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10.20.06
"There and Back Again"
It was about four years ago that I began working on EA?s Lord of the Rings RTS team. Four years - that?s quite a long time to have things like Hobbits, Orcs and Wizards be a part of your daily life. On BFME, I was the Design Development Director, which meant that it was my job to manage the frenzied entropy that is our design department. At the time, I didn?t know much about the Tolkien universe aside from what I?d seen in the movies. The designers would tease me about being such a Middle-earth n00b ? they would explain things to me in Star Wars terms so I could understand everything. I know a lot more about Middle-earth now, although I would still pick Hayden Christensen over Orlando Bloom any day!
The experience of working in the Middle-earth RTS universe has definitely changed through the years. Four years ago when we were working on the first BFME, The Lord of the Rings movie mania was in full-swing, so we put a lot of time and energy into trying to recreate the dramatic, memorable moments from the movies ? Isengard blowing up the wall in Helm?s Deep, Theoden?s heroic arrival with his troops at Minas Tirith. Days were spent trying to get the details of those scenes right, so players would feel connected to the films. Just trying to bring the majestic size of Minas Tirith to life in RTS scale literally took months and almost drove one of our best modelers out of his mind! We even spent quite a bit of time trying to recreate movie moments that never made it into the final game. At one point in the design, Merry and Pippin could be combined with Treebeard and they would sit on his shoulders and throw rocks at enemies. We also spent some time trying to recreate my favorite moment from the trilogy - Legolas taking down the Mumakil in The Return of the King. Ultimately, we couldn?t make either of those elements feel really fun and useful in the game, so they ended up on the cutting room floor.
As we moved on to BFME2, our focus shifted in both the fiction and our approach to the game. From a fiction standpoint, we moved away from the movies and into other stories told in the books. This meant leaving behind the cinematic moments that people had seen on film and trying to bring to life characters and moments that fans had only read about, in addition to adding some new elements to the story to fill in the gaps. From the gameplay perspective, we decided to focus more on strategic depth and player choice and less on drama and recreating ?movie moments?. This is the reason we brought back "build anywhere" and changed the economy system. For me, my focus shifted away from the design department and onto the U&S effort (U&S is our shorthand for Units, Structures and basically everything else that goes into making a faction work). I was overseeing our awesome U&S engineers and working closely with our crazy art department to get the new factions working in-game. We did everything we could to make decisions based on how the game would play - not worrying as much about dramatic details like whether or not a unit would point at an incoming Fellbeast, and instead spending more time getting the combat chain working and making units behave in consistent and predictable ways.
With The Rise of the Witch-King, we have gone even further in this direction. We still want to tell an interesting story ? we?ve taken a story that takes up just a few pages in the appendix of the books and turned it into a full campaign. I especially like the way we?ve managed to weave the Angmar faction heroes into the campaign story. But our main focus is to put even more choice and strategy into the player?s hands. From the Angmar faction itself to the design of the missions, we put a lot of energy into trying to give you options ? different ways you could choose to build your armies or pursue mission objectives. This project also represented a big change for me personally, as I moved into the Development Director role. That basically means that I run all the logistics of the project ? scheduling, process, budgets, legal issues, etc. I?m sure that?s everything you think of when you imagine people working on video games, huh? It actually suits me just fine, as I?m one of those crazy detailed-oriented people who live to make sure all the numbers add up and everything is in its place.
We?ve come pretty far in four years ? from a movie-focused game designed to draw you into the drama of Frodo?s journey to a more strategic game where the Witch-king?s gameplay balance is just as meaningful as his quest for the domination of Arnor. I hope you have enjoyed taking this journey through Middle-earth with us and that you enjoy playing The Rise of the Witch-king as much as we enjoyed making it!
Jill Donald
Development Director
The Rise of the Witch-king
And if you would like to check previous blog entries from the BFME Development Team, be sure to check out Executive Producer Mike Verdu's previous blog entries from The Battle for Middle-earth II. Click the links below.
Mike Verdu's previous blog entries:
6.19.06
Patch 1.05 / MOD SDK Update
3.16.06
Patch and Server Update
3.09.06
Launch Week
2.24.06
Multiplayer Fun
2.14.06
War of the Ring & Create-A-Hero
1.23.06
Convergence
1.06.06
We Hear You
12.30.05
A Citizen of Middle-earth
12.01.05
Bio-Ware
11.17.05
Fortresses and Walls
10.31.05
Team Alchemy
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Ladder Reset
Coming Soon |
11.12.06
We will be revitalizing the BFME II ladder with a healthy restart on Friday, Nov 17th. Everyone's records on the 1v1 and 2v2 ladder will reset with a clean start. |
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War of the Ring!
New ROTWK Video |
11.06.06
There is a new Inside the Battle for our upcoming expansion pack, The Rise of the Witch-king, now available. Click the link below to learn about the new compelling features that have been added to War of the Ring!
View Here!
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Expansion Pack
BLOG |
10.23.06
Jill Donald, lead Development Director, discusses the evolution of the BFME franchise over the past 4 years and how the focus has changed from a movie-focused game to more strategic RTS game with The Rise of the Witch-king.
Read Here |
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Rise of the Witch-king
Official Trailer! |
10.12.06
Witness the first official gameplay trailer for the upcoming expansion pack to BFMEII...The Rise of the Witch-king.Cick the link below to head to our video page.
Click here
Want the 50MB
high-res version:
Download here
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