Palette Swap
Member
You know Celebrimbor, we really are the Lord of the Rings.
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Middle-Earth: Shadow of War trailer (WB/Monolith, PC/XB1/PS4, 8/22), gameplay Mar 8th
- Thread starter kulapik
- Start date
Shadow of Shadows
This cracked me up more than it should've, well done
Lord of Castamere
Member
First of all, fuck cgi. Also already seeing the fall sidestep. Who the fuck aims for August? Waves are being made behind the scenes. E3 is gonna be massive.
Shadow of Wardor. Or better yet, Shadow of Hodor, with a surprise GoT tie-in twist.
paragonpro
Banned
Its really a shame that with all of the cool locales middle earth has to offer, this series insists on keeping you stuck in the least interesting.
I imagine this might be the norm going forward.
ChasingComets
Member
So....fuck off with canon?
Not that I mind, if the game really wants to go nuts it might as well not be tied down to the existing lore.
Not that I mind, if the game really wants to go nuts it might as well not be tied down to the existing lore.
AgentLampshade
Member
It's glorified fanfiction, but fuck it. If it's fun it's fun. Though I wish we'd venture out of grimdark Mordor.
Not like the first one really cared much for the "lore" in the first place. The idea of a wraith-human hybrid is already unheard of. I'm fine with doing things outside of the lore.
I'm just disappointed its in Mordor... AGAIN. Visually, the most BLAND of all of Middle Earth and again not realizing the attributes that make the literature based on Middle Earth distinctive compared to the rest of the contrived high fantasy fiction based on it.
Glass Shark
Banned
I wonder if this game will be seen as fondly in a climate where good games aren't as hard to come by. I know I'm not alone in thinking the original was massively overrated at the time.
Salty Rice
Member
A black guy in middle earth? So obvious this is fan fiction. /s
Dont think we ever saw one before.
Dont think we ever saw one before.
LordBaztion
Member
play anywhere probably won't but sure Scorpio releases.
Cymbal Head
Banned
Tinúviel;231114734 said:
Yeah AFAIK, they don't have the LOTR movie license, which is why I was surprised at how movie-accurate some of the locations in the trailer are.
dancingphlower
Member
Honestly didn't think that was too exciting of a trailer. The premise seems kind of tired too. Hoping the game is fun at least. I was a fan of the first game, but for some reason I can't get excited yet. Gotta see gameplay first I guess.
Lifejumper
Member
Creating another ring of power? blasphemy.
Cuningas de Häme
Member
Your mom is bland and boring!
Trailer looked neat, only canon in Middle-Earth is what's in the books and whatnot, so these movies and games are just like EU was for Star Wars. Fan Fiction, often silly and outright stupid but sometimes ok.
MegaSackman
Member
That was a pretty cool trailer.
The consistency of the world-building is what makes Middle-Earth so appealing, it *is* a setting ripe for compelling media *if done right.* Lord of The Rings is the direct opposite of a power fantasy and this is exactly that. Why can't Talion use his ranger wits and smarts to outsmart and defeat the enemy? Because teleporting wraith powers! I get it, it's fine, it's just conceptionally and thematically completely messed up in relation to Tolkien. But perhaps that is more a Video Games problem in general and not a Shadow of Mordor thing.
Could they have got round that by using some of the Alan Lee/John Howe illustrations? The ones they made before working on the movies?
Uhh...isn't Scorpio a souped up Xbox One? Why is this a surprise? Not like it's a new generation or anything...
I mean, it's coming out in August which is traditionally a pretty dead month for gaming. It should do well assuming the game is good.
They exist, though. The thing is...
So black people do exist in LOTRverse, they're just 'aligned with Sauron.'
FusedAtoms
Member
The plot seems quite dumb but I'm sure the gameplay is fuego, so I'm there day one
Cymbal Head
Banned
Good point. They can claim to have been inspired by the same works that inspired the movies. A common ancestor, if you will.
link1201
Member
Well that's true. I guess I gotta reset my mindset about it.
Marketing playing their Jedi mind tricks with me. lol
TheVoidDragon
Member
I don't know much about the LOTR lore, what was the problem with Shadow of Mordor?
I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm ok with the fan fiction storyline, though it'd be cool if after this they spun off into a pre-Hobbit time period or fast forwarded beyond LotR to do their own depiction of the Middle Earth that followed. The plot feels constrained and overly contrived to fit within the confines of the books just to say that it's chronologically aligned with the books, even though no one would ever mistake it for canon work.
Monolith is a very talented studio and I've been following their games since they were both Monolith and Snowblind, so I wish them all the best here. Likely on my B2G1 holiday sale list already as long as it doesn't have something incredibly revolting baked in a la campaign micro-transactions or similar.
August is an interesting release date. Pretty much the same day as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I can see not launching right into the teeth of the holiday storm with this game but I'm not sure if the IP and the previous game carry enough weight to make this stand out. The first stood out because it was the best game in a bad holiday lineup. Now it's going to be releasing mid-gen when everyone is dropping bombs from August through November.
Monolith is owned by Warner Brothers Games, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment. New Line Cinema was merged into and is now a brand within Warner Brothers Pictures, as part of Warner Brothers Entertainment.
They have the rights to all the movie shit they want to mine.
The likenesses and voices of the actors was licensed out seperately for the first three films. Ian McKellen has been pretty outspoken about how it. For example, he has stated that he made more money from his likeness and voice work in the LotR trilogy games than he did from the movies themselves, but when it came time to do The Hobbit they tried to staple video game adaptations onto his movie deal for a fraction of what he made before, so he refused.
I'd imagine Monolith is trying to walk a bit of a fine line here where they want the artistic sensibilities of the movies to bring the movie fan base in the door, but don't want to borrow the assets to the point of it becoming heavy handed. Beyond that I'm sure that both Enya and Howard Shore get a taste on re-use of their works associated with the trilogy, they were both well established in their field at the time after all, and so it'd be yet another bite out of the profits should they go down that path. Music licensing is a bitch in video games, just ask Square Enix.
Monolith is a very talented studio and I've been following their games since they were both Monolith and Snowblind, so I wish them all the best here. Likely on my B2G1 holiday sale list already as long as it doesn't have something incredibly revolting baked in a la campaign micro-transactions or similar.
August is an interesting release date. Pretty much the same day as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I can see not launching right into the teeth of the holiday storm with this game but I'm not sure if the IP and the previous game carry enough weight to make this stand out. The first stood out because it was the best game in a bad holiday lineup. Now it's going to be releasing mid-gen when everyone is dropping bombs from August through November.
Monolith is owned by Warner Brothers Games, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment. New Line Cinema was merged into and is now a brand within Warner Brothers Pictures, as part of Warner Brothers Entertainment.
They have the rights to all the movie shit they want to mine.
Tinúviel;231114734 said:
The likenesses and voices of the actors was licensed out seperately for the first three films. Ian McKellen has been pretty outspoken about how it. For example, he has stated that he made more money from his likeness and voice work in the LotR trilogy games than he did from the movies themselves, but when it came time to do The Hobbit they tried to staple video game adaptations onto his movie deal for a fraction of what he made before, so he refused.
I'd imagine Monolith is trying to walk a bit of a fine line here where they want the artistic sensibilities of the movies to bring the movie fan base in the door, but don't want to borrow the assets to the point of it becoming heavy handed. Beyond that I'm sure that both Enya and Howard Shore get a taste on re-use of their works associated with the trilogy, they were both well established in their field at the time after all, and so it'd be yet another bite out of the profits should they go down that path. Music licensing is a bitch in video games, just ask Square Enix.
Andodalf
Banned
When you buy a ps4 game and you play it on pro AND PC too?
JonnyDBrit
Member
To clarify a bit on this further, Tolkien does hang a lampshade on the unfortunate implications by having Sam muse on whether it's right to really consider the men aligned with Sauron evil, or if they've merely been misled and tempted by Sauron's promises.
The line is transplanted to and spoken by Faramir in the films.
Edit: Given Talion's stated ancestry as a Northman, it may be that the black guy we see, who seems pretty prominently featured, may also have a 'non-standard' ancestry among the Gondorians.
No, but I can play it on PS4 or PS4 Pro, which, I think, is the point the poster was trying to make.
Pie and Beans
Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
It is particularly baffling.
I feel like a better title would have been "The Two Mordors"