A lot of people are very excited about the forthcoming Lego Lord of the Rings game.

We may have missed a couple of cool reveals about the game that emerged at E3 around the beginning of last month.

So here’s a re-cap, including an 18-minute on-stage demo that Nick Ricks gave at E3. It reveals a long in-game sequence from the Mines of Moria, including Balin’s tomb. You can also pre-order the game here.

Props to Ringer Lars for the links. Continue reading “Re-cap on the Lego Lord of the Rings game”

In January, Lord of the Rings Online an expansion to the MMO called Riders of Rohan. Launching on September 5 this year, the game expansion adds the regions of East Rohan, Amon Hen and the Eaves of Fangorn Forest, a new mounted combat system plus a new, original score by award-winning composer Chance Thomas.

Thomas’ work should be familiar to anyone who’s already played the Lord of the Rings Online Games: Shadows of Angmar and Mines of Moria. Writer Layton Shumway recently visited a recording studio near Thomas’ Utah home and learned just how much effort the maestro behind the music of Turbine Entertainment’s Lord of the Rings Online puts into his craft. Continue reading “Inside the music of LOTRO: The Riders of Rohan”

Award-winning composer Chance Thomas’s work should be familiar to anyone who’s played the Lord of the Rings Online Games: Shadows of Angmar and Mines of Moria. Those are just two examples in an impressive resume. His latest collaboration with LOTRO and Warner Bros. Entertainment is the soundtrack to the new online game Riders of Rohan, releasing September 5, 2012. Posted on Lord of The Rings Online’s YouTube site are three musical selections: “LOTRO Legacy”, “Shadow of the Argonath” and “Boromir’s Last Stand”. Be sure to click on “Show more” on the individual pages for “Shadow of the Argonath” and “Boromir’s Last Stand” to read Thomas’s insight into the composing of the music.

Additionally, the second in the series of behind the scenes videos: “Immersion through the look and sound of Rohan”, posted July 5th, has interviews with Thomas as well as Director Mitch Cohen, Director of Photography Scott Kevan and Senior World Designer Chris Pierson. The composer speaks to how he relied on painstaking research of the literature to create what he feels is “authentic” and true to Tolkien’s vision of the role of music in his stories. This video along with the first behind the scenes and various teasers and trailers for the game are available at LOTRO’s YouTube page. More musical tracks will be posted as the launch date approaches. In the meantime check out Chance Thomas’s official site to hear examples from some of the composer’s other works.

For LEGO developer, Traveller’s Tales, it’s all about the journey with their first venture into “LEGOfying” an Academy Award Best Picture winner. Executive Producer Nick Ricks shared at E3 that the team has been working closely with LEGO and WingNut Studios/New Line to recreate The Lord of the Rings experience as authentically as possible. Some in-game sequences are not completely made of LEGO with cinematic sequences added.

“There’s so much fantastically framed cinematography and brilliant camerawork. We can’t improve on that, so we just need to take it and put it into the game,” Ricks explained.

The usual LEGO voices for characters have also been replaced with theatrical ones such as Orlando Bloom for Legolas, and to streamline the journey, the game world has been created around Tolkien’s original maps where characters can move from Hobbiton to Mordor without jumping in and out of chapters.


Have you ever pondered what a LEGO balrog might look like (and does it have wings?!) or longed to see a Lego Fellowship trot across the Bridge of Khazad Dum? If so, or even if not, today is your lucky day. The LOTR LEGO trailer has landed and not only is it full of cuteness that is a danger to fans’ wallets everywhere, it features 100% movie actor voices and only shows footage (LEGO style) from “Fellowship of the Ring.” We have no idea what all this means. Are these cut scenes? One game or three? Will we be able to mine for mithril? Is LEGO Boromir cuter than Legolas or Aragorn? In other film LEGO games, “Harry Potter,” “Indiana Jones,” and “Star Wars” for example, the characters never talk. We have no answers but we do have this trailer and it is cute.