This legendary producer took time to talk with GameZone.com about War of the Ring, an upcoming RTS based on the Third Age battles in Tolkien's world.

Answered by: Ed Del Castillo, President and Co-Founder, Liquid Entertainment

Question: First, can you give us a little background on your history with the works of Tolkien? Are you a fan of the books and, if so, when did you first get introduced to the land of Middle-earth?

Ed: I think I saw the Hobbit cartoon when I was nine back in ’77 and that pushed me to read the book shortly thereafter. From there I read the rest of the books. The Hobbit was the first fantasy book I’d ever read. Currently, I’m on my first reread of the material which was preceded by lots of research of the appendices and other related material. Spanning the First through Third Age, but focused on the Third.

Ed: For the most part, I think it can be attributed to 3 reasons:

1. Quality – There have been past attempts to do Lord of the Rings games, but for the most part, these games were poorly made and were only retelling the story (which isn’t allowed to change) the limited gameplay coupled with limited quality usually results in poor sales.

2. Acceptance – For the longest time it wasn’t cool to be a geek, and geeks liked Tolkien. Times have changed and so have people’s perceptions. The new Rings movies have bought the stories to a mainstream market in an epic "believable" way and has made it cool to like Tolkien’s work, and fantasy in general.

3. Reliance on the License – A bad game is a bad game even if it says "Lord of the Rings" on it. Previous game makers relied too heavily on the name to sell the titles and didn’t support it in an unknowing market.

Ed: The biggest challenge in making an RTS based on LOTR was the very medieval approach that Tolkien took to the battles themselves. Although there are always exceptions, most of the combatants are similarly armed and armored. If we were trying to create a game like the ones in the Total War Series (fine games I might add) this would have been grand, but we are trying for unit individuality and uniqueness so that posed a challenge. We’ve found a good mix of unit uniqueness with only tiny stretches in the Tolkien universe.

Sometimes the chronology of events posed a challenge as well. For example, a particular mission might seem perfect to insert the Legolas unit into, but at that moment in time Legolas was halfway across the map participating in an entirely different battle! So for each mission, we have to consider the time it takes place, where it takes place, and what characters/races can actually be there at that time and place. On top of that, the game needs to ramp up in difficulty appropriately and flow well from mission to mission. It has been a huge challenge, the design team constantly struggles to make a game that is fun and that at the same time does not betray the story of LOTR.

Q: War of the Ring is a real-time strategy game that is based on his works. What elements, aside from the general plot of the ringbearer are gamers likely to see bleed over into this game. Aside from the main quest, will there be sub-quests evolving around Lord of the Ring themes? If so, what will some of them be?

Ed: Wow. Big question, so here’s a big answer…

Overall, we aren’t focused on the ringbearer or even the storyline of the books in this game. Although all the missions in the game loosely tie back to that story, we are focusing on the story of the war rather than the story of the Ring. What that really means in short, is that we’re taking a "History Channel" approach to the mission structure and working our way through the war explaining each mini-campaign, its relevance to the books and to the fellowship, but other than that, this game is about fighting not about running a small group of heroes around. We wanted to focus on things that the player would be able to mold, and the story of the Fellowship is sacrosanct.

We are planning an epic RTS. We will allow large unit battles, but are focusing on making every unit matter. Most battles should be around 20 and 100 units, with the occasional huge battle of hundreds vs. hundreds. The pacing will be on the faster side with a heavy emphasis on combat and use of abilities. A resource system will be present to allow you to build units, but it will be simple so that you’re not spending all your time there. You should expect a research system, tech tree, upgrades, heroes, and a whole host of surprises.

In terms of gameplay, we’ll be working on creating a very different gameplay experience in multiplayer and singleplayer. In multiplayer expect a full-on brawl with a series of well thought-out and inter-related units that allow for new and varied strategies. In the single-player portion of the game, it will be much more story driven. Players will be able to fill in sections of the story from the books that they would have only gotten if they had read the appendices. Units will work their way through forests battling spiders, releasing prisoners, uncovering secrets and discovering places of power. The mission progression itself, will be comprised of linear and non-linear sections. There will be no sequential storyline other than the time line of events in Middle-earth and the locations of the battles are determined by the written histories. So, the player will be given a map and there will be places on the map marking the location of battles. He/she will be able to select which missions to play and those missions will, in turn, unlock other missions, and so on. When the player purchases the expansion, the new missions will show up on the same map alongside the pre-existing set. The end goal being that if the player has the whole series installed, he/she should have an interactive history of the battles of the Third Age.

All missions in War of the Ring take place during the Third Age of Middle-earth. Some missions, however, will take place outside of the time line of the books, and take place in the earlier years of the Third Age. The latter half of the Third Age (around the time of the books) was chosen as our focus because it is that period that the fans and people with casual interest are most familiar with.

There are many aspects of the property that make it well-suited for an RTS. For one, there are the two playable sides in the game. LOTR is an epic struggle between the forces of good and evil, which naturally gives us two distinct sides with very different motives who can fight it out. Also, there is the mission design. LOTR, as well as the rest of the history of Middle-earth, is full of battles, slaughters, skirmishes, sieges, and routings, which we can pull from when creating the missions. And then there are the units in the game. Middle-earth is inhabited by many distinct species and races which each have their own skills and specializations (elves are great archers who are nimble and can hide well, dwarfs can wield an axe like nobody’s business, rangers can scout, orcs attack in numbers to overwhelm the enemy, etc). Many of these conventions of the world fell into place naturally when it came to designing the units in the game.

Q: It seems that everyone has notions of what The Shire should look like, or what a hobbit or ent looks like. How did your design team come up with what appears in the game?

Ed: We all have mental images of what we think up when we think of those characters, but I think that the first, right step is to consult the books. Usually, they have very detailed descriptions of the topic in question. From there we move to the artist’s interpretation for the resolution of any ambiguities and those are checked against the world for consistency and support.

Q: The RTS genre has been solid for several years, with - aside from plots and sub-features like unique units - very little changing. Does War of the Ring trod any new territory in terms of gameplay or graphically?

Ed: These are always such loaded questions… Let me tell you about two things - one gameplay and one graphical that I think are breaking new ground. I think there are more, but a list at this point just sounds like I’m running around trying to throw everything at this question.

1. Gameplay – Currently, the focus of RTS’s is kill the enemy’s troops, then kill his buildings. The game is the same over and over again. What’s missing? Terrain. Right now, in most RTS’s terrain is just the pretty thing that you ignore. We want to begin to change all that. Using a number of techniques, we’ve made the battlefield more important. 1) Height now impacts how much damage your units do. Meaning that you can change the battle by fighting on a downslope. 2) Trees block line of sight, which makes ambushing easier. They also reveal your position if you run through them as the birds fly up out of the trees. 3) The best for last. We have created a whole Places of Power system which allows an object or place in the world to grant benefits or penalties to the player that controls the area or even is just in the area. This means we have Elven ruins that Orcs fight less well in. Healing pools and emboldening totems which raise the morale of your troops allowing them to fight better. Early test of the multiplayer on this has been great. Suddenly, there’s a new dimension in strategy since allowing your opponent to hold these positions will mean your certain death, there are now more important things to target and fight over, which adds a whole new layer.

2. Graphically – The new world system we have is really cool. We have a weather system that determines when it rains, a wind system that causes the water to ripple, the trees to sway and even the grass to wave. On top of that, the grass is dynamically animated and gets pushed aside whenever a unit moves through it. All in the name of bringing Tolkien’s world to life.

Q: Does the game feature an original score?

Ed: Yep. Lots of original music for the player to sink his ears into. (thanks for the easy question)

Q: You have been involved with a lot of high-profile companies and titles during your career. What have you determined is essential in creating any game, and how does War of the Ring realize this?

There are two ways that I could go here, but one is a book and one is an answer to a question so I’m going to go with that one… Other than being fun, there is no one thing that all games must have. It’s like preparing a dish. The end goal is that it be delicious, but there are many ways to achieve that.

For RTS’s, in particular, I think there are some fundamentals that shouldn’t be ignored, but even there, it’s an alchemy of elements which always has different results. I believe that good unit design and tech tree design is key to any good RTS. Also, the player must feel that he is capable of strategy and not struggling with his units or the interface. These are two of our major focuses right now. On the unit and tech tree front, we are already playing multiplayer games and balancing the units. So far its really fun. Every unit has a cool reason to exist and a cool use on the battlefield. On the interface front, every single unit has lots of help for each of its abilities and uses. The tooltips help with strategy and unit matchups and well as explaining the significance of different places and objects. We help the player understand what his units are and how to use their powers so that he can move through the learning process at lightning speed and get to the fun.

Ed: Perfect opportunity to restate question 8 because that’s exactly how we think of it.

The element of the game that we hope will have the most immediate impact is the interface. I’m tired of playing games that force me to learn THEIR way of doing things but don’t really show me how. Our vision is to provide the player with all the information he will need to play the game right there at his fingertips so he never feels lost.