The LEGO Lord of the Rings Developers Talk About Crafting Middle-Earth Out of Digital Blocks

This might be the LEGO game I want.

My son loves these games.

@Morningstar said:

This might be the LEGO game I want.

This IS the LEGO game I want.

@Vexxan said:

@Morningstar said:

This might be the LEGO game I want.

This IS the LEGO game I want.

But is it the one LEGO game to rule them all?

@Vexxan said:

@Morningstar said:

This might be the LEGO game I want.

This IS the LEGO game I want.

I stand corrected. This IS the LEGO game I want.

@alex said:

I still don't know how I feel about that movie dialogue.

I do know how I feel. I don't like it. Minifigs should be seen and not heard.

If you watch this as a satire, it's pretty hilarious.

I love that Traveller's Tales has been making the same game with different skins for 7 years now. They are really giving Omega Force a run for their money.

The movie dialogue seems incredibly awkward. Gandalf and Gimli's guttural voices just don't match the playful lego characters that get matched to them at all. They should've gotten new voice actors for that stuff, in my opinion. Lego games with voices is something I don't mind, but any good voice director or actor would know and tell you that different iconographic styles require different takes on voice work as well.

How could Lego characters fight over a ring when they have no fingers is beyond me.

@Morningstar said:

This might be the LEGO game I want.

Yea, i may be onboard with this.

But will Tom Bombadil be in it?

LEGOlas. That is all.

@HulkHanson: You win. Shut the comments down.

"you can find fetch quests inside missions"

@Drazat said:

My son loves these games.

I can't wait till my son is old enough to get his head around the controls because I love these games and I can't wait to run through them with him.

I haven't watched this one yet, may be the same one I saw a few months ago. But I love it with the original voices. i would not call it satire, but I would call it funny. It accomplishes that lego 'a couple steps away' in a different fashion, hard to get all serious with how the models move and such. I'm real attached to Tolkien's world..well as much as I get attached to anything. Read the trilogy a number of times, just got done paging through the Silmarillion again. Watched the movies 3 times or so, love the story.

But you know...

EDIT..the devs talking, I saw the scene at the bridge in Moria. Re-creation looks good...

The wraiths look like Darth Vadar.

I cant wait for this looks cool

@SlashDance said:

How could Lego characters fight over a ring when they have no fingers is beyond me.

Oh snap.

You shall not (online) pass!

James McLoughlin was later fired for not wearing black like the rest of the development team.

If they are doing everything from the book and the movies, how are they going to handle the countless scenes that never had dialogue in the movies?

Oh right, they aren't actually giving a fuck about the book.

I think I'd rather they just go and do their own thing with the dialogue, but maybe it'll turn out well. It just looked awkward and bizarre seeing Lego Gandalf talk like that.

@BBQBram said:

@SlashDance said:

How could Lego characters fight over a ring when they have no fingers is beyond me.

Oh snap.

They can't do that either!

Lego Balrog for the win.

Should Legos ta...wait is that joke old already?

I've played almost all the lego games and just finished up Harry Potter years 5-7. It was without a doubt, the worst game they've done yet. The POTC game was fantastic and well polished, and this was the total opposite Many of the systems are implemented poorly and it actually looks worse than some previous games. Aside from technical issues, for the first time I found one of these games to be really tedious with a terrible hub. I really hope they do right by LOTR, but I won't be jumping in day one for sure.

I'm disappointed that they didn't manage to legoize the Eye of Sauron. Something along of lines of individual flowing transparent, glowing bricks would be cool.

@Kerned said:

@BBQBram said:

@SlashDance said:

How could Lego characters fight over a ring when they have no fingers is beyond me.

Oh snap.

They can't do that either!

The plot thickens.

Nice to hear a good old Liverpool accent!

Been wanting a Lego LOTR game since the concept was first introduced with the initial Lego Star Wars. Pretty excited for this.

But is there Lego Tom Bombadill?

LEGO "Justice League" (Batman 2) is going to be hard to top. But if TT does it, it'll probably be with LEGO City Undercover, since they're adding more depth to the combat and platforming - the simplest, more repetitive parts of current LEGO games. But LEGO Batman 2 managed to get around that thanks to the unique abilities of the super heroes. Gandalf is no Superman; it's not like he can fly. It's not like he has laser eyes. Exploring the world of LEGO Middle Earth will probably be interesting and fun and loaded with secrets like LEGO Gotham City, but the actual gameplay for these characters? Eh - I'll pass.

@SlashDance said:

How could Lego characters fight over a ring when they have no fingers is beyond me.

*boom* Mind blown.

I want to like these games, I really do, but I just can't stand the combat at all. Until they change that and finally give it some more weight and heft, I'm just not interested.

It seems like using the real voices and recreating the scenes from the movie shot for shot is going to jar pretty badly with the light hearted goofiness of the Lego characters. I kind of wish they'd either make this a serious game with real people or take out the obviously slavish devotion to the movies and put in their own lines and scenes.

I'm still amazed that these Lego games come out and are actually quality experiences.

I fucking hate the music for this trilogy.

Every time I hear that fanfare, I know I'm doomed to go home and put the extended editions on. So good.

@CrossTheAtlantic: I hear ya. I don't put Howard Shore anywhere near the top of the list of all-time great composers, but the score he created for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is easily one of the best ever written. I'll probably buy this game just to hear the pieces in a new context.

The grander the vision of these games, the greater the disconnect, I feel. When they were recreating scenes with a TT-patented twist, that was all fine and dandy, but recreating actual scenes and usuing actual dialogue just makes this looks like a low-poly movie tie-in. The grand scenes of them running or the horses just further emphasizes the contrast between what they want to do and what the blocky LEGO models were made for. Stick to your parody-esque approach, TT.

I have to say this looks awesome. Definitely on my radar

I don't understand why this is a Lego game. Aside from the mini figs, I saw maybe 1 environmental object (a tomb?) made out of Legos.

Just where exactly am I supposed to get my Lego studs from? This just defeats the purpose of making it a lego game, I think. Even the castle was all stone instead of Lego pieces with moss growing off of them.

Well, with the exception of lord of the rings online. Lord of the rings has been done pretty poorly in other games. (Unfortunately, imagine if they make some incredible role playing game that did not feel budget)

I for one am glad that travellers tales is making a lego lord of the rings, especially in the wake of the fantastic lego batman 2. The developers might not be original, and I worship original in this rather incremental climate - however they are evolving, they are making the games more 'open ended theme parks with rail sections' rather than 'rail sections with some occasional more open rails sections'.

Which is good timing for people like myself, who rather liked lord of the rings. They hit their stride just as they hit the quality fiction. Great stuff.

If this ends up being a lot better than lego star wars, then everything will fit perfectly in place.

One thing for certain this video is made for PARENTS (the consumers) and get them hyped to buy the game for their kids.

@Kerned said:

@BBQBram said:

@SlashDance said:

How could Lego characters fight over a ring when they have no fingers is beyond me.

Oh snap.

They can't do that either!

Best ^

These lego games are starting to becoming ridiculous.... :/

Not interested.

Something about the shading in this LEGO game looks decent.

Did that guy talking about map design have a lazy eye? Well, good on him.

@ravage484: Shut up.