Warner Brothers and Monolith Announce Guardians of Middle-Earth

no. wonderful looking video, but absolutely ridiculous.

This looks fucking atrocious. Like it has been conceived by people whose only exposure to Tolkein was watching a highlight reel of action scenes from the Peter Jackson movies. And this highlight reel was composed 75% of footage of action scenes from the Matrix Reloaded. This trailer is giving me horrible visions of a committee saying "People like this Gollum guy right? Lets have him fight like Jet Li!".

@EchoEcho War in the North was the Tolkein based game that I enjoyed the most to date. The somewhat dismissive quicklook was not really a fair representation of it. It was clearly made to be a supplement to the Jackson films rather than Tolkein's literature and it has some atrocious bugs which are game breaking if you do not know how to avoid them and have never been patched. But in terms of presenting something that captured the tone of those films it was a success, and most importantly it presented an original narrative and some original settings not seen in the films, it was not a lazy execution of "Hey guys remember this fight scene from the films well here you get to play Gandalf in it!" that most of the other games seem to be. The art direction was great, I particularly liked the atmosphere in the Barrow Downs, and it played pretty fun as well.

If Snowblind were given time and budget (and proper QA) they could have made something really special.

sold

Oh god, this looks horrible and nothing lIke the spirit of lotr

Chat will consist of:

Goddamnit, who fed legolas.

go back to LoL Gandalf.

or

misterfister69(Sauron): Me Mid or I feed!

@jessej07: I understand your position as well, and I'm sure -- from a gameplay perspective, at least -- I could enjoy playing through War in the North with a friend. In fact, I'm actually rather curious about what they do with it, story-wise, since Lord of the Rings Online also touched on the same subject, and I'd like to see how War in the North's version of events differs.

That said, I will freely admit that my reasons for not having played it are nitpicky, but I feel strongly about them nonetheless. Tolkien's work is one of the few franchises that I'm this nitpicky about, because there are next to no games that truly treat the setting and its lore with respect. When it comes to War in the North specifically, the first (and primary) thing that turned me off was their portrayal of magic.

The Loremaster class displays a flashy use of magic that is inconsistent with what we know about it from the books. In the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, the only examples of "flashy" magic that we see are performed by the wizards. Even then it's very subtle compared to something like D&D, and most Elven magic is even more subtle than that. It just seems to me that there are ways to go about achieving a more or less similar result, gameplay-wise, without resorting to making the Loremaster look like a low-level D&D Wizard.

Again, is that nitpicky? Probably. But like I said, if you're going to make a game set in Middle-Earth -- a fantasy world much more grounded in reality -- then you should play to that as a strength, not try to spice it up and make it more flashy, because then you only succeed in creating a poor man's D&D.

Well Monolith is making it, so what's the worst that can happen? I'll probably just stick with my Dota 2 though.

.......Of all the things that could inspire hope in a LotR game.... this was not it.

@EchoEcho: I understand wanting to conserve the integrity of something you care about, but War in the North was more than a really fun game- it embraced the mythology of middle earth and put players right in the middle of the war. It was a great story that paralleled what we've actually observed in the books/films. I've merely read the books and enjoyed them, I don't hold them in some high esteem that makes them untouchable. Sounds like any LotR game or other property not approved by the late author himself wouldn't gain your approval... I totally get it. But I just wanted to say that WitN was actually really fun (and co-op too!). If you can bring yourself to give it a shot you might find some of the writing and tying into the existing fiction was quite clever :) But honestly, I totally get it.

When I think formidable LOTR fighters I think....Gollum?

When did Gimli steal Thor's hammer?

I hope it's more SMNC than DOTA or LOL

That's a lot of damn acronyms.

@cruxking said:

@EchoEcho said:

What a disgusting abuse of the Lord of the Rings license. And I thought War in the North and the Battle for Middle-Earth games were stretching things too much. This just takes the cake. The very gross, insulting, unfortunate cake.

how were the battle for middle earth games insulting? they were totally competent rts games, not amazing, but also not shit.

that is unless you're talking about the console versions of them. those sucked.

I'm not talking about the quality of the games, I'm talking about the liberties they took with the license. Speaking of which, while I'm at it, you can add Lord of the Rings: Conquest to that list.

There is every possibility that Guardians of Middle-Earth will be very competent from a gameplay perspective. The fact that it plays so fast and loose with the lore of Tolkien's world is what is insulting about it and the vast majority of other LotR-licensed games, including Battle for Middle-Earth.

I know some people don't care, but as someone who grew up reading Tolkien and really enjoys his vision of Middle-Earth, it depresses me when a game twists and distorts it for the sake of gameplay, completely unnecessarily.

There is a feel and atmosphere to Middle-Earth, and a depth to the lore, that sets it apart from things such as D&D, Warhammer, and WarCraft -- and if you are going to choose to make your games set in that universe, then you should be embracing that atmosphere and lore so that it stands out from the crowd, not turning it into D&D with Lord of the Rings characters.

But since they are essentially only using the Lord of the Rings license to cash in on its popularity, I don't think maintaining the integrity of the property is high on their list of concerns.

What a bummer, was hoping Monolith were working on something worthwhile. Hopefully this is just a side game for something I actually give a damn about. 

plz nerf Witch King, conditional immortality is op

Gollum and Sauron either have completely unbalanced stats or unrealistic stats.

PD: realism wrt LOTR universe.

MOBA games are starting to get over saturated really quickly. I mean this is like the MMO syndrome with Wow>MMOs. Companies Executives, "Wow. This Riot company came out of no where and made millions. Lets do the same thing with less effort and cash on that!" And how the mighty shall fall real, real quickly. I see companies in the future closing because of failed MOBAs lol.

this trailer looks great, I have no faith that the game will be though. I'm more excited about lego LOTR than this and am surprised both come out his year. When does the Hobbit come out?

also if you didn't go look at the game page this is a downloadable game, not full disc.

no no no no no

@EchoEcho said:

What a disgusting abuse of the Lord of the Rings license. And I thought War in the North and the Battle for Middle-Earth games were stretching things too much. This just takes the cake. The very gross, insulting, unfortunate cake.

how were the battle for middle earth games insulting? they were totally competent rts games, not amazing, but also not shit.

that is unless you're talking about the console versions of them. those sucked.

@Donkeycow said:

Why can't anyone make a LOTR game true to the source.

Because that would be a walking simulator with shitty dialogue.

I love me some DOTA. But most importantly....I love me some Lord of the Rings.

I was really excited for about thirty seconds after watching this and reading the video description.

Then I actually thought about it and got real confused real fast. Now I don't know what to think.

This game may turn out to be awesome, but this trailer is just yucky.

I have to wonder if this is even the same Monolith that made FEAR, Condemned, and NOLF.

And a million Tolkien fans cried out... and were silent.

A MOBA? No, thanks.

Sweet trailer, though.

Neat looking trailer, but Warner Bros... please stop misusing Monoliths talents.

No thank you.

@Meatsim said:

But I want Condemned 3 not this.

This would be way better.

If it wasn't for Alex's description, I would have ZERO idea what the hell this game even is. 

What a disgusting abuse of the Lord of the Rings license. And I thought War in the North and the Battle for Middle-Earth games were stretching things too much. This just takes the cake. The very gross, insulting, unfortunate cake.

I'll play a LOTR-themed MOBA, sure. Let's do this.

@OneKillWonder_ said:

This better not be all that Monolith has been working on. Where the fuck is Condemned 3 already?

And where the hell is No One Lives Forever 3? =(

DoTA - LOTR: GoME?

Well, now I know what it looks like when Gandalf fights Gollum. So thanks for that.

There is NOTHING in this trailer to even suggest it's a MOBA, good job guys. LOL! Anyway, getting kind of sick of this sort of thing. Hopefully the graphics are really good at least. And not like MOBA graphics usually are, uninspiring... League of Legends is KING, I think we can stop making these now....

solomid

I take it the DotA/MOBA knowledge comes from elsewhere as the trailer shows nada about the gameplay.

I hope it isn't entirely true though. Trying to charge money for a game at retail when LoL is doing so well F2P and DOTA 2 is about to officially launch with an even more (if that makes sense) F2P model sounds like economic suicide.

How come they dont make a LOTR game based on a Civ/ Total War type game. I would play the hell out of that game.

*sigh* for fuck's sake WB.

The chorus of Guardians of Asgard totally played in my head as I read that.

Amon Amarth anyone?

ROFL at Gollum

In the trailer-verse, this looks pretty awesome. For LOTR nerds, that is, and count me in.

@Grixxel: @HubrisRanger:

Yea... that was a derp moment, oh woe is my shame.

I agree with most in that I'd like to see monolith go nuts on some new IP however you can't argue the timing isn't good for them to put out a MOBA before DOTA 2 is done. This should prove profitable enough that once they've gotten this out the way they hopefully can make something unique.

The face my dog makes when she doesn't understand whats going on and tilts her head to the side is what I did as soon as I saw this. Monolith? Lord of the Rings? Fall 2012? Gimli's hammer is now a boomerang? Gandolf didn't say "You shall not pass!" at any moment in this video? Hmmmmm..... something seems off.

@SaturdayNightSpecials said:

Gollum works for Sauron all of a sudden?

*shrugs* I just.... I just don't know anymore.

Cool looking trailer.

None of these on consoles yet so I can see why they'd do it.

Calm down everybody.

Monolith, please do any kind of FPS game. This just seems silly & believe that by now there's a bulk of the mediocre LOTR video games that the license just won't hook people that well, plus with DOTA & other recent clones out there, this one will just be overshadowed to get much attention.

If it doesn't suck like nearly every other LOTR game, I may be on board with this.