Raze the Shire in LOTR Conquest

By Rob Fahey Published 28 May, 2008

Step into Sauron's boots in the Evil campaign

Pandemic lead designer Sean Sourcy has dropped a few more precious nuggets of information about the studio's upcoming Lord of the Rings title, Conquest - revealing that the game's Evil campaign will let hobbit-hating players live out their darkest fantasies at last.

Speaking to CrispyGamer.com, Sourcy casually mentioned that along with "all the big battles from the films", the game will also include several encounters that are only hinted at in the books. Moreover, there's an entire Evil campaign which explores what would have happened if Frodo failed in his task.

One of the major consequences of that, of course, is the razing of the Shire. "In the films, when Frodo looks into Galadriel's pool, Frodo sees what will happen to the Shire if he fails," explains Sourcy. "We let the player live that out."

Lord of the Rings: Conquest is essentially the fantasy follow-up to Pandemic's Star Wars: Battlefront games, and allows you to take on a number of roles across a sprawling battlefield - playing as the named heroes of the fiction, as officers in charge of various divisions or controlling huge units such as (in LOTR's case) catapults, siege towers, battering rams, wargs and elephants.

As you might expect, Lord of the Rings: Conquest focuses rather more on melee than on shooting, although each class continues to have a ranged attack of some description - and Sourcy is promising that overall, the game will give a better sense of epic battle and a better single-player campaign than Battlefront did, which is quite a claim.

He also hinted that a well-known actor from the LOTR films will be providing the narrator's voiceover for the game, but we'll have to wait to find out who that might be. There's plenty more info in the full interview, if you fancy popping over for a read.

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Comments (3) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • SirDespard #1 4 years ago

    Shouldn't that be Scouring of the Shire rather than Razing?

  • Razorus #2 4 years ago

    Yeah, the end of the Return of the King had a chapter called the Scouring of the Shire, but this is not the event. As the article mentioned, this part of the evil campaign will be about a "what if" scenario.

    Still, can't wait to slay Hobbits.

  • sneetch #3 4 years ago

    Possible Spoiler Warning!

    Invading the Shire, killing many hobbits and herding survivors into the "manacle-o-matic" and then off to slave in the mills and smelters? All for the Eye?

    I love it! Where do I sign up?

    "One of the major consequences of that, of course, is the razing of the Shire. "In the films, when Frodo looks into Galadriel's pool, Frodo sees what will happen to the Shire if he fails," explains Sourcy. "We let the player live that out.""

    This is a "what if"?

    This is a bugbear of mine; read the damn books! The Shire *does* fall! The hobbits pretty much rolled over straight away requiring Frodo and Co. to come back and kick their asses before they fought back (they had no armies for a start).

    Mind you as part of an RTS based on the Lord of the Rings I can't think it'd be terribly challenging, unless they've made all hobbits level 10 elite ninjas with flame throwers or something.
    Edited by 1 at 29/05/08 @ 12:16