The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth

**Mairu** · 02 Mar 2004, 07:48 PM

http://www.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_lotr_bfme_2.html

EA DOES IT AGAIN! This game looks pretty damn amazing to me. After seeing the trailer, I can't wait for it to come out.

**perkyskirt** · 02 Mar 2004, 08:15 PM

Looks awesome, gonna be my first game for my new computer.

**Super-Eggroll** · 02 Mar 2004, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by perkyskirt

Looks awesome, gonna be my first game for my new computer.

Yeah, if I wanna play this one I'm going to have to do some upgrading myself. Looks like it makes good use of that C&C:Generals engine, which I have no problem playing right now as long as it's not in high-res mode.

The EA site has a trailer showing what looks like a Sauron-Bomb going off. That'd be kinda funny if they make him a Super-Weapon - and you just run him into a bunch of guys and detonate him like the suicide-bomber in C&C.

**Andy** · 02 Mar 2004, 11:23 PM

Heh, damn I was going to pre-empt all you motherfuckers and make the official thread for this yesterday, but oh well

Anyway, yeah, this game looks fantastic. I'm probably the biggest (and by that I mean "only"

) C&C Generals fan here, so this is easily one of my most anticipated games. I have every faith that this will be the best LotR game released; here are a few of the really cool early details from GameSpy's interview with Mark Skaggs;

The game spans all three movies, beginning in the Shire.

Players will be able to play the forces of light or dark, controlling the appropriate heroes for that side.

Skaggs said there will be "simplified base building within the concept of the world." So Isengard would use trees as a resource; Gondor would use farms, while Mordor might have no resources at all. Gold will be available to everyone, but not through the traditional sense of mines. The plan is to have buildings or units "drop" gold when they are destroyed. Skaggs said that they are working on a way to keep each side utilizing their own resources. "It wouldn't be good if Gondor started chopping down trees because of the influence of the Ents," he said.

Because of the sheer numbers of units that can appear on the battlefield at any one time, the idea of clicking on a barracks each time you want a new unit isn't as feasible. Skaggs said that one click for archers, for example, may produce 10 units for Mordor, perhaps fewer for the side of Men. "Right now, that is one of the balance issues we are working on," he said.

The development is also working on ways to bring actual emotion to the units in the game. "In the trailer, there is the Oliphant going on a rampage," Skaggs said. "That isn't because it was directed to. If you look closely, its back is on fire and it is panicking. There are other areas where we are employing this as well. In an RTS, if you tell units to go to a spot, they go. Here, if you tell a couple of Gondor soldiers to attack a troll, they might hesitate because of the tremendous fear factor."

Another aspect of unit behavior is how they operate in groups. Skaggs said that you can group archers and swordsmen into a group and the swordsmen will then form a ring around the archers to protect them. If you group orcs and a troll, the troll will throw the orc like artillery pieces. There will be plenty of different combinations that will be available and the A.I. will change the individual unit behavior to adapt to a group setting.

A key RTS element that is being toyed with is the interface. "We'd have loved to eliminate it entirely, but we know that isn't feasible," Skaggs said. "So we have come up with a way to minimize it."

Also, almost all RTSs have a radar map of some sort, he said. "You can't have a radar map in Middle-earth. It just doesn't work as part of the world. When Theoden starts plotting his strategy, he'd pull out a parchment map with Vs for mountains and lines for rivers. We are working on something like that to keep with the feel of Middle-earth. We've really had to eliminate our own internal habits about creating an RTS."

The team will also be working on the in-game cutscenes, which are being developed to play while a mission is loading in the background. "In Generals, a mission would take a minute or a minute-and-a-half to load. In this game, it will only take about 10 seconds, because the game will be loading behind the cutscene," he said.

Despite the enhanced graphics, the game is being billed as recommending the same system specs as Generals, namely Pentium 4 or Athlon 1.8 GHz, 256 MB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce3 or more recent Direct3D-capable video card.

We had a chance to talk to Skaggs after the showing to find out how the game is progressing. It turns out the trailer was done in November, and the game is even further along than the trailer suggests.

**Despair** · 03 Mar 2004, 10:12 AM

I will watch the trailer tonight. While I am somewhat burned out on LOTR nowdays, the game does sound pretty cool.

**Error** · 03 Mar 2004, 11:02 AM

Well, first off, no you aren't the only Generals fan here Andy, I happen to think it's the best C&C game ever made. (Mind you I will admit I'm not the biggest fan of the series, and the only good game Westwood ever made was Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat)

As for this one, I'm hyped for it, both this and Rome: Total War. It's been a while since I've been able to play my PC using anything other than BF1942. I need a new frickin game, and which ever one of these two gets here first will probably be it.

**soundwave** · 03 Mar 2004, 03:45 PM

This game looks amazing--how many units onscreen will this game have? Generals runs fine on the 1Ghz PIII with an ATI Radeon 7500 I use but i don't think it can run this game.