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Jaero

BFME2 - Another reason to hate EA!

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On Gamespot, there has been posted yet another bland, unimpressive, piece of writing disguised as a preview for the recently-announced Battle for Middle-earth II. I reviewed the first game, and found that the Lead Designer had made an attempt to innovate in a number of very interesting ways. Few of them were what I would call "successful", and the problem of one innovation often impacted other parts of the gameplay. But all the same, there are few RTS games with a minimal user-interface - and I respect that they made the attempt; took a risk (which is very unlike EA). Unfortunately, that designer has left EA Games to work on a new project at Blizzard Entertainment. So as a result, we get this preview which tells us the equivalent of "more units, more explosions, more big stuff and this stuff and that stuff" - in other words, nothing new. Nothing interesting. Nothing worth my $50 to play the stupid game. Oh, I forgot, more violations of Tolkien-lore than ever before!

On the plus side, you may not be restricted to pre-fabbed bases. But you are still required to be aggressive, to hold parts of the map with special resources (Mithril included!) and the like, in order to be successful. This was no fun in the first game, and it's clear we're getting more of the same, because the last creative person working on the LOTR franchise there has left.

So they compensate by giving uninspired, repressed employees creative control of their license-driven game. And what do we get?

Together with the goblins' wild cave trolls, half-troll marauders (disturbingly intelligent brutes that carry spears into battle), and goblin spider riders (believe it or not, the goblins will actually have cavalry), the goblins present a formidable military front. Goblins can also build monuments for their fortresses. In this case, they're called drakes' nests, which are huge steely effigies of giant reptiles that produce fire drakes--hulking, land-bound four-legged reptiles with fiery breath.

This is rife with items that will make Tolkien fans wretch bile. GOBLINS DID NOT RIDE SPIDERS. SPIDERS EAT GOBLINS. GOBLINS RIDE WOLVES. It's all very bloody plain and simple. EA, you got the licenses to the books, but apparently you skipped the part of school where you learned how to read them?

In the teaser at Gamespot, you will also see giant scorpions, also being used as mounts. I can not wait to get my hands on this game, and give it the review it deserves. Why? Because if you've been to the LOTRO Official forums in the last few months, you may have seen threads inquiring about the sticky licensing situation. There's no problem - Turbine has the rights to the books for the development of MMORPGs based on them. New Line had the rights to the books in order to make the movie trilogy, and though EA only had license to the movies, New Line has somehow extended them the rights to the book (which must have involved paying Tolkien Enterprises off for a lot of money, as they are apparently cut out of the creative process - which is why we're seeing giant-fucking-scorpions).

So what we're actually getting is RTS, not Tolkien. We're getting The Lord of the Rings, adapted by people who think "Dungeons and Dragons" came first, and that Tolkien stole his ideas from it. The only other possibility is absolute stupidity, and I suppose I was formerly too optimistic to admit that it was such an epidemic.

I can't wait to review this game. <_<

Why am I so pissed about this? Because this was their one chance to do it right. The first game had enough lore violations to go around, and that was partially due to it being licensed from the films, not the books. But instead they skim the books, look for every possible noun that could be used or transfigured into a unit in their game, and throw the important parts of the book away.

How do I know it's actually this bad? Because Peter Jackson himself (who is hated by many Tolkien fans for changing the story/characters around) has cut off EA and gone to one of their competitors, Ubisoft, for his new movie, King Kong. Ubisoft doesn't regularly make a killing on mass-producing mediocre pieces of shit. :shifty:

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I care only because Tolkien fans have been waiting for decades to get some playable form of something that remotely stands up to the literature behind 'em. The Lord of the Rings Online could be the last one in a long while now, that has that chance. EA/New Line now holds just about all the rights to everything else.

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They should make a Hobbit RTS entirely focused on cooking for dwarves, tightening belts when hungry, and singing bizarre songs. That's I game I could support.

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They should make a Hobbit RTS entirely focused on cooking for dwarves, tightening belts when hungry, and singing bizarre songs. That's I game I could support.

Yeah Façade kind of game in which you have manage the lunatic behaviours of a bunch of dwarves and a wizard on pot. Oh, the fun. I can't wait.

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Yeah Façade kind of game in which you have manage the lunatic behaviours of a bunch of dwarves and a wizard on pot. Oh, the fun. I can't wait.

Hmm, Gandalf's trickery with the trolls might actually work very well in a Façade type engine. Me ponders.

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I have to say that preview was hilarious. It's essentially "we're reverting back to standard RTS form, but keeping all the original units and adding stuff ripped from other games. Also, we have invented an amazing, never-before-done strategy we like to call 'flanking' ". :shifty:

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I have to agree with the first response. Who cares?

Personally, I can't blame EA if they did just skim over the books, as I've always found Tolkien completely unreadable. My god is it boring. And I find myself hating every character in the story more and more with each passing page. Especially when it comes to LOTR. Suck it up, you little whiny Hobbit bastards, and get on with it.

In my opinion, Tolkien is quite possibly THE most overrated writer of the past centuries. Possible exception of Steven King, but still, you get the point.

Addendum:

As for the movies, they were very pretty. Pretty is not necessarily good. The new Star Wars trilogy was pretty too, and you can see where that got them.

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Ubisoft doesn't regularly make a killing on mass-producing mediocre pieces of shit. :shifty:

Umm... is this sarcasm? Have you seen what Ubi has been putting out recently? They aren't pumping out Beyond Good and Evil's.

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Personally, I can't blame EA if they did just skim over the books, as I've always found Tolkien completely unreadable. My god is it boring. And I find myself hating every character in the story more and more with each passing page. Especially when it comes to LOTR. Suck it up, you little whiny Hobbit bastards, and get on with it.

In my opinion, Tolkien is quite possibly THE most overrated writer of the past centuries. Possible exception of Steven King, but still, you get the point.

I agree with that, Tolkien is overrated, doesn't mean he hasn't got a lot fans who deserve to have something that stays a little more faithful to his 'vision'.

As much as I despise JRR, he has kind of influenced all fantasy writing that followed... Hmm I don't like much of that either... I think I lost the point I was trying to make.

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Umm... is this sarcasm? Have you seen what Ubi has been putting out recently? They aren't pumping out Beyond Good and Evil's.

Heh, it's not sarcasm. But I did put some thought into that, and that's why I said that they don't regularly mass-produce modiocre games. On the other hand, EA is all about the constancy and consistancy of their shit.

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It isn't really a die hard fan accurate rendition its just a regular fantasy games with the named borrowed from LoTR. I liked the first game , though there were things that annoyed me it was ok overall but I thought it was pretty much repeating the same thing over and over again.

Though I agree, goblins and spiders is a bit of a stupid thing but as long as the game is fun I don't really care.

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I have to agree with the first response. Who cares?

Personally, I can't blame EA if they did just skim over the books, as I've always found Tolkien completely unreadable. My god is it boring. And I find myself hating every character in the story more and more with each passing page. Especially when it comes to LOTR. Suck it up, you little whiny Hobbit bastards, and get on with it.

In my opinion, Tolkien is quite possibly THE most overrated writer of the past centuries. Possible exception of Steven King, but still, you get the point.

Addendum:

As for the movies, they were very pretty. Pretty is not necessarily good. The new Star Wars trilogy was pretty too, and you can see where that got them.

Amen to that.

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Wow, I'm getting much more agreement than I ever expected. Normally the nerds would be at my throat. I already loved this place, but now it feels like....

home.

*starts bawling*

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As the only person here with a genuine reason to hate EA, I just have to say...

I genuinely enjoyed the first game and am heartily looking forward to the sequel.

So there.

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I didn't abhor the first one, and I am only talking about the bones I had to pick with it (in relation to this sequel), not about the stuff I liked.

Miffy, as a nerd, I considered going that route, but I do realize this isn't a LOTR forum, and you're not going to a Tolkien fanatic's house to say his idol is overrated. You're allowed to hate. Just don't hate more than Yufster hates some things. That would frighten me.

It's not so much the "unfaithful" parts of the new game that annoy me, so much as it is what they've done with this new license they've gotten - because now EA has all the rights to make any game based on the movies and the books - save for MMORPGs, which Turbine has the rights to. What it means is that the fans will never, at least in like the next 10 years, get a video game that does the literature justice. It'll be exploitation after exploitation. And Lord of the Rings Online being a MMORPG, it would have a life of 5-10 years, probably, meaning for a long time there would be no alternative. Not to mention it leaves in the dust any fan without a good net connection or very decent PC.

It's the long-term implications that make me flip my shit, not so much the game itself. I'm sure by the time more is actually revealed of it, I will like more about it than I do right now.

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As the only person here with a genuine reason to hate EA...

What's the reason, out of interest?

I couldn't care less about this game. I enjoyed BFME (in fact, I still am), and I can fully see that EA saw a game of theirs that sold well, and they want a sequel. So they handed it to the side of them that makes the Sims expansion packs and Road To World Cup - the dark, pure-capitalist-crap side.

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I didn't like Battle for middle earth that much. It just wasn't as fun as Warcraft 3 or Command and Conquer Generals. I hope BFME 2 will be more fun that the original.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but EA is just a publisher and I don't really think they could care less if the goblins ride spiders or wolves. As long as it makes them money...

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I understand the concerns of the fan about developers keeping the integrity of the books' content when adapting them into games but... who cares about spider or wolves riders? It's not like they had thrown the Nazis into the LOTR plot , right ?

What I mean is that, I think there ha been enough into paperbased games of LOTR to allow publisher to take a few - or, that is what I wished for - a LOT of freedom with the original content. Let's make Goblins ride enslaved Hobbits!

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What's the reason, out of interest?

No, I have nothing personal against them, I just work for Take 2/2K Games. EA's our sworn enemy or something like that.

Plus I heard they suck.

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The entirety of the Idle Thumb Forums have been condensed into one easy to digest thread!

Oops, wait...

psychonauts

theeere we go.

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