im sure it's gonna kick ass.

Anyway, if any of you are gonna get it for xbox live, then post ur gamertags, ill add you and we can do a hardcore playthough :L
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 4:02 pm 
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I'm not sure if the rest of you have noticed but the WORST thing is that theyu call the game's leading antagonist, Agandaur, 'Sauron's top lieutenant' Have those eejits forgot about the Witch-king, Khamul, the other Nazgul, Gothmog and the Mouth of Sauron?

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 5:52 pm 
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GothmogtheWerewolf wrote:
I'm not sure if the rest of you have noticed but the WORST thing is that theyu call the game's leading antagonist, Agandaur, 'Sauron's top lieutenant' Have those eejits forgot about the Witch-king, Khamul, the other Nazgul, Gothmog and the Mouth of Sauron?


Dude, who is gonna buy a game where the main bad guy is "This guy from accounting" Obviously their gonna describe the villain as a top lieutenant. As you rightly said there are multiple "top lieutenants" so whats wrong with them adding another?
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 6:49 pm 
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After all, Gothmog is a top lieutenant. besides, lietuenant has ranks above it anyhow!

Marsbar: HashutsBlessing - be there ;)
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 8:13 pm 
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I would describe myself as a gamer. I have purchased and played through nearly every LotR game that has been released since FotR, but I stopped around Aragorn's Quest. I gotta be frank. LotR games are usually mediocre, as a game in their own right. Let's just be honest about it. But there's always an additional factor involved in judging LotR games--the source material. For most gaming franchises, the canon exists within the games. That's how we experience the storylines of Gears of War, Halo, Alan Wake, etc. Sure, there is spin off material, but games come first. LotR games are based on either the films by Peter Jackson or an interpretation of the books. Or at least they should be. After the wave of films was over, I noticed a release of material that had little to do with the image of LotR presented by Jackson, or the Nordic-Anglo-Saxon-Medieval fantasy images presented by Tolkien. Games consisted of generic fantasy elements, with "The Lord of the Rings" slapped on the cover to get a cash-in on a brand name, and often times the results were just plain ugly. I actually quite dislike turn-based games, but I got Third Age because it was a LotR game. When I was done with it, not only did I find myself disliking the game play, but I was also very turned off by the story line. And even while I was bothered by numerous elements in Battle for Middle-earth II, I still bought it because I am an LotR fan. It turned out to not work on my PC (I bought an anthology), so I wasted more money and bought it for my Xbox 360. It wasn't fun. I enjoyed Halo Wars as a console RTS about 1000 times more. Additionally, even though Conquest looked ridiculous, and was a rather poor game besides that, I felt obligated to buy it as an LotR fan. I had to prove I loved LotR, and support LotR in video gaming. People had to see on my gamertag that I was a LotR fan! There is a long line of "bad" LotR games, bad in more than one sense. They betray their source material in the hope of creating a more compelling, original, or playable game within Middle-earth--but because of the often sub-par quality of the games in the end, its extremely hard to justify all the changes.

War in the North does not look like it will continue the trend of mediocrity. It actually looks like a decent game. But with all the characters from the LotR background included, its still hard to see War in the North as anything more than a fantasy game will "Lord of the Rings" slapped on it to get a cash in on a brand name. The creators are taking massive liberties with the source material in this game. There is quite a bit of material that has been left untouched in the ACTUAL LotR story, yet the developers felt the need to tell something original. Eagles saving the Free Peoples' butts seemed to be a pretty rare thing in Tolkien's works. Eowyn being a female in war was a big freaking deal, but they included a female elf warrior. Dwarves pretty much keep to themselves--Gimli cooperating with Legolas was a massive victory for racial relations. Would a ranger work with an elf and a dwarf over fellow rangers, without a specific purpose? Or even more likely, would a ranger not just work alone? Just the existence of the Fellowship of the Ring was a major deal in Middle-earth if you stop and think about it--but now the desire for a diverse group in a fantasy setting has become so necessary its a cliche. In order to make an epic video game, the developers took all the elements from the epic tale of the Lord of the Rings and crammed them into one game, experienced by three people we don't know anything about, who were important enough in Middle-earth history to defeat a major antagonist in the War of the Ring that we also know nothing about. Is it possible? Well, yes. Is it over the top? Goodness, yes. Is it far-reaching? Gosh, yes. There were and are other options for a new LotR video game. But if they wanted to stick with this idea, they really, really could have tweaked it to make it more appealing to LotR fans who appreciate the source material. Going up against Skyrim, Halo CEA, BF3, CoD: MW3, Uncharted 3, Gears 3, and AC:Revelations was a really dumb idea, and making the game more appealing to general audiences, who will preoccupied with the aforementioned games and more, was an extremely dumb decision. I'm also a member of Xbox360Achievements.org, where there are plenty of news posts related to War in the North; response to the game has been quite underwhelming. The general audience is still reeling from the generic Conquest, which was basically catered to them! Maybe if this game looked like more than just a co-op fantasy rpg, and looked more like the greatest LotR console game of all time, the game FANS have been waiting for, I'd get it. Seeing as its not, and money is limited, I'll be passing and getting something else.

I had to rant. I'm sorry. I'm just so sick of seeing one of my favorite films/epic novels continually abused by video game iterations. I just wanted to comment on one more thing...this game has an M for Mature rating. Once again, this was done to appeal to the masses. The films were rated PG-13 and had plenty of violence. But even more striking is the fact that Tolkien is often very restrictive in his descriptions of violence. I view the violence as WitN's attempt to keep up with the trends in video gaming--not to accurately present the violence as Tolkien would have wanted or expected. That's just my take on it, I haven't got a problem with the M-Rating.

One last thing--In my last post I said I was going with BF3 and HaloCEA this fall--but lol, I'm almost certainly actually going to pass on both of those as well. I've been playing a lot of my older games for achievements; I hope to purchase Gears of War 3 soon though. 8)
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 9:40 pm 
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SuicidalMarsbar wrote:
GothmogtheWerewolf wrote:
I'm not sure if the rest of you have noticed but the WORST thing is that theyu call the game's leading antagonist, Agandaur, 'Sauron's top lieutenant' Have those eejits forgot about the Witch-king, Khamul, the other Nazgul, Gothmog and the Mouth of Sauron?


Dude, who is gonna buy a game where the main bad guy is "This guy from accounting" Obviously their gonna describe the villain as a top lieutenant. As you rightly said there are multiple "top lieutenants" so whats wrong with them adding another?


because they said he's Sauron's top lieutennant not one of his top lieutennants. and i'd rather by a game were the 3 main guys and the villian are less overpowerful than they are.

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Sat Oct 29, 2011 3:25 pm 
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SuicidalMarsbar wrote:
Dude, who is gonna buy a game where the main bad guy is "This guy from accounting" Obviously their gonna describe the villain as a top lieutenant.


Actually Agandaur did work up the ranks from accounting on the 30th floor of Baradur, after 500 years it's about time he got a promotion that comes with a mountain high estate with a beautiful valley side view. People should give the guy a break.

@ Jamros after actually reading your long rant I get your meaning. I myself skipped on Third Age & Aragorn's Quest. Third Age had characters with American accents, no? I heard LOTR online is good, but I don't have time for MMORPGs. Sometime my Fanboyism leads me to buying a game, but sometimes I have to way that against the type of gameplay the game has and the whole package. I'm familiar with the WitN developer Snow Blind; liked their overhead action RPGs. I'm hoping WitN doesn't dissapoint me like Conquest did, though Conquest wasn't awfull it was just lacking.

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Sat Oct 29, 2011 3:53 pm 
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Yeah conquest is most certainly a couch game as opposed to a full on story/online game. And even as a couch game, it's lacking. Nonetheless im gonna get war in the north .

Also i doubt snowblind described agandar as saurons top lietenant, it was probably some clueless games reviewer writing a preview for the game who knows next to noting about lord of the rings.
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Sat Oct 29, 2011 3:54 pm 
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Sacrilege83 wrote:
SuicidalMarsbar wrote:
Dude, who is gonna buy a game where the main bad guy is "This guy from accounting" Obviously their gonna describe the villain as a top lieutenant.


Actually Agandaur did work up the ranks from accounting on the 30th floor of Baradur, after 500 years it's about time he got a promotion that comes with a mountain high estate with a beautiful valley side view. People should give the guy a break.


HOw would be top lieutennant above all the wraiths, Gothmog and the Mouth of Sauron in only 500 years. The Mouth served him for over a thousand years and still never got that Orthanc tower!

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Sat Oct 29, 2011 4:47 pm 
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Sacrilege83 wrote:
SuicidalMarsbar wrote:
Dude, who is gonna buy a game where the main bad guy is "This guy from accounting" Obviously their gonna describe the villain as a top lieutenant.


Actually Agandaur did work up the ranks from accounting on the 30th floor of Baradur, after 500 years it's about time he got a promotion that comes with a mountain high estate with a beautiful valley side view. People should give the guy a break.

@ Jamros after actually reading your long rant I get your meaning. I myself skipped on Third Age & Aragorn's Quest. Third Age had characters with American accents, no? I heard LOTR online is good, but I don't have time for MMORPGs. Sometime my Fanboyism leads me to buying a game, but sometimes I have to way that against the type of gameplay the game has and the whole package. I'm familiar with the WitN developer Snow Blind; liked their overhead action RPGs. I'm hoping WitN doesn't dissapoint me like Conquest did, though Conquest wasn't awfull it was just lacking.

Dude thanks for reading it, I didn't expect anyone to 8) It just felt good to let it out. Also, I have played LotRO. It is good, and free atm, but tbh I got bored of it and don't have time to devote to MMORPGs either. Its unfaithfulness to Tolkien imo is actually excusable--its not over-the-top or far-reaching at all, and being an MMORPG, the vast amount of enemies is necessary.
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Sat Oct 29, 2011 7:58 pm 
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GothmogtheWerewolf wrote:
Sacrilege83 wrote:
SuicidalMarsbar wrote:
Dude, who is gonna buy a game where the main bad guy is "This guy from accounting" Obviously their gonna describe the villain as a top lieutenant.


Actually Agandaur did work up the ranks from accounting on the 30th floor of Baradur, after 500 years it's about time he got a promotion that comes with a mountain high estate with a beautiful valley side view. People should give the guy a break.


HOw would be top lieutennant above all the wraiths, Gothmog and the Mouth of Sauron in only 500 years. The Mouth served him for over a thousand years and still never got that Orthanc tower!


I think he was joking mate xD
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Sat Oct 29, 2011 9:51 pm 
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I know but i really like the Mouth of Sauron and feel sorry for him :sad: and I hate that blasted Agandaur and that lead trio too! :-X

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:44 am 
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Witch king is the highest in command after Sauron :-X
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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:07 pm 
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Hilbert wrote:
Witch king is the highest in command after Sauron :-X


Exactly! :-X

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:13 pm 
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I have the game but I can't play it due to my PS3 being busted :(

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 Post subject: Re: The War In The North
PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 6:48 pm 
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If anyone gets to play it, please tell what you think of it. :)
I'm not sure yet if I will buy this game...

I wonder why it is so hard to make a LotR game that actually makes sense. :roll:

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