28 replies to this topic

[dathui]

CrazyThumbs, on Oct 15 2005, 05:44 PM, said:

So this is the big annoucement. To be honest I think the idea is ok, might play it, but as long as you keep the RTS part this game will be great.

The RTS part will be coming out at some point, but it will take some time after we have released this part.

[Beren IV]

Gotcha. I take it then that the priority levels are:

LotR > The Hobbit > HoME12 > HoME11 > HoME10 > ... HoME1 > Sil > The Adventures of Tom Bombadil > Smith of Wotton Major?

Let me bring up another example:

In the Dead Marshes (in LotR), Frodo, Sam, and Gollum see apparitions of the fallen in the Last Alliance, and these apparitions include the faces of dead Elves, Men, and Orcs, alike. As others have noted (see quote at the bottom of this post), there is no reason to believe here that the three races are at all dissimilar in death: they all have bodies that rot away, and in dying they leave some malevolent memory behind that can potentially snare the hobbits who will then "light little candles of their own", to quote Gollum. But there is no mention anywhere of an afterlife (note emphasis) for any of the three races: they die and are dead, forever, just as any beast would.

This starkly contrasts with virtually every volume of HoME, in which the Elves at least always undergo some form of reincarnation, in Valinor at least if not in Middle Earth (in the earlier versions). Of course you cannot prove that the spirits of Elves and Men go their separate ways merely because both races are featured among these apparitions in LotR, nor can you prove that the fate of Orcs is similar to either Elves or Men. Nonetheless LotR in this scene presents a very strong connotation that their immediate fates at least are similar: their souls, if they exist at all, carry only a part of them onward, leaving their memories in some way behind.

How do we deal with this sort of incongruence here at TLA?

Quote

What does it mean for Elves to die? In this passage in LotR, as far as I can tell, all the stuff in Morgoth's Ring about reincarnation is to be ignored: the Elves are on the same level as the Mortal Men and Mortal Orcs that fell in the same battle. Whatever the state of their spirits (and where do Orcs go when they die, we wonders?), their faces appear in this marsh entirely because Elves as well as Men and Orcs fought and died in the great battles at the end of the Second Age. How Sauron or some other power preserved the bodies to appear in the waters three thousand year latter, is frankly anyones guess.

[Enarwaen]

Beren said:

How do we deal with this sort of incongruence here at TLA?

hmm - why *should* we even deal with that? we are not simulating the afterlife of the Eldar or of any other species in Middle-earth. If an Elf gets killed (or it's hroar is destroyed) we will still see the body on the ground. We will not follow the fëa - or even display it on screen. If one of your units gets killed - it will stay dead - we call that a 'persistant game state'. If you manage to get one of your heroes or leaders killed - it stays dead - no resurrection like in Warcraft III - same goes for the (latter) Strategy Mode.

And yes - the Dead Marshes are contradicting some fragments of MR - but it is not our 'place' to go out and try to interpret some meaning into it or come up with the *one true theory* - we are using it as it is described in the books - we encourage the player to come up with his own ideas and solutions to it.

if you want to know - my *personal* take on this would be that - with Sauron at the height of his power in the Second Age and the Dead Marshes being so close to the battle site at Dagorlad (and to Mordor itself) that some sort of power (or Sauron's influence) somehow denied the fallen (be it Elf, Orc or Man) to release the fëa (or parts thereof) from the body.
we can see a similiar motif in the 'cursed' inhabitants of Dwimorberg.

Beren said:

LotR > The Hobbit > HoME12 > HoME11 > HoME10 > ... HoME1 > Sil > The Adventures of Tom Bombadil > Smith of Wotton Major?

well it's not that easy personally i'd move some 'parts' of the HoME volumes above LotR/Hobbit/Sil ... same with goes with UT. again my *personal* way of tackling these is - keep the 'story' as the core and try to 'enrich' the fabric with facts found in the surrounding works (e.g. HoME, UT). as said previously - this is very much a case by case basis - which forces you to remember to know where to find certain fragments that apply to the current situation/problem/question. hope this helps

[Beren IV]

In other words, TLA characters have no afterlives? That is realistic by the standards of the Earth as well as we can measure it, but not what Tolkien (as a religious man who believed in the afterlife) liked to think.


I will have to wait to see what you come up with, I guess. I personally think that a judicious use (and perhaps some modding) of the Neverwinter Nights editor is pretty good for creating computer rpgs in Arda, although NWN certainly has its drawbacks (you cannot make mountains in NWN...). I have been looking forward to TLA to explore the interactions between cultures more than anything else - but I certainly feel that, myself being a Tolkien Liberal in the true sense of the phrase, multiple interpretations are worth considering and enjoying.


p.s. Lúthien is certainly the most spectacular example, but she certainly isn't the only elf in the First Age who possesses some powers beyond what her physical form would indicate, and some of these powers are usable as weapons or as aids to weapons. I envision even some of the Edain heroes as having some powers, in fact.

[CrazyThumbs]

I assume the RPG part will be using the same engine as the RTS part, so how might this effect the RTS part of the game? Like will you be able to play Nern Ennorath part with only the strategy part downloaded, or will any of the RPG features be mixed in with the stratgey portion of the game?

[Deacon_Raptor]

good question for a necromancer

[CrazyThumbs]

yeaaaaa, not much has been going on around her latley so I havent been as active.
By the way any news from the developers? hmmmmmm.

[Enarwaen]

Quote

I assume the RPG part will be using the same engine as the RTS part, so how might this effect the RTS part of the game? Like will you be able to play Nern Ennorath part with only the strategy part downloaded, or will any of the RPG features be mixed in with the stratgey portion of the game?

i wouldn't necessarily call it a RPG-part. TLA is and will be a RTS. The scope of Nern Ennorath is just a tad different than e.g. the random map features of games like AoE.
we are presenting the tales of Tolkien as a mixture of engine-driven cutscenes and several missions where the player must fulfill several objectives. you will learn more of this pretty soon so stay tuned ...

[Beren IV]

Understood. Yes, I was apprehensive when I heard that it was being made into an RPG, because it is difficult to make the characters unique enough using normal RTS-like game mechanics for it to be a good RPG.