It is official. IGN has just released news about Pandemic’s latest game, which is Lord of the Rings: Conquest.
The high-level pitch is this basically fantasy Battlefront. This is everything that you’ve wanted to do in the Lord of the Rings universe’s battles but have never been able to before. We’ve basically set up a series of systematic battles where we re-create these battlefields from the film and then throw the player in the middle of it and let them figure out how they want to accomplish their objectives and how they want to win the battle, much like they did in Battlefront.
Conquest will feature every single battle from the movies, including Helms Deep, Minas Tirith, Pelennor Fields, The Black Gate, and even missions taken place in The Mines of Moria, Weathertop, and The Shire.
IGN: Are the extra battles that you’re talking about that weren’t in the movies, are those from the books or are they things that you created on your own?Eric Gewirtz: Some are from the books and some are fictitious. In the books they refer to going back to the Mines of Moria and cleaning it out, so we kind of elaborated on that. Because we have the ability to access from the books and the films (we have the rights to both for the video game), we’ve been able to expand on some of the fiction that was mentioned in the books. There’s stuff like Minas Morgul. It’s this really badass, evil castle that they showed from… it’s where the evil army launches their attack from in the films and you never get to see the inside of it. They never talk about it. In the books, they consider going and attacking and they decide not to on their way to the Black Gates, and in the films you just see it from the outside. We were able to model the entire inside of it and have this whole epic battle where the good forces are laying siege to Minas Morgul.
IGN: I’m assuming that, aside from the standard mode, there’s some sort of free mode? Can you play whoever you want at any time?
Eric Gewirtz: Yeah. So we have the Campaign Mode — we have two full campaigns on either side. The good campaign pretty much faithfully follows the events of the films, but again with the systematic gameplay that allows you to play up the battles any way you choose. The evil campaign is unlocked afterwards, and that’s kind of a “what-if” scenario that assumes that Frodo failed in destroying the Ring. They hint at, both in the books and the films, that it would be very bad if Frodo were to fail, but they never really go into detail about exactly how Sauron would go about conquering Middle-Earth.We let you live out that kind of dark fantasy of being Sauron and his forces at the end of the film. You start out as a Ringwraith and you catch Frodo and deliver the Ring to Sauron, and then it launches this evil campaign where you’re basically conquering through Middle-Earth, playing as all the evil forces. You get to ride the Oliphant, you get to ride these Wargs, play as the Balrog and Sarumon and the Witch-King and the Ringwraiths and Sauron himself. Those are our two Campaign Modes.
In addition, though, we have a ton of Instant Action Modes that are playable in single-player, split-screen and online play. We have Conquest, which is capturing of control points like you did in Battlefront, we have Capture the Flag, we have Deathmatch, we have Hero Deathmatch where everyone gets to play as a hero; just a massive hero battle and we have a bunch of other cool modes. We’re still exploring some other modes, but one mode that we just kind of stumbled onto that’s really fun and kind of in line with the universe is called Ring Bearer. One player is Frodo and the other players are Ringwraiths and the longer you stay alive as Frodo, the more points you get until a Ringwraith finds you and kills you. The first Ringwraith to finally find the player, to find and kill Frodo, becomes Frodo, so it’s kind of this game of tag where you’re trying to stay alive as long as you can as Frodo, and you’ve got the Ring and you’ve got Sting and you’re trying to outsmart the other players.
The maps that these battle will take place in are huge as the game’s director Eric Gewirtz said. He said the Helm’s Deep map goes from outside Helm’s Deep to the Glittering Caves to inside the Throne room. Four basic classes will be in the game, which you will be able to chose from each mission. Gewitz stated that you can ride Oliphants or even be an Ent or a Troll.
It seems Online will be great with both 8-player single multiplayer as well as Co-op play up to four players(both online and slit screen). As mentioned above the online play will include several modes, including Conquest, Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, and Hero Deathmatch. In online you can play any variation of teams that you want from everyone being on one team and fighting AI or a evenly split 4 vs. 4.
So In closing this game looks to be amazing and I recommend that you check out the entire interview here.
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