The Lord of the Rings has been adapted countless times. There are the famous movies made by Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens. There were cartoons before them. In the coming years we’ll get The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rings of Power and . There are💖 graphic novels, there is fanfiction, there is the adaptation we make in our heads every timeꦫ we read a passage, and there are games. Plenty of games.
When you think of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lord of the Rings games, you might think of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Shadow of War or Battle for Middle-earth 2. The former is a fun jaunt - it’s ba💫sically Assassin’s Creed Mordor - if you ignore its mutilation of Tolkien’s precious lore, and the latter is still one of my favo♓urite strategy games 15 years after its release.
Then there are the movie tie-ins and LEGO versions, card games and mobile games, text ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚadventures and more. I’ve played most for at least a couple of hours, but one seemed impenetrable: The Lord of the Rings Online. Despite its simple title, the prospect of entering an MMO - a genre I haven’t delved into since the OG Runescape - and being surrounded by overleveled players who know what they’re doing was daunting.
The Lord🧔 Of The Rings Online Is The Best Tolkien Adaptation To Date
I took the plunge this month, because I’ve heard great things about how it adapts Tolkien’s texts and recreates his world. It’s not like I’ve got enough live-service games on my plate with serious 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:FIFA Ultimate Team commitments to juggle as well, but I wanted to at least dip my toes into the biggest blind spot in my Tolkien gaming catalogue. I was also motivated by the discussion of The Rings of Power not being ‘true to Tolkien,’ largely due to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:people of colour being cast and the female dwarf not having a beard. Tolkien’s own work barely described his characters and contradicted himself many times about the appearances of dwarf women, but many people won’t listen and remain, perhaps unknowingly, more influenced by Jackson than Tolkien. The Amazon series’ 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:time compression and the potential 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:muddling of Durin’s lineage both worry me, but I wanted to spend some tꦅime in a world that is considered incredibly faithful to Tolkien’s text: The Lord of the Rings Online.
I created a little hobbit bard. I wasn’t in the mood for taking many fights, and I realise without a raiding party of friends picking a relatively defenseless healer was probably🌸 a bad choice, but I’m here to explore rather than fight - let’s see how that works out for me. With my little dude complete, I began. After a short period in Tutorial Village, I was transported to The Shire and immediately made my way toward Hobbiton.
Over hedge I jumped and across field I sprinted. I scared a bunch of chickens once, narrowly avoided being skewered by a b♔oar another. It all felt very hobbity, but I needed to see an iconic sight to know how accurate to Tolkien’s words this game actually is. As I crested 🍬the last rolling knoll and saw The Hill, I knew LOTRO had nailed it.
Comꩵpare the game’s recreation of The Hill - that’s Frodo and Bilbo’s house, Bag End, at the top for those of you not well-acquainted with The Shire - with Tolkien’s own illustration of the area. It🐟’s an incredibly faithful replica, a fully 3D and playable Tolkien illustration expertly transferred from page to screen.
But it gets even better when you stray further afield. Places like Bywater are described in fair detail in The Fellowship of the Ring, but Brockenborings is only mentioned in passing (once in all six books of The Lord of the Rings) and shown on a map. Tolkien’s maps are a core part of his world building, but not much use when designing a part of The Shire for a visual medium - for that, you’d much prefer to have his words to work with. However, The Lord of the Rings Online extrapolates on what Tolkien has described to create a real👍istic-feeling world that feels straight out of the books, even for the areas that are only hinted at.
The locations are all precise as per book-maps and verbal directions. But Brockenborings feels like a location from The Lord of the Rings, as if the developer had access to a hidden chapter t🌌hat Tolkien spent descriꦓbing the network of hobbit holes drilled into the area’s hills.
There are more wild pigs and aggressive wolves than in Tolkien’s version of The Shire, andꦆ I don’t remember him 🧸ever mentioning bears or copper deposits either. But any adaptation has to make some changes to fit its new medium. After all, The Lord of the Rings Online is an MMO, not a walking simulator. We need to level up and complete quests, and that means concessions must be made. Now that I mention it though, I would love a Shire-based walking simulator. Anyway.
From Rushock Bog to the mine at Scary, The Lord of the Rings Online visualises parts of Middle-earth in ways that feel true to Tolkien’s descriptions of the rest of The Shire, while filling in the blanks. Concessions have been made 🔜- giant spiders never ventured to Bridgefields - but these are not important.
We should take this experience into The Rings of Power and The War of the Rohirrim - and any adaptations after them. We’re not privy to Tolkien’s thoughts, but adapters are sculpting their own creations out of the fantastic world he did create. Parts may not align with how you envisioned Little Delving or Forodwaith, but that’s fine. An adaptation having its own sᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚpin on things - be they locations or characters - doesn’t take anything away from what you imagined, much like it takes nothing away from the canon of Tolkien’s books. It is, after all, an adaptation, which is to say, 🍸an interpretation of the source, something that Tolkien, who was a fervent interpreter of classic texts such as Beowulf, knew well. For the moment, we don’t fully know what Amazon’s show will be like and I don’t know what the rest of The Lord of the Rings Online’s sprawling depiction of Middle-earth will have in store. But in both cases, I’m excited to find out.