The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring Preview

By Andrew Park, GameSpotPosted Sep 17, 2003 12:53 pm PT

Liquid Entertainment's upcoming real-time strategy game will draw inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy novels.

The spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy novel series, The Lord of the Rings, is alive and well, thanks to the recent motion picture adaptations, as well as to the recent interest that publisher VU Games has shown in adapting the actual written source material for computer and video games, including Liquid Entertainment's upcoming strategy game based on Tolkien's novels, War of the Ring, for its Black Label Games division. The game will let you command the armies of Gandalf and Legolas by collecting precious resources, building a base of operations, and recruiting armies of skilled military units to defeat your enemies before they can similarly fortify themselves. War of the Rings is being built on the experience that Liquid has acquired through the development of its Battle Realms real-time strategy games, and it's already looking extremely solid at this point.

Battles under the tree cover of Mirkwood Forest should appeal to both Tolkien fans and real-time strategy fans.

According to Liquid Entertainment president Ed Del Castillo, the team wanted to make a game that would appeal to two very distinct audiences: hardcore fans of real-time strategy games and exacting fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's novels. Over the course of the game's early development, it seemed like the best way to satisfy the needs of both of these audiences was to gear the multiplayer game towards the strategy fans and the single-player game towards Tolkien fans.

The game's single-player campaign will be split into two parts: one set of missions for the good-aligned characters, like Gimli and Aragorn, and one set of missions for evil-aligned characters, like Saruman. The campaign will take place during the end of Tolkien's third age--the same time frame that includes the journeys of Frodo Baggins and his legendary fellowship, as well as various adventures that took place centuries before it. As Del Castillo describes it, the single-player game will essentially serve as an "abbreviated history of the rise of Sauron," the dark lord of Mordor and controller of the magic rings that made men, elves, dwarves, and hobbits, alike, mad with power.

The campaign won't have a linear structure either; rather than play through a predictably linear series of missions that become more difficult over time, War of the Ring's campaign will progressively unlock small groups of missions and let you choose which ones you'd like to play next. The order in which you unlock the campaigns won't be strictly linear, but will instead be governed by the chronology of events in Tolkien's fiction. Each of these missions will include introductory and closing cinematics, as well as an epilogue that explains the significance of the mission in the struggle for power between the forces of good and evil within the time line of Tolkien's third age. Many of these missions will feature multiple objectives and side-quests that can be performed in exchange for miscellaneous benefits.

You must choose your tactics wisely to win this bridge from the enemy.

In terms of multiplayer gameplay, Liquid Entertainment is attempting to both add to and streamline the mechanics it used in its previous game, Battle Realms. In both single- and multiplayer games, War of the Ring will feature only two resources: food and ore (while Battle Realms also featured water as a separate resource). The actual gameplay will focus on the smart, tactical use of your units and their abilities.

War of the Ring will feature an enhanced version of the physics engine featured in Battle Realms. As in Battle Realms and other real-time strategy games, you'll, of course, want to harvest resources quickly and research upgrades for your units and bases. You'll also need to take heed of new tactical considerations, such as "knockback," which is an ability some units will possess that sends their enemies flying backwards--sometimes to their deaths when near the edges of chasms or deep lakes. Units with the knockback ability will be able to effectively subdue close-range melee units, like the good side's stout dwarven shieldbreakers, so you'll need to make sure you either recruit an ally with immunity to knockback (like the legendary shapeshifter Beorn) or add ranged units, like elven archers, to your army. Or you can do both.

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