{"id":128339,"date":"2022-09-24T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-24T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/#article-138069"},"modified":"2022-09-24T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-09-24T13:00:00","slug":"talking-point-where-are-all-the-lord-of-the-rings-rpgs-on-console","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2022\/09\/24\/talking-point-where-are-all-the-lord-of-the-rings-rpgs-on-console\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking Point: Where Are All The Lord Of The Rings RPGs On Console?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image: Vivendi<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The year was 2002. Peter Jackson was about to release the second instalment in the Lord of the Rings<\/strong> movie trilogy, EA had bagged the rights to the video game adaptations of the films and Vivendi was just about to release its own console adaptation, not of the New Line Cinema property, but adapted directly from the Tolkien-penned source material.<\/p>\n

It is hardly a hot take to say that the motion picture trilogy is fantastic. The fellowship is perfectly cast, Howard Shore\u2019s score stands up today as one of the greatest of all time, and each film efficiently serves Tolkien\u2019s original work through the scope of their worldbuilding. Though even with a combined runtime just short of 12 hours (extended editions, of course), the films could never really capture the entirety of the world about which Tolkien had written.<\/p>\n

This presented a considerable challenge for not only the filmmakers but also for video games developers, whether they were aping the films’ treatment of the source or steering clear for rights reasons. Vivendi (publishing under its Black Label Games label) needed to make a game that would do Tolkien’s world justice. While the bigger versions of The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring<\/a> on Xbox, Playstation 2, and PC took the conventional action-adventure route, some serious adaptation was required to fit the Game Boy Advance\u2019s significantly reduced hardware capabilities. Vivendi needed a smaller style of game to fit Tolkien\u2019s massive world, and \u2014 with developer Pocket Studios at the helm \u2014 settled on an RPG with turn-based battles.<\/p>\n