Late Gamed: Lord of the Rings: War in the North and the Fore-Shadow of Mordor

<**HEY! There be spoilers right away. But really...you know how LotR ends, right? So it shouldn't really surprise you...**>

“Yes, I can feel it too, it's as if a great burden was lifted. The Ring is destroyed.” reports Farin, and thus do we hear of Sauron's demise, via the simple reports of the three main characters of War in the North. It is a telling scene for a game that can both thrill and frustrate even the most epic of fans.



For as big of a fan I am of anything both Middle-earth and gaming, my interest in this title was obviously piqued quite early (though I suppose not enough to play it at launch). Tolkien's Middle-earth is easily vast and detailed enough, and even his own writing hints at, many other heroic exploits occurring concurrently alongside Frodo and co.'s own journeys. As a fan, a gamer, and a writer I feel I must express how conflicted I felt at the prospect of playing this game. I was  excited, but not without a certain amount of trepidation. Anything presented in this game's story could only ever be non-canon, whether it was based on a mixture of book and films or not, and I could not help but feel its existence would undoubtedly give Professor Tolkien another good reason to roll in his grave. Even amongst scholars, and the most die-hard of fans, there are probably (and are) a myriad of inconsistencies, and misconstrued facts of Tolkien's original meanings and intents. But, as a fan, I wanted to set aside those worries and try to enjoy what looked like a beautiful and well-reviewed game, and to have an excuse to wander the paths of Middle-earth again. In fact the prospect of ranging around the main narrative's less-visited and sometimes only mentioned places like the Ettenmoors or Mount Gundabad was irresistibly tantalizing, more corners to sniff out in one of my favorite paracosms.

I liked WITN, don't get me wrong, by no means is it a bad game, but I will start off by saying that the game's ending is a bit lackluster. But this was never a game about the story of Frodo and the Ring, as that serves only as the backdrop to the quest of the Ranger, the Elf, and the dwarf of Erebor. Yet the ending scene, where the Ring's destruction is merely felt by the heroes, is indicative of the quality of WitN's tone and handling of it's story. It is a bit of an interactive mixed-bag for any LotR fan. Here's why:

Presentaion

WITN is a beautiful game. The visuals I daresay even compete with those of Skyrim and some of the other first tier games currently out. The emulation of the films' art styles, and often actual use of them, again places us in a Middle-earth that is intricate in its detail, deep in its feeling of history and culture, and just plain gorgeous. If not entirely ubiquitous by this day in age of Middle-earth's place in pop culture, we are once again in the Middle-earth as interpreted by Peter Jackson and Weta.

However, when it comes to the pace of the game's narrative, and the play of these visuals within the story, WITN falls short of the author (and director) of which it couches its intellectual property. Jackson did justice to Tolkien's work when he inserts sweeping aerial shots of Middle-earth's landscapes, our heroes tiny blots against gargantuan mountain sides or stretching valleys. We truly get a feeling for the vastness of the landscapes for which Tolkien spent many a paragraph describing with poignant detail. WITN does little to nothing to give us this sense of space and beauty. It may in its essence be merely and action game, but being that it is a Lord of the Rings game, I think we should rightly expect a certain degree of artistry when it comes to coaxing the audience into the lands of Hobbits, Elves, and Dwarves. Aside from a few necessary intro shots to each region, there is little done in the way of giving our heroes a sense of travel, of spanning the landscapes of Middle-earth; the game does not bid us to pause and partake of any wonder. Perhaps just a scene, with appropriate musical scoring, of the heroes soaring on the backs of eagles just merely looking over the land, shots of them approaching or leaving Rivendell, you know--the quiet moments that the books (and even the films) give us. These, I feel, would in turn not only give us a grand sense of scale, but in a way draw us closer to our characters, and exploit the setting of Middle-earth as fans should and do expect it, as we travel along with them.

Character

A New Fellowship Unites, the backside of the game's case heralds. Understandably in the days of the War of the Ring we see the makings of many unlikely companions, and just so is it in WITN. Now I know it is to be argued that many of Tolkien's characters, particularly those outside of the Shire, are bent toward the archetypal wont, very much a portrayal of good or evil; I've heard it said that many times how Tolkien's work lacks the shades of gray when compared to the likes of Game of Thrones, but it is not without characters with nuance and subtlety, think Boromir for instance. Having said that, one could argue the merit of the seemingly carbon-copied fellowship of WITN, of Eradan, Farin, and Andriel, but not without a strong rebuttal. Not only are we lacking proper origin stories for each character and the circumstances of their coming together, except for some passing mentions in the early scenes, but they are largely bland, generic, if not stereotypical representations of their respective races. Boring. We could have had a chance for some interesting drama at work between the characters. Instead we get the Dwarf as a kindly grandfatherly type, with seemingly no inherent greed or ill-will towards Elven kind that is the norm for most of his ilk. Andriel is no less droll. Offering little character outside the wispy and pedagogical sayings that the writers must have assumed all Elves speak. Sure, maybe. But what if we had some genuine contention between she and Farin, some interesting conflict, instead of the bland yes-we're-all-heroes-so-we-must-be-friends-too dynamic. And Eradan? What must I say about him except that I feel more inclined to call him Aragorn jr. (without any signs of internal conflict.)

Setting

Despite lacking a true tour of the games settings, or imparting a sense of Middle-earth's scale and power, the game's environments are truly beautiful and very much feel as though they are a part of the Middle-earth most of us know. What I find problematic though, are some of the creations and license taken with some of the locations and characters added (yes, I know nerd-rage). Not so much is it a problem that the developers wanted to create them, but anything for shoring up the plot, and consistency with the main narratives would seem desirable. Here's what I mean: Urgost, for example, though technically I guess dragons (lesser, fire-drakes, cold-drakes, etc.) still exist after Smaug, what was this character's purpose? As far as I could tell, through my play-through, there was no ability to fight him, and the conversation with him only left the option to make a deal with him to take Agandaur's fortress at the end of the game. But this did nothing to move the story along, so why introduce him? It seemed to me that the story was doing everything but bending canon to introduce a dragon into its plot and to really no effect. You still had to fight the main villain yourself, and Urgost's appearance was relegated to merely a spectacular asterisk on the game's ending.

Furthermore I ask what the point of introducing the non-canon (though possible) dwarven city of Nordinbad was when we had a perfectly good and well-known one in Erebor. After all, it is documented in the Appendices, that Erebor did not escape the War of the Ring unscathed. WITN was released one year before the first Hobbit movie was released, and if it had Erebor in it, like Radagast, it may have run the risk of breaking continuity with the film's, but why not wait that one year? Release it in tandem with the film, and thus consistency between the mediums could have been shored up. Is there some business dealing I'm not understanding here? I feel that in using Erebor the game would have done further justice to it's fans, and, allowing us to explore another beloved and historical location, the game might have felt “more canon”. In all, it seems that WITN did not take full advantage of the names and locations that it could have. And to emphasize this, I return back to the closing scene, in which the narrative's relation to its source material, Frodo and the Ring, is merely mentioned, and nothing significant is shown.

Having picked it apart, let me leave off by telling you what I did enjoy, what delighted my little, inner-fanboy:

• Meeting Elladan and Elrohir
• Beleram (and his possible death at the end, was one of the rare poignant instances in the game)
• Ability to wander Bree and work “behind the scenes” for Aragorn and the greater quest
• Killing Trolls
• Rescuing Radagast

So yes, while casually fun, WITN will not likely satisfy the deep longing of a die-hard Tolkien fan, but it just might delight it from moment to moment. That in itself lies the strength of its story, it's presentation however just wasn't quite up to par with the original works from which it was derived.

And now, we have Shadow of Mordor to look forward to as the next major LotR game. What does this bode? WITN seems to have opened a Pandora's Box for non-canon Middle-earth interactive fiction (and really, unless we need more Lego adaptions, all the spaces in Middle-earth history are the only premises left for studios to try and exploit the franchise) and I can't help but flinch initially when I hear about a half-wraith Gondorian Ranger, believing with a good amount of certainty that such stories, in a purist's sense but not a profit sense, would be better left to other IPs. What do you think this coming Shadow means for gamers and Tolkien aficionados alike? Will these games enrich future fans' experiences or skew them?