So there’s a new Lord of the Rings game coming out from EA, Lord of the Rings: Conquest. In it, you first play through as the good guys, but the second half of the game has you playing for the other side, postulating a version of the story where Sauron got The Ring and ended up taking over all of Middle Earth. Along the way, you get to kill Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo, Elrond… basically all of the ‘good’ heroes.

I guess I’m just hopelessly out of date, because I really have no interest in playing a game where I kill all the characters that were my heroes growing up. Nor do I have much interest in playing a game that has the audacity to re-write Tolkien’s history of Middle Earth. (I’m already in a high state of alert over Peter Jackson’s 2nd Hobbit movie, which will span the 40-odd years between when Bilbo returns to Bag End and the Expected Party of his one-hundred and eleventy-ith birthday celebration.) I’m surprised and a bit disappointed that the Tolkien estate gave this title the thumbs up.

I think this might be generational. If someone did a game where you killed off The Justice League, I wonder if that would be seen as ‘cool’ by your typical gamer? What about a game where Luke ended up lured to the dark side and ran around murdering Leia, Han Solo and the rest of the good guys?

I truly, honestly hope that the game flops and that developer Pandemic and EA lose boatloads of money on it.