The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion and countless other books by the great J.R.R. Tolkien provide us with a rich and exiting world full of beautiful sites and terrifying foes. So much so, that the movies by Peter Jackson have only scratched the surface of what this world has to offer. Middle-earth is a wonderous place indeed, and perhaps this is why so many people are longing for the opportunity to walk around it freely.
This then, is at the root of one of the most-requested genres for a Lord of the Rings game: the open world RPG. For the uninitiated, an open world RPG is a game that offers the player an entire world to explore as he wishes and when he wishes. Open world RPGs usually have a prime story line which involves the player solving a number of problems, undertaking quests and defeating enemies. This is similar to linear RPGs. Linear RPG’s, however, offer little or no freedom to do anything outside of following this prime storyline. An open world RPG allows the player to postpone his primary mission, and go about the stretches of land before him as he wants.
As many of you probably already know, EA has already tried to make a Lord of the Rings Open World RPG once. “The White Council”. While we never saw much besides concept art, it was perhaps the most promising and most ambitious Lord of the Rings video game to date. Fans would have to wait another year to get their chance to explore Middle-earth. The Lord of the Rings Online, while an MMO and not an Open World RPG, offered and still does offer players to explore large parts of Eriador and now even allows players to cross the Misty Mountains to the east. This game, however, offers radically different gameplay from an offline RPG and cannot use artwork and designs from Peter Jackson’s films due to licensing issues.
Any game that would attempt to cover large areas of Middle-earth would be a huge project. Not only in terms of creating this world by designing the buildings, foilage, trees and such, but mostly just mapping out the terrain. The books by Tolkien are renowned for their detailed descriptions of the characters’ surroundings, and players love to see even a small bush or foxhole portrayed in the game as it was in the books. This would require humongous amounts of work to research and then implement in the game. Not to mention the fact that even though players would love to cross country, they would need something to do. Because seriously, would you want to cross the dead marshes for 4 hours straight with nothing going on? Probably not.
This challenge is probably why such a game is yet to be realized. With the economic crisis still going on, developers are more then ever reluctant to spend money and time on such a lengthy and costly project. Let’s not forget the inherent risks that would be involved, by the time the world has been mapped out and populated, the graphics could be outdated, people may have lost interest or some other game may steal away potential customers. Then will we ever see a “The While Council” realized? I would like to think so, right now it doesn’t seem very likely, with the Hobbit movies not even greenlit, interest in the Lord of the Rings has dropped considerably. However, if the movies do take off, let’s hope we’ll see a developer with an interest in not producing a cheap, short and sloppy cash-in license game, but rather the in-depth Lord of the Rings game that would go down in the books as one of the greatest games ever.
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Comments:
jeffey143:
ya my friend wants a new lord of the rings game to be like runescape i sort of agree with him but not rlly i think id be kool if its like world of warecraft
Sezuan:
I want this :)
Freek:
jeffey143:
o ya completely forgot bout that wow o my god lol but ya something like that
zach:
Yea an open world of JUST the main points covered in the movies would take ages. LotrO has been in development forever and still only covers a portion of Middle Earth.
Yams In a can:
You know,I used to think lotr online was dumb,after seeing the title,it seemed cool. That was when I thought world of warcraft was for losers... I don't anymore,it's a stereotype.
Balin38:
For me there's a world of difference between a MMO such as World of Warcraft and an single player open world RPG. Wow bored me . Oblivion kept me entranced for hours on end. World of Warcraft was full of reminders of why it was not real. Oblivion was, to me, a living breathing world. I think what separates MMOs and single player RPGs is depth.
zach:
I would love a mix between Oblivion and Lotro. Lotro has really cool crafting and I love playing with friends, but I love the combat in Oblivion so much more.
Heron:
I have to echo Balin38. Fallout 3 (and Oblivion before it) is very open-ended. The world is huge, and you can just go do whatever you want. I would absolutely love a single-player LotR RPG using Fallout 3's engine, but I don't think it will ever happen :(
zach:
Even with Oblivion's world as big as it is, it is only a fraction of the size of the land just in LOTR:O not to mention Middle Earth. An open world game would have to focus on a specific region in Middle Earth leaving a lot unseen, or have "areas", such as Minas Tirith to Osgiliath, then Helms Deep to Isengard to Edoras as the next areas border, etc. Then you would have to have a swift travel between these areas. Even with this system it would take years to make all of the required landscape.
FUEL has the largest game space ever made in a game, which is 5560 square miles. Middle Earth is MUCH bigger and when you are remaking Middle Earth you cant just throw mountains, forests, etc down as like Freek said, its too well mapped out.
zach:
FUEL has the largest game space ever made in a game, which is 5560 square miles. Middle Earth is MUCH bigger and when you are remaking Middle Earth you cant just throw mountains, forests, etc down as like Freek said, its too well mapped out.
Samus1111111:
Maybe if they did something like LotrO is doing by releasing Middle Earth in sections. Like you start out with Bree and surrounding area, then the next expansion adds Hobbiton, ect. And they could make it so that when you install the next expansion pack it works seamlessly with all the previous ones.
Yams In a can:
I kind of feel like getting this game,but I doubt my mom would like monthly payments,or even to cough up $300.00 to let me get this, especially since I got a PS3 <3.
Heron:
That's exactly why I said I think it will never happen, zach ;) It would be super-awesome though...
zach:
Yea its really sad. However there is a rumor about a game called "War In The North" seeing as the battle all happened in a somewhat small area (less than the size lotro is) a free roam RPG could be made. However there is a lot of open forest land between Lorien and the the location in and around Northern Mirkwood.
This is also an area that has received little attention so far.
Sezuan:
Ranger of the Numenor:
What I want to see, which is soon coming to be more frequent hopefully are games like Fallout and Oblivion with online Co-Op. I know the game Two Worlds has it (not a big fan) but if we had games like Fallout and Oblivion with the possibilities of Co-Op I think the RPG category would be upgraded greatly. There is a game that is coming out somewhere in the future called Borderlands, there was a recent article on it in the last edition of GameInformer (Issue 196 I believe). This game isn't as open as Fallout or Oblivion but it will bring a team experience to RPGs on the console. There are 4 classes to choose from (currently) its both a single player and Co-Op game. In the future I can say I truly hope we have more games like this, maybe the next Elderscrolls game will allow Co-Op.
~Ranger
zach:
Yea Oblivion would have been truly epic given a co-op mode.
Mektar:
well i am working on a modification for oblivion wich changes it to LOTR it is called MERP middle earth roleplaying project it's not finished yet but it is going to be good with all middle-earth to explore and questlines lots of new armors and weapons