If I want to play LOTR games, experience everything there is to the fullest in the setting...

Because they're media products that have almost no knowledge of the source material outside of a few cinematic depictions of the War of the Ring. You end up with a fantasy product as generic as any other. The closest you will get to the scope and feel of LOTR in game form is Dwarf Fortress.

>his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity
lmfao, the current year is retarded. Tolkien doesn't understand political ambiguity? Here's Tolkien describing WW2, reacting to the common sentiment his books are an allegory for it:

>As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical... The crucial chapter, "The Shadow of the Past', is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels.
>The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dyr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would m the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

It's unambiguous not *because* our reality isn't.

>Harold Bloom
Good taste, in fact peculiarly rare taste for Yea Forums. Tell me your favourite authors, user.

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Tell me this is bait plx

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Quite a few writers have said the same thing, Moorcock said Tolkien was ridiculous and old-fashioned for opposing industrialization of England because he looked out the window and saw a nice countryside so it means Tolkien was wrong. Gary Gygax fullblown despised Tolkien hardcore and got pretty pissed when LOTR was attributed to the creation of D&D.

>Shadow Mordor games

Did you miss the point of OP:s thread?

Those aren't quite the same thing unless you've got more detail to post, but yeah no surprises that Gygax is a fucktard. I despise Gygax wholesale for what he did to elves and dwarves, which absolutely was him badly ripping off Tolkein and mutating them into the joke archetypes they are today. Anytime someone says "god I hate Tolkeinian elves" and then posts a picture of a skinny, beardless male with knife-ears it makes my blood boil. If Gygax is annoying that people attribute his inspiration to Tolkein then a) he's a liar and b) the feeling is mutual.

Moorcock's the guy whose chaos symbolism was shamelessly ripped off by Games Workshop for Warhammer, as-in they didn't even change the symbols for Khorne and Tzeentch, wasn't he? Weird dude.

Not gonna lie: nothing. For example The Third Age is a straight up Second Fellowship OC team game, "Shadow of Mordor" is Batman in Fanfic Mordor (I still gripe about a missed opportunity of turning Turin's story into a game), the LEGO games are LEGO games and thus are parodic twists of the films... The MMO is a little closer since it plays with elements from the story but again its an MMO so its inherently flawed.

I guess the closest might be the old text adventure but I never finished it so I can't say for sure.

>tried reading the first book
>had to stop because of how dull it was
Read other series like my life depended on it, but I just couldn't with this one. I guess I got overhyped with how "mythical" people make these series out to be

grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/01/gygax-on-tolkien-again.html

Tolkein's canon is one fictional setting with associated stories that I feel no issue with simply and soley delving into wikis to understand.

Do not want to click

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>I guess I got overhyped with how

No, you just don't have the ability to see anything through because you're a zoomer. you don't realize that you might have to slog through some pages for the journey to really start, because it's a long epic

the other series you read like your life depended on it are young adult "fast food" stuff, inconsequential garbage churned out by nobodies.

>that I feel no issue with simply and soley

you feel no issue with it because you don't comprehend what you're missing by not having any feeling for the legendarium and treating it like sonic the hedgehog

His narration is shit.

>Tolkien includes a number of heroic figures, but they are not of the "Conan" stamp. They are not larger-than-life swashbucklers who fear neither monster nor magic. His wizards are either ineffectual or else they lurk in their strongholds working magic spells which seem to have little if any effect while their gross and stupid minions bungle their plans for supremacy.

>Take several of Tolkien's heroic figures for example. Would a participant in a fantasy game more readily identify with Bard of Dale? Aragorn? Frodo Baggins? or would he rather relate to Conan, Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser, or Elric of Melnibone? The answer seems all too obvious.

what a faggot, his own creation lead to entire generations of neckbeards basing their characters on fucking Legolas and Gimli much less Aragorn

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t. user

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>Tolkien's world has never been done true justice in video game form.
Nor in any adaptation in any medium.

>>The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dyr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would m the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

That's brilliant user, I'm saving that. It makes me so mad that such a subtle and intelligent author as Tolkien should be glibly dismissed as Le What Even Was Tax Policy Man by an untalented hack like Gurm.

Unironically LEGO Lord of the Rings

You have access to the full Tolkien map of the west for the open world with the Shire being one of the comfiest locations ever. The levels are fun, especially with two players and you can play as essentially every character that makes even a hair of an appearance in the trilogy. Fucking shit up at Pelennor Fields with a Sauron + Tom Bombadil tag team is beyond based.

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That's a lot of words for someone that HAS to brag that they read through that slogfest. I mean, seriously with those first chapters being nothing but shitty ass history about the Hobbits and the Shire? I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THEM. By the time those were finished I was already falling asleep.

>turning Turin's story into a game
I've been crying about this for years, user, it's not just you.

lmao is this dude a literal manchild?

Yes, and he's the forefather of popular modern roleplaying. The Big Bang Theory is indirectly his fault.

I'm not alone! I'M NOT ALONE!
The one story that would give the edgiest plotline and a REASON for the "dark" mood of the films or even SoM... and they skip it.

>I despise Gygax wholesale for what he did to elves and dwarves, which absolutely was him badly ripping off Tolkein and mutating them into the joke archetypes they are today. Anytime someone says "god I hate Tolkeinian elves" and then posts a picture of a skinny, beardless male with knife-ears it makes my blood boil. If Gygax is annoying that people attribute his inspiration to Tolkein then a) he's a liar and b) the feeling is mutual.

It's worse than that. It's not just Tolkien's version of elves that was included. Gygax put in orcs, which were invented by Tolkien. He had humans being able to mix with elves and orcs, just like Tolkien. Half-orcs are basically Uruk-hai.

>Moorcock's the guy whose chaos symbolism was shamelessly ripped off by Games Workshop for Warhammer, as-in they didn't even change the symbols for Khorne and Tzeentch, wasn't he? Weird dude.

The whole chaos/law dichotomy that was present in pre-5th edition versions of D&D are very Moorcock.

MORGOTH I CRIED

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Oh that's great, I forgot all about this game. Good thing I got it off Humble before it was pulled off.

A first age game would also kick ass, I think. There's enough tremendously evocative details given in the Silmarillion to give developers a great platform to work on, but most of the storytelling is reasonably vague which would give ample scope for them to stamp their own ideas on it. If not Túrin Turambar, I'd love a game (or movie or TV series or anything really) that follows the adventures of Glorfindel.

I'm not even going to watch the Amazon Prime series out of curiosity, so convinced am I that it will be crap.

>I mean, seriously with those first chapters being nothing but shitty ass history about the Hobbits and the Shire? I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THEM.

I do. It's interesting when you have a broad scope of knowledge which informs the whole text. There is a wealth of historical and mythological subtext throughout the whole thing. And besides, the beginning is supposed to get you comfy, like hobbits live, so that when the journey starts you feel the shift towards danger more.

I know user, I was just giving one example for the uninitiated in the thread. I couldn't bear to go into anything deeper, such as the idea of orcs as being something other than the hobbitish word for goblins. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the Warhammer setup of Orcs/ks and goblins/grotz because that works for them, but when I think about and lay out of fantasy races in my head I understand that Warhammer-style orcs = bruiser goblins.

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...

Blind Guardian is a band not a game.

The first few chapters are literally the lightest and most punchily written in the whole trilogy, while he was still in Hobbit mode and not yet in epic-for-modern-times mode. If you didn't enjoy them then you should not bother with these books, they ain't for you.

> He had humans being able to mix with elves and orcs, just like Tolkien. Half-orcs are basically Uruk-hai.
Movie-only fag here, didn't they dig up Uruk-hai from the ground?

I like poking fun at people who don't read the Silmarillion by saying that the elves made mithril starships, Sauron caused the flooding of Atlantis, there was a vampire in Middle Earth, Sauron is actually subordinate to Lucifer, and that the sun and moon are a fruit and flower. I'm told to stop making things up.

Another carbuncle on the face of fantasy writing. I swear to god everything bad stems from that generation, including the notion of fantasy lodged in one narrow historical era and not part of a free-flowing continuum of technological and social developments. I'm sure most of you know in this thread that Tolkein originally planned on giving Sauron's army machinery, including vehicles and artificial dragons, and that the elves would have a space ship to access the realms of the Valar.

>there was a vampire in Middle Earth
I kind of wish this sort of thing was more expanded upon. Did she merely take form of the bat? Did she feed on human/elven blood?

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wait I thought you were referring to when Sauron transforms himself into a 'vampire' but I don't recall an actual separate vampire character?

Sauron could take the form of things so I alternately call him a werewolf, a vampire, a lich, ect.
I think she was a lesser maia like the Balrogs but the fact that she was described as taking their form suggests that she either took on a bat-form or just... took on the form of an existing if possibly rare creature. Whether bat or vampire its possible she drank blood but whether she got anything from it outside of scare factor is a mystery.
I remember Sauron turned into a vampire after getting his ass kicked by a fucking dog.
I joke that he got beaten up by Scooby Doo since the dog could talk (limited amount of times though).
>character
Thuringwethil.

Not at all, pure fabrication for the movie. Not a terrible fabrication admittedly, but in the books there's mention of "orc-wives", demonstrating that goblins have women and make bebbe the same as everyone else. Uruk-hai are described as goblin-men, that's because they literally are goblin and men ceoaawa.

Understanding this means knowing that Saruman's army was shorter on average than the men and elves they fought at Helm's Deep, and that Sauron's goblin hordes are even shorter than them. It's midgets vs lanklets every day in middle earth.

Here's the part in Silmarillion that mentions her:

>But Lúthien heard his song, and she sang in answer, as she came through the woods unlooked for. For Huan, consenting once more to be her steed, had borne her swiftly hard upon Beren’s trail. Long he had pondered in his heart what counsel he could devise for the lightening of the peril of these two whom he loved. He turned aside therefore at Sauron’s isle, as they ran northward again, and he took thence the ghastly wolf-hame of Draugluin, and the bat-fell of Thuringwethil. She was the messenger of Sauron, and was wont to fly in vampire’s form to Angband; and her great fingered wings were barbed at each joint’s end with an iron claw. Clad in these dreadful garments Huan and Lúthien ran through Taur-nu-Fuin, and all things fled before them.

...

>hen Beren perceived that Lúthien could not be divided from the doom that lay upon them both, and he sought no longer to dissuade her. By the counsel of Huan and the arts of Lúthien he was arrayed now in the hame of Draugluin, and she in the winged fell of Thuringwethil. Beren became in all things like a werewolf to look upon, save that in his eyes there shone a spirit grim indeed but clean; and horror was in his glance as he saw upon his flank a bat-like creature clinging with creased wings. Then howling under the moon he leaped down the hill, and the bat wheeled and flittered above him.

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First Age was some weird shit

in an early draft Tolkien played with the idea that orcs were made from mud, but decided Morgoth can't create life on his own.

Uruk-hai is term for all Orcs in Black Speech and not a specific group of orcs; Uruk=orc, hai=folk. The orc/men hybrid were something Saruman was experimenting with, the half-orcs that show up in the scouring of the shire for instance.

See, I don't get why they didn't use Thuringwethil for that Shadow of War game. She was already close to Sauron, and her ultimate fate was never revealed, so having her survive to the Third Age and nursing a bitter resentment for her former master wouldn't have been too far reaching. Instead, they fucking made Shelob Sauron's lover, taking human form whenever she willed.

It gets weirder man. The shit that happened during the creation of the world. The fact that the world was sung into existence by God and all of his angels. Tom Bombadil. The shit with the Giant Pillars/Lanterns, the Two Trees, the creation of the Sun and Moon because the trees got sucked to death by eldritch space spider... Dragon-eyes. The size dragons can be in the first place. Turin's story. The creations of the Silmaril and how creepy Feanor is over his niece's hair.
The Third Age is tame. Its still somewhat Middle Ages Fantasy World but the First Age (and Second) are straight up bullshit.

>Shelob is Sauron's lover
At least she wasn't Morgoth's. Given Ungoliant that would be a MASSIVE breach of characterization... and timeline.

not only was she Sauron's lover but she was the true 'unsung hero' of the story and merely helped Frodo along to destroy the ring

No, no, you forget, she and Gollum were heroes and Frodo was a loser who would have fucked everything up without the two of them moving events along. That's all according to the Shadow of War developers. God, I fucking hate faggots like that.

>giant spider that would had eaten Frodo and Sam
>Gollum
>are heroes
>and helped Frodo
>or Frodo just would had fucked up without them
WHAT
THE FUCK

>First Age (and Second) are straight up bullshit.
Fuck you man, that shit is cool af.

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That's lame after Sam was the one who literally carried Frodo

I said straight up bullshit in the "this is so cool" way. Granted its utterly insane... but its so much better than the events of the Third Age.

first BFME was pretty comfy, don't you think

It's the twisted way they justify to themselves the immense lore-rape they do unto Tolkien's works when they made their game.

Nowhere in the narrative says how big Ancalagon was

youtube.com/watch?v=D7eICeAfMwA

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Not exactly, while "uruk hai" does literally mean "goblin people" in the context of the books uruk hai and uruk are both used exclusively for the hybrid warriors of Isengard and the stronger of Sauron's own goblins, which referred to the smaller strains as "snaga" (slave). Tolkein used the terms somewhat interchangeably, and did this in universe to reflect natural ambiguities in language.

Is this really what they came up with or are you making it up (x) doubt

The only really standout bit about them is the language building though. That's the really cool shit, everything else is pretty standard affair. The songs are the best written bits about the books.

>lotr
>long

and if Tolkein wasn't so fascinated with describing the countryside every 2 minutes it would lose a good chunk of it's page count. But the problems lotr has are what make it kind of interesting, despite Tolkein's inane fascination with paternalist bullshit.

Basically Tom Bombadil is the best bit, fucking fight me.

Does anyone have that image of the observable universe and then a figure of God/Jesus looking upon it and then pulling back you fucking Ancalagon eclipsing it all?

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>uruk are both used exclusively for the hybrid warriors of Isengard and the stronger of Sauron's own goblins
This isn't true. You might want to read the Two Towers again.

Oh also this scene justifies the entirety of the Hobbit trilogy forever.

youtube.com/watch?v=o5MwScwGass

Because Tolkien's best stuff is songs and silly fun.

technobuffalo.com/2017/08/16/controversial-decision-to-make-shelob-a-woman-in-shadow-of-war-explained-by-monolith/

>There were two things that were a starting point for our inspiration. A big part of what we do is look at these characters that are in kind of the grey zone – they’re not as pure good as Gandalf or Aragorn, they’re more human. Characters we’re inspired by, characters like Boromir and Saruman and Denethor, because I think sometimes Lord of the Rings gets characterised as being oversimplified, black and white, good guys vs bad guys, but actually there are these incredible nuanced characters.

>So you’ve got Shelob representing darkness and then you’ve got Galadriel representing light, so you’ve got a duality between these two powerful women basically opposing each other in the same way that there’s a lot of duality in our game. So we thought those two in opposition are really interesting, and the way Galadriel basically manipulated and sent people off on these different quests [testing the Fellowship with the mirror in Lothlórien] but ultimately left to themselves that quest [to destroy the ring] would have failed. Then you think of Shelob as almost the dark mirror to her, who actually had this minion [Gollum] that… if you think about it in a way, ultimately succeeded.

>We were also thinking really in a lot of ways that, not intentionally, but it felt like Gandalf and Galadriel kind of lied to them [the Fellowship] a little bit about their chances and what differentiates Shelob is that she’s completely honest.. So she’s evil, or perceived as evil, but she has this honesty to her, and so as we started thinking through that and thinking of her as this dark mirror to Galadriel and filling that role in our story of that narrator and what that would look like.

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>powerful women
Shelob is a goddamn spider

it's only "standard" in that it literally set the standards.

Someone just wanted to write their waifu into a game, she was a convenient vessel for it.

Sorry sweetie

like even assuming Shelob and Ungoliant were Maiar and therefore shapeshifters, after having offspring they *can't* shapeshift anymore. Maiar typically don't have children because it diminishes their power. Melian was permanently in elf form after having Luthien.

The use of the term vessel here is poetic, the role of entities like Shelob are reduced to the equivalent of tosspots for the mental masturbation of zoipoi devs.

Its the sheer rape of canon and the whole "hurr durr bad guys r gud" shit.
>examples they use are guy first to break under the weight of the Ring, asshole fallen Maia who was obsessed with power and was a paranoid shit long before the events of the film, and mindfucked asshole who allowed paranoia and use of magic item with a direct link to Barad-dûr to fuck with his head
>Shelob as Darkness vs Galadriel as Light (okay fine)
>Shelob as dark mirror to her and used Gollum as a minion
FUCKING BULLSHIT

?

George MacDonald really set the standards desu.

God damn now I miss being twelve, lads.

I'm not getting into a "nuh-uh" match. If you want to you can find the exact passage where Uruk is used in general conversation to refer to something in The Two Towers beside the special goblin-men in Isengard and/or Sauron's larger goblins then you can be my guest.

Ungoliant was a Maia who joined Morgoth early in Tolkien's writing that got really big and hungry after eating the trees, but I don't think that's the case anymore. Still there's nothing about Ungoliant or Shelob shapeshifting.

I've never heard of Ungoliant referred to as a maia, that would be far too weak for one. Ungoliant is an embodiment of the outer darkness into which Melkor went wandering during the prep time before the Ainulindale.

You bothered me enough to look him up.
>Urban Fantasy writer
>All of his books look like $5 schlock you find in the bargain bin
Thanks for stopping by, Yea Forums, I needed a good chuckle.

It was used for Orcs, not the human/orc hybrids, those were a different group entirely. They were mentioned by Ent in particular. Uruks are pure orcs.

She was a eldritch space spider not a Maia.

>Ungoliant
>Maia
Yeah, nah. It was never said she was Maia. Only that she came somewhere outside of creation.

>an embodiment of the outer darkness into which Melkor went wandering during the prep time before the Ainulindale.
This is brought up a lot but there's literally no source for it. You'll find drafts about it being Maia in the history of middle-earth. Also maiar aren't weak; they aren't equal in power. If Ungoliant seems unusual it's because it eat the trees.

he's actually a pretty good writer, just a bit of a tit too big for his britches like most sci-fi fantasy writers

Then give the source in Tolkien's writing. In the Silmarillion it's unclear what Ungoliant is, in early drafts it was speculating that it's maia.

I'm not gonna bash $5 schlock too hard, some real nice stuff can be found in there sometimes. And it's not like I could do any better, goodness knows I've tried before.

He couldn't look more chavvy

Think about it logically how fucking awful the lore of these shit games are

youtube.com/watch?v=M_P09AzBCgw

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It's definitely not a Maia, because none of the Valar knows where it came from

Well they're literal fan fiction. The devs themelves even came out and said it. They didn't even want to make a Middle Earth game, WB made them slap the paint onto it to make use of the license.

Sorry sweetie.

She isn't listed among the Ainur, that's about as much as you'll get, therefore she's not a Maia.

Ignoring the lore, I liked the first half of the first game.
Second was just the exact same thing without a final boss.

Never got into the second game much, seemed just like more of the same.

but the first game doesn't have a final boss while the second game does

>ctrl+f
>not a single mention of Return of the King or BFME2
this thread is a fucking disgrace

We spent more time talking about the Silmarillion.

But he is big enough that when he was killed and fell from the sky the weight of his body completely destroyed Morgoth's lair and the surrounding mountains.

>dark mirror of Galadriel
IT'S LITERALLY SAURON
THEY LITERALLY SHARE A NAME (Sauron is Artano, Galadriel is Artanis)
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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Where was the Feanor Galadriel hair thing mentioned? I don't remember it from the Silmarillion and I only finished reading it last month. Was it from Unfinished Tales or am I just being retarded and forgetting it from the Silmarillion?

Galadriel is sauron???

There's so much kino history in the Appendices that would EASILY make for several games and not break the lore at all like Shadow of Shit, devs are fucking pussies who are too afraid to go beyond the direct events related to the main story.

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Shelob's role as a dark mirror is redundant, as that was already filled by Sauron and it was blatantly obvious because they both use related names.

Galadriel is her Sindarin name, while her father called her, in Quenya, Artanis (meaning "noble/high woman")

Meanwhile, during the Second Age, one of the names Sauron used was Artano, meaning "High Smith".

Battle for middle earth is essential.
LOTR 3 movie tie in is also good.

I wish I could sit every hack fantasy writer and gamemaker down and have them read Macdonald. It would do them a lot of good