Lord of the Rings collectible RPG mobile game is about saving history

You can also find out more about the following: The Lord of the Rings Heroes of Middle-earthIn the new game, launched on Wednesday, Android and iOS users are challenged to maintain J.R.R. Tolkien’s most beloved works. It means recreating the major events of Tolkien’s works in battles that are based on turns, with good winning.

Not all of the time.

“There is, actually, a part in the tutorial when we actually do unlock the ‘Shadow Side’ campaigns, where our narrator, Eärendil, actually speaks to it,” Capital Games’ Nicolas Reinhart, the game director, told Polygon. “But basically, he’s pained — he doesn’t like the fact that you have to go in to make sure that the bad guys win.”

“The bad stuff still needs to happen,” added design director Jay Ambrosini.

Capital Games’ bad content will soon follow all the other good things they have imagined. The Lord of the Rings Heroes of Middle-earth, a “collection RPG” in the mold of Star WarsGalaxy of HeroesCapital Games and Electronic Arts launched the highly successful Android/iOS title in 2015, which has been a huge success. Like Galaxy of Heroes, Heroes of Middle-earth is a free-to-play game that revolves around unlocking, collecting, and deploying some of the most recognizable characters from Tolkien’s canon, as a squad of champions sent back in time to put things right.

“A lot of what we were inspired by, being late ’70s, early ’80s kids, growing up with toys, and playing in the backyard with action figures — it’s a lot of the same thing,” Ambrosini said. “That’s what we’re trying to recreate there. Your figure is made so well that you truly believe it’s Frodo. And then you’re with your friends, and you’re like, What if Sauron were there? A lot of it is sitting and recreating those moments of playing with your toys.”

The conduit for that, narratively, is the player discovering “a ring unlike any before,” Reinhart said in a media presentation last week. “And with this ring, players can bridge time and space, bringing together characters from different ages to build incredible What if?-styled squads, mixing and matching characters that have never been together before.”

What if you could also create a team of your own? The Lord of the Rings Heroes of Middle-Earth The game will explore alternate timelines and propose scenarios which fans have been wondering about for years: For example, what if Galadriel had taken the One Ring away from Frodo, becoming the dark queen that she feared. “We’re going to explore these questions authentically, with our players,” Ambrosini said. “We’re excited to take the literature and imagine it in new and exciting ways.”

Grid View

Heroes of Middle-Earth The game has been under development for over two years. Reinhart allowed that the game was born of business decisions — as Capital Games was looking for its next project, Reinhart said, the studio was asking what other fandoms might be served by something like Galaxy of Heroes. Instead of skinning Galaxy of Heroes units in Lord of the Rings costuming and shipping that, Capital Games’ designers knew they had to start with a narrative that justifies why an eclectic set of characters might be recreating old battles.

The opening sequence is: Strider, Aragorn and Frodo arrive at Weathertop with the Hobbits on their way to Rivendell. They encounter Nazgûl in a combat tutorial sequence, the two characters are unlocked for the player to use, and they make their way forward to Rivendell.

Along the way players will be able to recognize themes. The Fellowship of the Ring: The Lord of the RingsReinhart replied. Aragorn acts as a tank-like unit that draws attacks away from Hobbits. A critical hit will cause any Hobbits to enter stealth mode, which both damages the enemy and distracts them while also limiting their exposure.

“You would never imagine Frodo to stand front and center [and]Be like “Hit me”,” Ambrosini explained, “whereas on the other hand, you get Sam[wise Gamgee], who pops in and very shortly, he’ll throw an apple at someone’s head and be like, Hey! Over here, big guy!”

EA Capital Games/Electronic Arts

The Riders of Rohan is another of the 46 units that can be unlocked on launch day. Obviously, Capital couldn’t bring an entire cavalry charge to Heroes of Middle-earthThe squads of Rohan’s knights consist of four separate units. Instead, Rohan’s knights are represented in teamwork attacks; one shown to media involved a rider tossing a sword to a companion who catches it mid-stride to deal the blow.

Ambrosini did not answer the question of whether or not there would be unlockable content in the form of a season pass, battle pass, etc. “There will be multiple timelines; we’re working very closely with Middle-earth Enterprises [the licensing authority for the Lord of the Rings franchise] on it,” he said.

Reinhart and Ambrosini are still aware that mobile games can quickly go out of style, in particular licensed titles. It’s a free-to play game that launches on mobile, gets a lot attention and interest for the first few months then disappears from mainstream consciousness after its content is exhausted.

Heroes of Middle-earth’s makers already have a full year of post-launch content in mind, Reinhart said. There are missions and battles in three campaigns: Light and Shadow. Guild is the third campaign, which begins with an encounter set at the Mines of Moria.

“Live [service] games are a dance,” Reinhart said. “You have to have that dance planned. We said in our presentation that we’ve got a year’s worth of content on our roadmap that’s specifically accounting for this issue. We’re timing them, trying to make sure we are doing the right thing by the players — Are you using the correct cadence? — but also making sure that we take the appropriate length of time to develop something in relation to how they want to play the game.”

Reinhart stressed the fact that all of this was tied into a narrative experience as opposed to siloed mission menus that had nothing in common. “Each of these is a different story to be told inside of a single concept,” he said, “which is, basically, we have a shadowy figure who is trying to disrupt these storylines, and then you are coming in with your heroes that you’ve collected in order to right that wrong, so that the storylines match up at the end.”

Lord of the Rings Heroes of Middle-Earth The app was launched on Wednesday, 10 May and is now available through Google Play and the App Store for iOS devices.