Middle-Earth: Shadow of War

[PrettyDeadman]

This is the reason why Christopher Token disowned his son.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Prepare to be enraged.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-15-why-shelob-is-a-woman-in-shadow-of-war

Firstly, it's important to understand that de Plater's approach to Shelob comes from an interpretation that she and Gollum are, in fact, the unsung heroes of The Lord of the Rings. Put simply, it's his take that Frodo fails to cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom at the crucial moment - instead Gollum succeeds where he cannot (albeit tumbling into the fire himself along the way). According to de Plater, that weakness in Frodo was something Shelob sensed, making a pact with Gollum and hastening him on his way to Mount Doom and the final confrontation that saw the ring destroyed. It also goes some way to explaining why Shelob tried to eat Frodo in The Two Towers.

It was that duality (being one of the saviours of Middle-earth while also being a giant, horrifying spider), de Plater explained, that drew the team to Shelob as a central character in Shadow of War. "There were two things that were a starting point for our inspiration. A big part of what we do is look at these characters that are in kind of the grey zone - they're not as pure good as Gandalf or Aragorn, they're more human. Characters we're inspired by, characters like Boromir and Saruman and Denethor, because I think sometimes Lord of the Rings gets characterised as being oversimplified, black and white, good guys vs bad guys, but actually there are these incredible nuanced characters.

I'd have more respect for them if they shrugged their shoulders and said they put Shelob in the game and made her a woman because it was cool. Writing fanfiction and claiming false justification in the books is just bullshit.

 

[Mynon]

 

[Volrath]

What in the actual fuck.

 

[ore clover]

Eh? Frist of all, I thought Tolkien hated spiders; there's no way Shelob's secretly a goody. Secondly, how does trying to eat Frodo advance the destruction of the ring? What if she had eaten him? Was she going to bear the ring to Mordor herself? Would she give it to Gollum, who would then dance a jig all the way to the volcano and accidentally fall in? Dudn't add up, Plater.

I'd have more respect for them if they shrugged their shoulders and said they put Shelob in the game and made her a woman because it was cool. Writing fanfiction and claiming false justification in the books is just bullshit.

Basically this. "We made her a woman because spider tiddies," was all he needed to say for his target audience. At least it would've been if they hadn't cocked everything up with the war chests, but that's fully beside the point.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Eh? Frist of all, I thought Tolkien hated spiders; there's no way Shelob's secretly a goody. Secondly, how does trying to eat Frodo advance the destruction of the ring? What if she had eaten him? Was she going to bear the ring to Mordor herself? Would she give it to Gollum, who would then dance a jig all the way to the volcano and accidentally fall in? Dudn't add up, Plater.

I'd have more respect for them if they shrugged their shoulders and said they put Shelob in the game and made her a woman because it was cool. Writing fanfiction and claiming false justification in the books is just bullshit.

Basically this. "We made her a woman because spider tiddies," was all he needed to say for his target audience. At least it would've been if they hadn't cocked everything up with the war chests, but that's fully beside the point.

The comments section is surprisingly incline for Eurogamer. Lots of pisstaking. Someone says quite rightly that in the books, when you do hear the kind of stuff Shelob has to say, it's mostly "Hobbits! Yum!".

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

What is this, Middle-Earth: WWE edition?

 

[Morkar Left]

Prepare to be enraged.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-15-why-shelob-is-a-woman-in-shadow-of-war

Firstly, it's important to understand that de Plater's approach to Shelob comes from an interpretation that she and Gollum are, in fact, the unsung heroes of The Lord of the Rings. Put simply, it's his take that Frodo fails to cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom at the crucial moment - instead Gollum succeeds where he cannot (albeit tumbling into the fire himself along the way). According to de Plater, that weakness in Frodo was something Shelob sensed, making a pact with Gollum and hastening him on his way to Mount Doom and the final confrontation that saw the ring destroyed. It also goes some way to explaining why Shelob tried to eat Frodo in The Two Towers.

It was that duality (being one of the saviours of Middle-earth while also being a giant, horrifying spider), de Plater explained, that drew the team to Shelob as a central character in Shadow of War. "There were two things that were a starting point for our inspiration. A big part of what we do is look at these characters that are in kind of the grey zone - they're not as pure good as Gandalf or Aragorn, they're more human. Characters we're inspired by, characters like Boromir and Saruman and Denethor, because I think sometimes Lord of the Rings gets characterised as being oversimplified, black and white, good guys vs bad guys, but actually there are these incredible nuanced characters.

I'd have more respect for them if they shrugged their shoulders and said they put Shelob in the game and made her a woman because it was cool. Writing fanfiction and claiming false justification in the books is just bullshit.

Wow, that's some of the worst shit you could do to the LotR fiction. I'm pretty sure Tolkien is rotating in his grave. I'm all for expanding a universe but in this regard I'm just speechless how anyone in the Tolkien family could allow this. It's basically pissing on the heritage.

What is this, Middle-Earth: WWE edition?

Maybe they could start some rap battle at the end. That would be cool...

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Prepare to be enraged.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-15-why-shelob-is-a-woman-in-shadow-of-war

Firstly, it's important to understand that de Plater's approach to Shelob comes from an interpretation that she and Gollum are, in fact, the unsung heroes of The Lord of the Rings. Put simply, it's his take that Frodo fails to cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom at the crucial moment - instead Gollum succeeds where he cannot (albeit tumbling into the fire himself along the way). According to de Plater, that weakness in Frodo was something Shelob sensed, making a pact with Gollum and hastening him on his way to Mount Doom and the final confrontation that saw the ring destroyed. It also goes some way to explaining why Shelob tried to eat Frodo in The Two Towers.

It was that duality (being one of the saviours of Middle-earth while also being a giant, horrifying spider), de Plater explained, that drew the team to Shelob as a central character in Shadow of War. "There were two things that were a starting point for our inspiration. A big part of what we do is look at these characters that are in kind of the grey zone - they're not as pure good as Gandalf or Aragorn, they're more human. Characters we're inspired by, characters like Boromir and Saruman and Denethor, because I think sometimes Lord of the Rings gets characterised as being oversimplified, black and white, good guys vs bad guys, but actually there are these incredible nuanced characters.

I'd have more respect for them if they shrugged their shoulders and said they put Shelob in the game and made her a woman because it was cool. Writing fanfiction and claiming false justification in the books is just bullshit.

Wow, that's some of the worst shit you could do to the LotR fiction. I'm pretty sure Tolkien is rotating in his grave. I'm all for expanding a universe but in this regard I'm just speechless how anyone in the Tolkien family could allow this. It's basically pissing on the heritage.

What is this, Middle-Earth: WWE edition?

Maybe they could start some rap battle at the end. That would be cool...

The Tolkien Estate sold film rights to WB which included the right to make video games based on characters and locations from The Lord of the Rings.

They recently tried to sue WB for ruining the brand by sticking it on slot machines and all kinds of crap but I don't think they got anywhere.

Christopher Tolkien has been quite vocal in recent years about what he thinks of modern adaptations of his father's work. Unfortunately there's nothing they can do now.

 

[Drakron]

Well only in the crooked US courts would the rights to make movies as well merchandising based on the movies would expand to "own everything", also I checked and they settled out of court and of course, the details arent known.

 

[Zombra]

What is this, Middle-Earth: WWE edition?

There's plenty to complain about with Shadow of War, but hyping up the different tribes is cool. Looking forward to more of these.

 

[DeepOcean]

I mean, being a hack writer that only get a job at the games industry because nobody would buy a brook written by you is the reality of the industry but turning Shelob, of all the things they could do, into a sexy lady is the most bizarre and retarded thing I ever heard. It requires a kind of special of stupidity that I'm surprised they could go so low. Guess after the bottom of the well, somehow, you can keep going lower.

 

[Mynon]

Making the Other essentially human/sympathetic is subversion 101. Problem here is not in the intention, but in their utterly tactless delivery.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Making the Other essentially human/sympathetic is subversion 101. Problem here is not in the intention, but in their utterly tactless delivery.

No, the intention is utter shit too.

From Tolkien's own writing, Shelob is an "evil thing in spider-form...[the] last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world"

and "But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dûr; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness"

Shelob serving the purpose of the Good side is de Plater's intepretation only, and it is unsupported by how Tolkien wrote Shelob which was as as really scary, evil spider that wanted to eat Frodo.

Gollum being a mixed bag, well, that's fine - lots of supporting evidence for that in the books, Gandalf's speech etc. If it wasn't for Gollum, Sauron might have got the ring because Frodo wouldn't have destroyed it and the Nazgul would have taken him off to Barad Dur. Saying Gollum served a dual purpose is not controversial. Saying the same thing for Shelob is utter horseshit, even before you get to the human thing.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah, I hate it when people don't get that monsters are monsters. They don't represent real-world human nationalities or ethnic groups. The Orcs aren't a metaphor for the French. They are a personification of human rage. They're not there to be sympathetic or make us think "You know, even monsters have a story to tell." They're there to show us what's bad about ourselves so we can conquer it. It's OK for good and evil to exist in books and games.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Yeah, I hate it when people don't get that monsters are monsters. They don't represent real-world human nationalities or ethnic groups. The Orcs aren't a metaphor for the French. They are a personification of human rage. They're not there to be sympathetic or make us think "You know, even monsters have a story to tell." They're there to show us what's bad about ourselves so we can conquer it. It's OK for good and evil to exist in books and games.

And, Tolkien was out and proud about explicitly having Good and Evil characters. He goes on at length about his intentions behind the characters in the prefaces to his books and the letters which you can find on the internet.

Good = Samwise Gamgee
Evil = Shelob
Good = Gandalf
Evil = Orcs

and so on. Others have a bit more shades of grey about them, corruption and so on - Sauron, Saruman, Denethor - but the non-human characters in Tolkien's books were basically adversaries to overcome, like the monsters of the old Norse and Saxon myths that inspired Tolkien in the first place.

 

[Dickie]

I dunno. The orcs don't seem all that evil.

 

[Delterius]

The Orcs aren't a metaphor for the French.

Are you telling me racist europeans don't portray brown people as all powerful industrial anarchic empires?

 

[Zombra]

On the subject of monsters and evil, I was very impressed with Shadow of Mordor's portrayal of the orcs. Every one was totally irredeemable. They were varying levels of sadistic, stupid, hateful, but I always felt good about killing them. Even after being dominated, they would stand around and talk about how they were looking forward to catching the ranger so they could torture him. I was a little disappointed to see Brûz the Chopper be somewhat relatable in a War preview. Hopefully they don't go too far down that path - most of what we've seen shows the uruks being pretty awful.

 

[abnaxus]

I'd rather see Galadriel's titties.

 

[Ash]

Modern gaming in a nutshell. And these pieces of mindless garbage, from Batman to Assassin's Creed to Bioshock to Gears of War, are top sellers and praised to the high heavens. Fuck anyone who supports this shit.

 

[Beastro]

Gollum being a mixed bag, well, that's fine - lots of supporting evidence for that in the books, Gandalf's speech etc. If it wasn't for Gollum, Sauron might have got the ring because Frodo wouldn't have destroyed it and the Nazgul would have taken him off to Barad Dur. Saying Gollum served a dual purpose is not controversial. Saying the same thing for Shelob is utter horseshit, even before you get to the human thing.

Even then the point of Gollum is the part everyone plays in life and Gandalf warned Frodo he doesn't know what good could come from the fool. He is not a good person though, at all. To think somehow he is is to miss the point of his character far more than thinking of him as a worthless piece of shit.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Zombra]

So I saw an annoying gameplay thing today on a Eurogamer video from a few days ago - I guess this was revealed a month ago

but I wasn't paying attention.

Evidently, skills have Augments that are basically Materia for people who know what that is. You "slot in" Augmentations on your skills so your Wraith Punch might have a fire effect or a poison effect or something like this. The annoying part? You can swap Materia Augments out at any time for no cost, like right in the middle of combat. So if you find an enemy who's immune to fire or enraged by poison, you can just remove that materia and slot in frost damage or whatever he's vulnerable to instead, instantly, free.

Basically it's pressing pause and using 50 stimpaks all over again.

 

[Mynon]

Many a beastly thing lurks in the shadow of war...