Featured Image Credit: Electronic Arts
Topics: PlayStation, Retro Gaming, The Lord Of The Rings, TV And Film, Warner Bros
Topics: PlayStation, Retro Gaming, The Lord Of The Rings, TV And Film, Warner Bros
The Lord Of The Rings is getting not one but two sequels in the next few years, one that focuses on the fan-favourite freak Gollum, and the other on the four hobbits from Bag End who changed the course of Middle-Earth history.
Superfan Stephen Colbert is writing the latter film which will be a sort-of sequel/sort-of prequel to the original trilogy.
Basically it’ll cover content from The Fellowship of the Ring that never made it into the final film, specifically what Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin got up to after leaving The Shire and before meeting Aragorn.
Like the One Ring showing Frodo visions of the future my mind began racing upon hearing this news, not out of excitement for another film, but rather the return of one of the PlayStation 2 RPGs ever made.
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The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a beloved RPG that follows the entire film trilogy from start to finish. Some creative liberties are taken with the story though, leading to some interesting “what-if?” scenarios.
For instance the game being centered around a party of characters at all times means Gandalf’s battle with the Balrog is not a 1v1 fight. Aragon, Gimli and Legolas are there to lend a hand. None of it is meant to be canon of course so it can lead to some fun and varied twists on your favourite scenes from the films.
Where The Third Age really shines though is the combat. The film tie-in games you can also play on the PlayStation 2 are excellent hack-and-slash titles with The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King arguably being the best of them all.
Whoever decided that The Third Age should be turn-based though deserves all of the flowers, as it was an ingenious decision that placed this game alongside the likes of Final Fantasy as one of the best RPG games on the PS2.
Even if you have no interest in The Lord of the Rings, it’s still a damn good time and well-worth playing if you have an OG console lying around.
Unfortunately that’s the heartbreaking thing, the game was never re-released for modern platforms. This is a common fate for so many games from the PlayStation 2 era and it’s a shame more isn’t being done about it.
So while the news of another Lord of the Rings film is thrilling, the video games that made so many gamers' childhoods deserve some love too.
It’d be great to see titles like The Third Age get sequels or follow-ups in the next few years, as hype for the franchise starts to build again for the new films.
Critical and commercial failures like The Lord of the Rings: Gollum haven’t exactly helped with that cause, but if the franchise can survive The Hobbit trilogy it can survive anything right?
As for The Third Age specifically, the obvious path forward would be some sort of reimagining. Not a remake as such, but a brand-new game that borrows a lot of the core mechanics while broadening its horizons. Give us more Middle-Earth locations to explore, more story and more characters to control.
With the right development team and enough time to cook we could have the Lord of the Rings equivalent to Hogwarts Legacy, a game that superfans can enjoy that’ll also welcome new fans to the franchise.
Failing that you could always just spruce up the visuals of the original a bit and re-release it on modern platforms, job done.