History of The Third Age :: "Your tale has hardly begun"

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is an RPG based off of all three of Peter Jackson's movies, so it goes without saying that there are connections between the two. From characters to voice actors, cinematics to motion capture, you'll find that the connections are many, and they each bring an awesome aspect of the movies to life.

Peter Jackson's World

Berethor explores Eregion.

EA Games has the rights to the film version of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but not the book version, so they must follow the film version strictly. However, that doesn't mean that you won't be able to explore areas you've seen and even not seen thoroughly. The developers put several "easter eggs" in the game that reward your exploring.

Many of the places that the fellowship entered will be a place that you enter, but you also get a chance to enter places that you've never seen before in the movies. For example, when you enter Rohan you eventually make it to Snowhelm. Also, if you explore a lot, you can see specific details that were left out of the movies, like a shrine to the Balrog made by the goblins in Moria.

Film snippets

The Third Age begins with a breathtaking video sequence, commentated by Gandalf, that leads up to the beginning of your quest. This won't be the only sequence you encounter, however. There are many video sequences, and all of them are put together by a video editing team at EA who re-edited as much footage as they can to make these sequences. That's not all, though! Some of the sequences actually include footage from the not-yet-released extended edition of The Return of the King!

As you travel through your adventures, you will fight enemies, open chests and just follow a specific road that will land you with several "story cards", 104 in total. These "Story cards" are, of course, the sequences, and generally refer to what's going on in the area that you're in, or what's going on in the area that you're about to enter. Most of the time, it's Gandalf telling you about his quest with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, and how it relates to you.

Your party and the other guys

This game is based off of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, so what would it be without the main characters? On your road, you'll meet up with all of the main characters (except Frodo, Sam and Gollum) at some point in time, whereupon you will help them with something or another. Generally you'll meet up with them at major fight points, but they can also appear just to give you advice (especially Gandalf).

Helping Gandalf with the Balrog in Moria.

The first time you'll meet up with a member of the Fellowship is in Moria, where you help Gandalf take down the Balrog (although the poor guy still drops a few hundred feet). Once that's all said and done, you continue your quest. At another point in time, you help the Fellowship defeat the enemies at Helm's Deep. You continue this tradition throughout the game at major battles.

When you're fighting with Fellowship member(s), always count on them being extremely powerful. For example, with the Balrog fight, Gandalf has an attack that does roughly 5000 damage, and has about 8000 health and roughly 700 mana to keep up. If the member of the fellowship dies, don't fret, however, because you can still finish off the enemies and the game won't be over.

Speaking of the other guys...

Every character (except for some minor characters) talks in this game, so it makes sense that so do the Fellowship! The development team got some of the original actors to come in to do more voice acting for this game specifically. If any of the actors would not come in (if you think about it, 5+ years of LoTR must take it out of you), they did the next best thing and used stuff from the previous games. The final product of the Return of the King game used roughly 25% of all of the recording that they made, so think about how much they can use here!

Gandalf is the most prominently speaking Fellowship member in the game. He talks to you through your "mind" in the Story Cards, and even comes and talks to you directly in some areas. If he says something to you, be sure to listen carefully, because the wisdom of wizards is unparalelled by all.

EA's Film License

So, EA has the film license for roughly another ten years, so does that mean there will be a sequel, or even a prequel (the second age)? We hope so, but there are no guarantees. According to Executive Producer Steve Gray, the guys at EA could end up making an RPG involving the Fellowship themselves, following their road with their characters.