Lord of The Rings The Battle for Middle earth II Preview

As the war emerges at the gates of Middle Earth, the kingdoms of Middle-Earth shall look upon gamers for help to bring this evil to a calm……and the gamers shall respond.

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II is being awaited by the whole gaming community and the reason for this eager anticipation can be owed to a few factors. First is the grand scale of the Lord of The Rings epic, which has been set by the movies themselves. J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendary books were resurrected by the three ambitious movies made consecutively, which set a new scale of success. In Hollywood, movies of such grand scale always carry their merchandise to the consumers in various shapes and making games out of the movies is one of the most lucrative options and when the movie in question is The Lord of the Rings, then it has more then a lucrative side to it. To make a game on LOTR theme is only more feasible as all the script work has already been done and it is full of fantastic material any gamer would want in a game based on fantasy realms. It has an incredible set of themes, locales, milieu and atmosphere, so much so that it seems a work straight out of Christian mythology (another Post-Modern trait of the Occident to create its own culture). Locations, heroes, villains, skills, names and ups and downs of the story have all been arranged and what wasn’t arranged (likes of the looks, clothes and concept arts), had been arranged by the movies. It seems as if LOTR books were waiting to be found to be turned into games and finally it’s happening right in front of our eyes. In fact the epic is of such a large scale that it can’t be turned into just merely one game, but many more games…and that’s exactly what we have seen.

Of course all this ready-made material didn’t come cheap as it involved copyright issues. Tolkien Enterprises offered two licenses: one for the movies and the other for the books. Electronic Arts and Vivendi Universal proposed two versions of the game, based on the books by Tolkien. The movies portrayed most of the material from the books but many aspects were left untouched because of the production limitations (it’s wisely said that if there were four of LOTR movies, it would have been an “epic” flop). But as the good luck will have it, the licenses have united and Electronic Arts has taken over the license for books, which enables them to go ahead with more projects based on the LOTR books and also to produce sequels to the existing merchandise. This statement will make more sense when you will know that the sequel to The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth follows the events which were not shown in the movies. So now EA has a chance to come out with a game with unseen material (except for those who have read the books) in the shape of The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II. Also we can hope for more sequels down the line. Well if there can be three movies of immortal lengths, wonder how many games could be there?

What the movies didn’t know… err show is that that Sauron sent an army to the north and the war that resulted was of more greatness then the massive epic battle at Minas Tirith, and the new game features this side of the wars. This invasion by Sauron started a chain reaction of many other sub-wars (of course grand at their own level) and these are the wars which are featured in the single player campaign. For those who are already lost, I must notify that these wars run parallel (well almost) to the wars shown in the Jackson’s trilogy. In simplest language, an alliance between Elves (with those horny ears) and Dwarves try to keep Sauron away from their homeland i.e. the Middle Earth. Sauron sends armies of Mordor from Dol Gurdor (where did Tolkien find these names, they are so Indian in origin) with the help of Goblins and Isengard. The wars will take place in the realms of Grey heavens, Withered Heath, Mirkwood, Caradhras, Goblin cities set in Misty Mountains and at various deployments on Elves and Dwarves and not to forget at The Shire.

According to the developers, the single player game will consist of more varied objectives with long-term consequences than the “search and destroy” scenarios which dominated the first game. There are going to be 16 missions in all: eight for good and eight for the evil side of fellowship. The details of these missions are already available at various sites over the internet. Along with the fellowship there are going to be six playable races: Men of The West (Empires of Rohan and Gondor have been merged together in BFME II), Dwarves, Elves, Mordor, Goblins and Isengard.

The creation of the base will be improved this time. In the earlier game, players were supposed to construct buildings on pre-assigned areas, and mostly strategy lovers hated that. What’s the point of playing a strategy game with pre planned structures? Thus EA has heard the protests and have given the freedom to construct on our own and BFME II gives the full control in the players’ hands. Apart from that, construction and setting of the base will be same as other strategy games. We will have option to construct fortified castles and minarets, with boundary walls. All of the buildings come with usual upgrades and your chosen race will be able to research its own technologies. In the earlier game, the garrisoned archers in the towers were not removable, but this “bug” has also been fixed for good in the BFME II.

The game is not only going to have all the heroes from the original games but is also going to feature more heroes from the books like Wormtongue, Sharku, Elrond and more. What is better is that the players will be able to create their own heroes from scratch with the variables sets of stats, skills, weapons, armor, colors, looks and more (more like Sim Heroes). Apart from that the heroes will be able to use special summoning powers. Only one hero will be available for one game, still players will be able to create a mass of heroes to be used in later scenarios.

There is going to be another feature in BFME II which can turn the whole game upside down and descends straight from the books. The feature is of the One Ring. Gollum can be found roaming around the map and the first player to kill him will get the One Ring. After a set time, the ring allows the bearer to summon uber-heroes like Sauron and Galadriel. These super heroes kill the regular heroes like dust, apart from doing tones of regular damage. To defeat these heroes the players will have to take some strict measures of destroying everything around them. A massive blast will destroy everything around the designated area and after everything has turned to dust what remains is the One Ring with no bearer. Its free-for-all and waits for its next bearer. After a certain time Gollum will re-spawn and he can be used by the other team as a tracker of the ring. He can lead the team to the ring
and the team can steal the ring before the uber-hero is created.

The sequel will also offer all the units from the early game and some new strategic formations for the soldiers according to their ranks. In the early games the formations worked on random basis and used to leave the weaker ranks like archers prone for attack, but in the sequel the formations will work on rank basis, with pikes men covering the archers for example. All the players will need to do is to select a group of different units and select a formation and all the units will make that formation usable according to ranks automatically.Even the flanking strategies have been modified. In the earlier game attacking from behind didn’t get you any benefit and you always had a chance of loosing the war, but in the sequel attacking from behind will get you an added bonus. The tactical strategies will play an important role in the sequel and they are going to make the game only more enjoyable for the strategy lovers.

Apart from other regular units the sequel will feature navy units. The sea and water reflections have been rendered artistically. The flow of waves is supposed to get you enchanted. All the good and evil armies will have access to the ships and the ships will be loaded with archers as seen in Return of The King. This means we will be able to see some good oceanic archery fights. Archers will be shooting firry arrows to set the enemy ships on fire and as the game has great particle effects, the fires are going to be as real as possible. The wars at ocean and shore sides will include ship to ship and ship to land battles thanks to the capabilities of archers.

If you choose to explore the map early in the game, you will be rewarded by the exploration system of the game. Seeking new territories will get you extra points and will put you in a better position then your enemies. Later in the game you will learn that putting your fortresses on farther routes gets you a lot more bonus then putting them close to each other. The game has the idea of controlling as many territories as possible. So set your scouts to work. The early exploration will also help you in finding the Gollum later in the game with chances of claiming the One Ring.

The game went into the development stage in March last year and is already looking very inviting. This is a far steeper rise for a game of such a Leviathan magnitude and especially with such an enormous merchandise to sell. But EA is not the name of a rookie, but a grandpa of gaming world which can earn profits even out of ashes and when it comes to profits…well its all in the game. The game as mentioned holds a great promise for the strategy lovers and it seems that Lord of The Rings and the games attached with it are going to capture all the genres of gaming (don’t wonder if next year they come out with Lord of The Rings Tycoon). All the games in the series have been successful and it looks from the outset that BFME II is also going to rock the cradle. EA has improved all the game play buggies of the previous game and only time can tell if the new sequel generates any new problems regarding game play. The game is supposed to be launched in March 2006 but as for now we are left with immortal time to wait before this vast empire awakes and decides the fate of our times….

My precious.. We wants it… We wants it…