May 8, 2008 - To coincide with today's announcement of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, we sent out a beacon to Pandemic's shores to find out just what the game is all about. Luckily for us, Eric "Giz" Gewirtz:, the director behind the game, responded to our call and gave us the low-down on the studio's spiritual successor to Star Wars: Battlefront.
IGN: First, thanks for taking the time to talk to us here. Now, we know next to nothing about The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, so why don't you just start from the beginning and tell us about it?
Eric Gewirtz: 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.
IGN: So which battles will you be able to take part in? Is this everything from the movies?
Eric Gewirtz: We've got every single battle from the movies and then some. We've got Helm's Deep, Pelennor Fields, Minas Tirith, The Black Gates, and then we've got a bunch of other cool stuff like the Mines of Moria. Weathertop, The Shire. We've got a whole level where you get to play as the evil guys, running through The Shire, trampling Hobbits and burning the place to the ground.
And really we've focused equal parts on the good perspective and the idea of re-creating cinematic moments from the films -- not faithfully so much, but just kind of allowing the player to experience moments that are like the films -- but also really, for the first time, letting you get the chance to play as all of the bad guys. Play as the Balrog, play as Sauron and Sarumon, and really kind of live out that fantasy fulfillment of "what would it be like to really just destroy Middle-Earth? What if evil had won?"
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: So is the art direction for places that we saw in the movies taken directly into the game? Is it as close as possible, or do you take a bunch of liberties with that?
Eric Gewirtz: I would say, you know, we started with the films as inspiration, but depending on where the game needed to go from a gameplay standpoint, we started taking more liberties. The best example I can think of is the melee combat system. We really wanted to make sure that the game felt spectacular and really responsive, so the attacks are a little more dramatic and elaborate than having Viggo Mortensen swinging a sword. I'm not saying it's crazy wireframe stuff, it's just a little hyper-real. And the thing with the environments, too, we definitely started with the movies as a base, but we've started kind of exploring how to make this really feel like a really next-gen game, and be robust, so we expanded from there.
IGN: So how big are these places that we're going to be able to fight in?
Eric Gewirtz: They're really big. We started with... I'd love to be able to show you this [laughs] "it's this big!" For example, at Helm's Deep, we pretty much modeled the whole battlefield, so we have the wall and then the keep and the outside where the army starts, and then inside the keep we have the Glittering Caves and the throne room and that whole area where you see the battles take place from the films.
For things like the really expansive battles like Pelennor Fields, we really kind of needed enough space to be able to play with all the toys you have access to. You're going to be fighting Oliphants and these massive siege towers and you're riding around on horses at top speed, so we needed to make these maps really extensive the entire time.
Hoy s*&t! If this is anything at all like the Battlefront games I am all over this. The pictures look swwweeettt. I can't wait to get my hands on this.
I currently play Lord of the Rings Online. I didn't realize there is going to be another LotR game. Is this an MMO? multi player? RPG?
Nice graphics.
Sounds to me like Battlefront with some RTS built in. They explained that there will be 150 objects/people on the screen. I imagine a lot of them will have to be NPC's.
I'm sure its on its way. Pandemic has to finish Mercenaries 2 and release that (Aug). They are working on a Batman title as well as LOTR:conquest.
They no longer have the Destroy all Humans IP to think about, so I'd bet that work will shift to Battlefront 3 by September 08' for a Holiday 09' release.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blu-Ray Buckeye
Can't access the link from work... the link implies this will be a PS3 game but I just want to confirm that. Also any release time frame?
They said Fall of 08' but I highly double that since this is the first I'm hearing of the game.
Last edited by phranctoast; 05-08-2008 at 03:40 PM.
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, Pandemic Studios' sort-of sequel to its Star Wars: Battlefront work. The game will allow players to jump into any battle seen in the films, plus more, and lets you play out the battle any way you see fit.
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Lord of the Rings: Conquest
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