Of all the veins exploitatively mined to near-exhaustion by the entertainment industry, Tolkien’s works have, until now at least, escaped relatively unscathed. Yes, his creations have made the transition to both the big and small screens, the latter by way of PC and consoles, but (with a couple of exceptions) none of the products have particularly damaged the brand. Jackson’s recent return to Middle-earth for a prequel trilogy based on The Hobbit has once again proven that Tolkien’s source material can have the Midas touch, so it’s hardly surprising that the decision was made to similarly create a new video game based on the license. After a well-received reveal, albeit with a few controversies, the question now is whether Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor can continue such a lucrative trend.
Despite Monolith having created a Lord of the Rings title before - the console-led MOBA Guardians of Middle-earth - design director Michael de Plater explained to me that Shadow of Mordor was created in parallel, with a completely separate team. Thankfully though, they’ve been far from alone during their three-year odyssey into Tolkien’s world, getting support from at least four different sources, all of whom are more than au fait with Middle-earth and its fantastical denizens.
The first is Middle-earth Enterprises, the company that has acted as licenser for all things Tolkien for a long old time. Alongside them, De Plater explained that Warner Bros., which is acting as publisher for the game, has a fair few Tolkien scholars whose job it is to check everything that goes into the game in meticulous detail. They make sure no inaccuracies slip in, and scrutinise the specifics from a lore perspective. But it’s the final two collaborative forces working with Monolith that’ll reassure you more than anything that this game is determined to fit snugly into the line-up of entertainment products that respect Tolkien’s source material.
Don’t make a movie game. Just make the best game you possibly can.
“We’ve shown the game a couple of times [to Peter Jackson] and he’s just been hugely supportive,” de Plater reveals. “His main thing, which was great, was ‘don’t make a movie game. Just make the best game you possibly can.’ He was super supportive of us trying to do something ambitious and different. Then in addition to but separate from him is his design company, WETA. We collaborated with them very closely. They’ve worked non-stop on all the design of the Lord of the Rings films and The Hobbit films and we were lucky enough to hook up with them directly.”
Given how the plot of Shadow of Mordor will comfortably slot between the two movie trilogies created by Jackson, it makes sense for both he and WETA to collaborate with Monolith in a bid to bring about a united vision. But already some concerns have been raised about the premise of Shadow of Mordor’s story; taking place at the time period it does, surely the team is restricted from having impactful moments in the game as, ultimately, Sauron does not fall to Talion the Wraith but rather Frodo the Hobbit? Will this not make it hard to feel like anything you do matters? According to de Plater, such fears are unfounded. He explained to me that while the wider conflict can’t be changed, that doesn’t mean the stories of the characters showcased in the title won’t pack an emotional punch, regardless of whether they’re new or old.
“One of the things that came first was we knew we wanted to do an open-world game,” he explained. “We wanted to find somewhere where we could show something incredibly iconic, but also different, in a way they hadn’t seen before. So we came to Mordor as a setting fairly early.
We also wanted to be very authentic to the themes of Tolkien.
“We also wanted to be very authentic to the themes of Tolkien. Some of the comments made about Tolkien accuse it of being an oversimplified good versus evil story with good guys and bad guys, but we feel like even in The Hobbit, people like Thorin and Thranduil are incredibly complex. There’s good and bad in them, they aren’t simple good guys. In Lord of the Rings there are even more amazing characters: there’s Boromir and Denethor and Saruman and Golem. So we really knew we wanted to tell something more character-driven and something very authentic to these themes.”
Yet it was the struggles of Boromir and Galadriel in particular that inspired Monolith, as both characters toy with the notion of wielding The One Ring in a bid to use Sauron’s might against him. Boromir attempts to take it from Frodo by force during the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, while Galadriel later contemplates Frodo’s offer of The Ring, acknowledging that should she accept she would undoubtedly defeat Sauron, only to replace him as Middle-earth’s oppressor rather than lead its people toward salvation. It’s clear from these two examples that Tolkien was fascinated with the notion of power as a corrupting influence, and the philosophical question of whether the ends can possibly justify the means. It’s this idea that gave birth to the Wraithlike Talion, resurrected with Nazgul-esque powers inherently evil and unnatural in origin, yet willing to use them in his desperate quest for revenge, regardless of the consequences.
“Of course, it’s a really interesting time for Sauron as well,” de Plater interjects. “He’s just been defeated in Dul Guldur and driven back. That means two interesting things about him: firstly, he isn’t omnipotent or invincible and secondly he’s at his weakest. So it’s a really interesting time to be able to pursue him, challenge him and think about what happens in Mordor during this period.”
It’s too soon to tell whether Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is destined to be a failure or a triumph, but it’s clear that Monolith is taking its responsibility to Tolkien’s legacy very seriously, assembling a team of collaborators with proven track records in respectfully handling the author’s material. Game development is a pressure cooker where deadline follows deadline, but as Gandalf tells Frodo in the first book of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” This seems to be as good a way to start as any.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.
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