Pandemic/Lord of the Rings: Conquest - Battlefront: LOTR

LewieP

[url=http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=137853]Eurogamer[/url] wrote:

Pandemic has finally unveiled its long-rumoured Lord of the Rings game, due for release on PC, PS3 and 360 this autumn.

It's called The Lord of the Rings: Conquest and is effectively a continuation of the Battlefront series but in the land of Orcs and talking trees and a big scary eye, according to the IGN reveal. That means you can pick any of the key fights from the books or films (as well as fictitious ones) and jump in as a melee warrior, third-person shooter archer, support class mage or stealthy scout. You have no control over what your army does, but can swing the tide of battle by successfully completing objectives such as stopping siege towers reaching the walls of Minas Tirith.

Each battle has you pick a fresh role, which you can also do after every time you die. There is a per-unit upgrade system based around you getting better at filling up your combo meter to unleash the best attacks. Pandemic will be giving you limited-time access to heroes such as Gandalf, Frodo, Aragorn and Legolas. Each is a super powerful version of the core class types with their own fancy moves. You can play them for as long as your health bar takes to tick down to zero, and can prolong your stay by going on successful kill rampages to refill your gauge. However, the best bit about The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is that it lets you be almost everyone from Middle-Earth, including the baddies. You can expect to be Cave-trolls, Oliphaunts, Ents, Balrogs, and even the Witch King, Saruman and Sauron himself.

There is an entire evil campaign waiting to be unlocked after you finish the good story, and it begins with you as a Ringwraith capturing Frodo and delivering the Ring to Sauron. You can play both campaigns with up to four friends online or in split-screen, or just hop into eight-player competitive battles.
Competitively there are a host of modes: Conquest, where you capture control points; Capture the Flag; Deathmatch; Hero Deathmatch; and an interesting addition called Ring Bearer. This casts one of you as Frodo and the others as Ringwraiths. The idea is to stay alive as long as possible, and whoever captures Frodo becomes him for the next round.

Frodo has his Ring and Sting blade, but when he turns invisible he shows up on the mini-map, even though he disappears on-screen. Clever Frodos will apparently try to attract more than one Ringwraith who will then proceed to fight over him while the hobbit sneaks around and stabs them in the back.
Pandemic promises around 150 characters on the screen at any one time, enormous maps to fit them all in and plenty of fancy visuals. You can ride around on horses and wargs as well, and command all sorts of siege equipment like siege towers, catapults, ballista and battering rams.

We wonder if you can throw severed heads around like the orcs in the films, too.

Sounds rather exciting.

I wonder if this means no batman?

bloodyroarxx

Considering the playtime me and my friends got out of PS2 lan play for Battlefront 1 and 2 Im super excited for this.

Pandemic is a very large company

There are currently several development teams inside Pandemic:

* Full Spectrum Warrior team, responsible for the original game as well as its sequel, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers.
* Star Wars team, who developed the Star Wars: Battlefront series.
* Mercenaries team, is currently working on a sequel, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, which will be published by EA Games.
* Project B, Q, Y, Z teams, currently working on several unannounced projects and the recently announced Saboteur, a game chronicling the adventures of a French resistance fighter during WWII.
* The Brisbane Team, which is currently working on project B[3]. Pandemic Studios is not producing Destroy All Humans! 3.

But I just hope this does infact mean that Free Radical is making Battlefront 3 alongside Haze and Timesplitters 4

-SPI-

They should just pay the makers of Mount and Blade and then the people who made the Last Days Lotr mod for it and then just take that and put it on the disc. Instant awesome.

Klyka

This sounds pretty awesome. Especially co-op and multiplayer.

Archonex

I hope they take a hint from BFII and either throw in a map maker, or do what the community did and make some of the hideously large (In terms of pop-count on both sides.) maps that the community made later on in the game's life-cycle.

I really want the LOTR equivalent of facing down five-hundred enemy NPC's, as a hero character, with a real army at my back. None of this sixteen/thirty-two player crap.

I mean jesus. Helms Deep, and Gondor, are just begging for the sort of maps where, if you stand on a rampart, all you'll see for as far as the game allows is hordes of orcs running at the castle/city from their spawns, with miniature "hero" NPC's mixed in amongst them.

Witchsight

Sounds great. I just dont know how the transfer from mid range blaster fests to close combat will go...

Dashui

Want!

UnbreakableVow

I hope this doesn't basically mean they're not working on the Dark Knight game as was rumored.

Der Waffle Mous

Archonex wrote: »

I really want the LOTR equivalent of facing down five-hundred enemy NPC's, as a hero character, with a real army at my back. None of this sixteen/thirty-two player crap.

I thought the method of having several dozen mook bots running around in multiplayer was a pretty elegant solution.

Pharezon

I want to be an Easterling or Southron so bad.

Jast

I know this thread is old, but the game should be coming out January 13th. Can't wait.

Gyral

There was an article on Kotaku a few weeks ago saying how the rumored Batman game was rumored to be canceled. Considering how buggy Mercs 2 was, maybe that was a blessing in disguise.

Captain Charisma

We are getting the potentially super-awesome Arkham Asylum game though, and there's always LEGO Batman and MK vs. DC to scratch the Batman itch.

As a huge fan of Battlefront I'm looking forward to this. Co-Op Campaign will be excellent in something like this.

Jast

I've played a few online MP games, and Battlefront 2 was the only was I was consistently good at. I loved being a rebel or republic soldier, charging into battle, dodging around, getting kills. In Conquest, I'll probaly alternate between a warrior and an archer. Teamwork will be key in this game. Have your warriors engage, then you flank around and snipe from behind. From Wikipedia, here is the class list.

Warrior: A melee combat unit which uses swordplay. Warriors can gain strength to unleash more powerful attacks, like setting their swords on fire. The warrior also has an axe as a secondary, short-ranged weapon.

Archer: A long ranged unit with a bow and arrow that plays like a third person shooter. Different types of arrows have been confirmed such as fire arrows which can burn things, poison arrows which slow enemies down and does damage over time, and a triple shot attack which fires a volley of three arrows. They have a kick as a close quarters attack.

Scout: A master in the art of moving unseen. The scouts weapons are two knives. A known move of this assassin is back stabbing a troll. The scout has the ability to cloak and kill units from behind. He also has fire bombs as a ranged attack.

Mage: A magic user with a staff that can use spells on enemies and is a support unit. Mages can use magical attacks like lightning blasts, fire, and shockwaves. Mages can also create a bubble around them for defense. They can also use their staffs as melee weapons for close quarters enemies, though it is not as effective.

Guardian: The guardian class has finally been confirmed as the fifth class. In an interview, director Eric Gewirtz has stated that there is a guardian class, but it has not been mentioned much since.

Fleeb

Dashui wrote: »

Want!

The_Scarab

Gyral wrote: »

There was an article on Kotaku a few weeks ago saying how the rumored Batman game was rumored to be canceled. Considering how buggy Mercs 2 was, maybe that was a blessing in disguise.

No. Dont be so retarded. Not only is Mercs 2 completely awesome but it's the goddam Batman.