The Lord of The Rings: War in The North - a Review

I consider myself a Tolkien fan. Not a hardcore one - I couldn't recite a line of elvish poetry, or detail the history of the Fall of Numenor, or tell you Gimli's true name. But I've read the Lord of The Rings a few times, I've read The Hobbit a whole lot more, and I've read The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin at least twice. And, like basically every person alive on the planet, I've watched the films. So I know my way around Tolkien's universe in a casual, not authoritarian, way. I know the basic cosmogeny, a few of the gods, the origins of the elves and the dwarves, etc. And I know that there was a lot more happening in Middle-Earth while Frodo was off hiking through Mordor than what both books and films showed us.

It's an interesting concept. Just from my own reading of the LotR Appendices, Gandalf was already planning for the War of the Ring when he sent Bilbo and co. off to the Lonely Mountain, to deny Sauron a strategic alliance with Smaug when he eventually came to power. I remember that the Lonely Mountain was also the site of a huge conflict, when Sauron's armies fought Erebor - where elves, dwarves and men lived, fought and died together. And I know that, despite what the film of The Return of The King showed,  Saruman's own agents were taking over the Shire. That is an interesting concept - what was going on elsewhere, while the Fellowship was going through their own hardships? Unfortunately, it's an idea wasted in The Lord of The Rings: War of The North.

I'm going to get the rest of the game out of the way before I get to the campaign. The combat is pretty standard fare. I played the Xbox 360 version, so X to swing the weapon, Y to deliver a heavy strike, B to dodge and A to interact. Holding the right bumper is run, and the left bumper blocks. Holding the left trigger allows the player to use a ranged weapon and use ranged combos, while the right trigger allows the player to use melee combos. You can play the game as one of three characters - the Dwarf Farin, the elf Andriel, and the ranger Eradan.

No, not Eridan!

The three follow the fairly typical tropes of fantasy games - Farin is the close-range Brawler, Andriel is the mid-range Healer, and Eradan (pfft, I still chuckle when I read that name) is a long-range Archer. I played my game pretty much the whole way through as the Dwarf, especially after I unlocked the explosive crossbow bolt, which has a decent area of effect and basically removes the need to close in on the enemy. It took a while to figure out what all the buttons did, since as usual I didn't read the instruction manual, but I got there eventually. I figured out most of the game's aspects - buying stuff, maintaining equipment, side quests, etc. I had a bit of an issue with levelling up my other two team mates, since they're meant for multiplayer co-op. It would have been better for single-player if you could access the stats of all three from the menu, but it was nothing I couldn't figure out. So all in all, it was a fairly good RPG.

Graphically, it also looks pretty good. Forests look lush and green (or dark and spidery), caverns feel organic and rocky, and the snow looks so good it makes you feel cold. Trees sway in the breeze, rocks tumble, and the skybox looks gorgeous. Character models are almost all based on the film depictions, which is an excellent choice since the WETA Workshop and WETA Digital teams did excellent jobs. The few new character models all look great too - although I have no idea why the game features Wargs if it's not going to let the player fight them. And Urgost gives off a very Slifer-esque vibe.

Holy Ra! Real monsters!

The campaign itself takes place along a fairly linear level design, with occasional digressions - a hidden cave or grotto, where you can find additional barrels to smash for coinage or treasure chests to rummage through. Each character also has a way to find the secrets of a level and gain more benefits - Farin can mine for gold in caverns or smash through loose walls; Andriel can gather herbs for potions, and open enchanted doorways; and Eradan can find hidden stashes of weapons and equipment, and find hidden areas through tracking. I did think there were too few enemy types - there's the small, Wretch-like goblins, the larger Orcs which either come with swords or with crossbows, a few scarce sorcerors, and the larger Uruks who are heavy berserkers who shrug off most close-in attacks. The largest of conventional enemies are the Trolls, who are pretty much like their movie depictions. There are a few unique enemies - a giant, and the spiders of Mirkwood - but for the most part, this will be the standard armada arrayed against you. It gets repetitive, and annoying as the Uruks get more common as the game progresses, but once I gained the explosive crossbow bolt they were easier to manage - get a clump of enemies together, and you can take a whole bunch out with one hit.

Interacting with the people of the game is also pretty standard - you get a few options, either for the basic facts or to delve into the lore somewhat. There's a Hobbit in Bree who tries to get you to gamble for a game of riddles, and all of the elves and dwarves are only too eager to explain the lore surrounding their history. If you've read The Lord of The Rings and its appendices, it's nothing you won't know already. If you haven't, then its just backstory - not necessary, but nice to have if you want it.

And then we come to the campaign.

Oh boy.

Firstly, my point about other things happening in Middle-Earth was well made. I would have loved to play as a defender of Erebor - you have the character selection options of the Silvan elves of Mirkwood, the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, or the Men of Laketown. Hell, you have the other two wizards, Alatar and Pallando, off raising a commotion in the east, an area which has barely been explored in lore at all. But instead, this potential was wasted in a pretty basic wish fulfilment story - you take the reigns of another Fellowship, the ones who got to the party late and couldn't go with Frodo, as they go on their own quest to bring down Sauron's sidekick Agandaur. They follow him through a variety of nice Middle-Earth locations, always one step behind him, and eventually defeat him conveniently just as Frodo tosses the ring into Mount Doom. To be perfectly honest, it's boring. I could come up with a better story. In fact, I think I just did! Please, somebody, go make a Save Erebor game. Every time Farin mentioned it, I wanted to go there and fight the forces attacking it, not deal with this Agandaur douchebag! The explanation for why these three are together in the first place also leaves much to imagination - Eradan is a Ranger guarding the Shire, okay. But Farin came all the way from Erebor just to guard this little part of the world that has no contact with the outside world? And Andriel is there because...um...we need an elf?

The dialogue is also wince-worthy sometimes, as American voice actors try their best to force British accents, or don't even try. And it's not just the delivery. Much is written in a pseudo-historical ye olde englishe style that's meant to sound grand and old, but just comes across as pretentious. If you can't get the accents it was meant for, it doesn't pay to highlight it further. It gets especially painful when I hear a stranger's voice coming from a canon character's mouth - Tom Kane was a brilliant Warden Sharp, but when I hear him as Gandalf I can't help but imagine Harley Quin breaking several fourth walls and clocking him over the head with his own staff. And I lost count of the number of times I heard a line that was straight from the novels - not just like the novels' dialogue, but literally ripped right out of the pages. I can only imagine that somebody went through a copy of The Lord of The Rings with a highlighter. And the same goes for the story - yes, it's grounded in the actual lore of the series, dragons and dwarves and elves and orcs etc etc, but at a certain point I decided that it was just pandering. Wander the paths of Mirkwood! Delve under the Misty Mountains! Storm the Dark Lord _(Agandaur)'s tower! Team up with the Eagles! Meet such beloved characters as Elronds twin children, Radagast the Brown, and Halbarad! (See! We read the books too!) It makes the quest the Fellowship went on look like a walk in the park, which utterly undermines both their story and this one. These three people, Elf, Dwarf and Man, take on vast armies, save cities, and defeat one of Sauron's top lieutenants single-handed. I can only imagine how short The Fellowship of The Ring would have been if they'd actually got to the meeting on time! It reads like a fanfiction - one that knows the lore and characters, and its audience, but a fanfiction nonetheless. That isn't necessarily a bad thing - it isn't a bad story, and it's not badly done. It's just unoriginal and unimaginative, and I find that disappointing.

War in The North is a fun play through as a game, is entertaining even if only to pick apart, and it's a fun solid entry into the Tolkien mythos for the uninitiated. In that regard, it's a success. For those of us who know their Silmarils from their Seven Stones, you can play the War in the North Drinking Game - take a drink every time you hear a line copied from the books. And as you get drunk, remember these words from a wise Hobbit:

All right. We'll put it away. We'll keep it hidden, we'll never speak of it again. No one knows it's here, do they? ~ Frodo Baggins