May 27th , 2011
By Requiem

Genre: Action
Systems: Playstation 2
Developer: Electronic Arts
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: November 2011

When the Two Towers movie became and instant classic action title two years ago, EA had already signed a deal to make a total of three games based on the insanely popular movie franchise (based on the greatest book of all time… I always feel I need to remind people od this…). The Return of the Kind came out a month before the film release last November and was another instant success. For anyone who completed the game, the last words to come across the screen were "The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: 2011." What in the bloody hell could that mean?

Now we know. Re-titled "The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age," EA has been putting together an RPG in the vain of the Final Fantasy based in the world of Peter Jackson's LOTR. While graphically similar to the two prior EA games, that is pretty much where the likenesses stop. The Third Age places you as a warrior on either the the good guy's or bad guy's side. Not too specific, perhaps, but we do know that we will NOT be playing as the members of the Fellowship… though they were show up to fight along side you from time to time depending on when in the trilogy you are fighting.

There isn't too much else to know right now except some of the battles that we will get to fight in. Of course we have the Pelennor Fields and Helm's Deep, but we also get to go mono-e-mono with a Balrog (only Gandalf could win this… maybe we will get to control the old wizard at one point…). As an RPG, this game has a lot of potential since anyone can tell you that the world of Middle Earth is incredibly large. EA has chosen some interesting methods to create the game that may or may not deter RPG fans.

First, there are no periods of long dialogue. Either EA expects players to already be well acquainted with the story of LOTR or we will get all the plot through videos and gameplay. Second, there will be no character creation. You are placed in the boots of a specific Gondorian soldier. Granted you can equip him with whatever weapons you see fit, but he isn't your own. Finally, it will all be turn based action a la the FF series. The fighting character will be chosen at random and you go through a list of actions that you want done.

Can EA pull off every RPG fans biggest geek fantasy? Hopefully, but it is hard to say by looking at their past selection of titles. Sure the other LOTR games were excellent, but there was absolutely no depth to those as all you ever had to do was run into massive hordes of Orcs and slay every last one of them… So we shall see this November if The Third Age can live up to everyone's expectations.