No, really. That's what this is. Believe it or not, The Shadow of Mordor saga isn't the first time that someone's taken the epic saga of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and gone completely and utterly off the rails with it.
With the release of the trailer for the new Mordor game, I figured it was a good time to look at The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (which totally makes this topical, right? ...sure, let's go with that).
It was an attempt by EA Redwood Shores (now Visceral Games) and EA to create a story set within the universe of Middle-Earth that coincided perfectly with the Lord of the Rings' story without upstaging it. Also, due to the joy that is licensing rights (see also: the cluster that is Marvel Entertainment at the time of this writing), the developers could only use assets that appeared within the films rather than any of the books or other related materials.
...except that two of the characters, Berethor and Morwen, are actually named from characters within the obscure lore of Tolkien's books, but one could be forgiven for not digging through the literal over-sized athenaeum of lore that Tolkien had as background for almost every single imaginable facet of his world. I'm sure there are plenty more they snuck in. Crafty bastards.
The game itself takes place within the Third Age of Middle-Earth (just in case the title had you confused, it's understandable if you thought it was in the year 10,191). A Gondor citadel guard by the name of Berethor is travelling to Rivendell to find Boromir, son of Denethor. On the way, he's aided by a Hippee elf chick against some Ringwraiths before going on an epic adventure to follow the path of the Fellowship of the Rings through Mordor, into Rohan, and eventually to the fires of Mount Doom itself.
No, seriously. Mount Doom. Spoiler alert: The final boss is Sauron.
Yes, that Sauron.
As in you climb up the Black Tower and punch him in the Eye.
I'll leave you to contemplate how nuts that is.
Getting back to the plot, the human and elf are eventually joined by a ranger and his dwarven buddy, and then later Morwen, a Rohan shieldmaiden, and a Rohan royal guard named Eaoden, rounding out their fellowship of...well, six. I suppose asking for a full squad of nine was too on the nose? That being said, you do get a fourth NPC to join you for the big important battles, such as Gandalf against the Balrog.
Yes. You actually help Gandalf fight the Balrog.
HAS THE CRAZY BEGUN TO SINK IN YET?!
Mind you, that's not so much a surprise when it's on the cover, but when you look into the lore of what the Balrog actually is and what others of its kind are in the Tolkien mythos, Sauron starts to look vaguely passable as a boss fight.
...ironically, my memory served me well and I found that Sauron was astoundingly easier...but that's a whole other can of worms.
The game basically plays like one of the earlier Final Fantasy games, particularly Final Fantasy X (which it came out a little while afterwards and was understandably maligned for being too close to). You have certain characters (mostly Berethor and Eaoden, though a few others can easily fill the slot) for tanking and DPS, you have Idrial for magical attacks and buffs as well as healing. In fact, everyone has some sort of buff and debuff that can contribute to the party's efforts.
What really surprised me when I was a kid was that EA actually got Ian McKellan and Christopher Lee to come in to record original audio as Gandalf and Saruman for this game. Most of Saruman's plot involves tormenting Berethor after he's stabbed by a Morgul blade (long story), and setting him to chase after Boromir as a sort of sleeper agent to get his hands on the One Ring. A good plan...if incredibly stupid and really not exactly what one expects of the conniving, scheming wizard who has managed to subvert the path of goodness and brew an entire army of orcs under his doorstep.
That being said, it's a stark contrast to the few appearances by the rest of the cast, who are all just recycled clips from the Lord of the Rings trilogy (including a particularly bad, yet noteworthy scene with Aragorn after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields).
But getting back to Saruman, yes, stupid plan, but impetus enough to get the game going, I guess. Are you going to care about halfway through the forty to sixty hour trek that Berethor is being mind-controlled into some kind of Manchuarian (or is it Gondorian?) Candidate by Saruman and later by the Witch-King of Angmar? Of course not. But still, it's there. Even if it breaks the lore. Then again, we did that about twenty hours earlier when we helped Gandalf fight the Balrog.
There's also a love triangle between Berethor, Morwen, and Idrial that goes nowhere and serves no purpose. Not that there's much time for chemistry when you're running around grinding out levels in the Mines of Moria or battling packs of Uruk-Hai and Wargs in the plains of Rohan. At the very least Final Fantasy X, while completely flubbing the "love" between Tidus and Yuna, at least attempted to do something. There's...really no reason for any of the three to be all relationship-ish.
Though I guess...wide mass appeal?
But if that all doesn't interest you, then there's Evil Mode. Yes, for the first time, you too can take over the Forces of Darkness!TM and lay waste to a computer-controlled version of your heroes. It's mostly for flavor, but also can get you some interesting items that can be used in your game. I will say that it at least shows that they were thinking at least a little about what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot, so that's nice. The only difficulty is that you do actually have to play through each section of the game to unlock it in Evil Mode, and unfortunately Evil Mode itself is just a string of battles as whatever baddies are in that region.
Even with that working in its favor, I'm not really sure who this game is for. I'd say fans of Tolkien, but they'll get caught up on the lore hiccups. I'd say fans of the films, but they'll most likely wonder why these six idiots have been running around just out of earshot of the actual main characters. Gamers? They can juts play a similarly-crafted RPG, such as the aforementioned Final Fantasy.
That's not to say that it's bad by any means. It's just...ultimately a cheap cash-in and an attempt to grab the interest of someone...which, technically, I guess it did. I played the crap out of it, and I spoke to all my friends and all three of them enjoyed it as well, so there must be something to be said for that. Not that I'm really sure what it is.
It does break canon into itty-bitty tiny pieces, though. So there's that. That can be said.
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is available from Electronic Arts and Visceral Games for Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, and Playstation 2.
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