5 Reasons It’s Impossible To Make A Great Tolkien Video Game
2. You Are Probably Not Enough To Win
When we play games, or at least those where there are victory and defeat conditions of some kind, our win or loss is determined by our actions. We have the power to win or lose. This is reflected in video game stories: Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us are the primary decision makers when it comes to whether humanity will be saved or not. The galaxy’s fate rests on Commander Shepard’s shoulders. It’s up to Mario to save the princess.
In Tolkien’s fiction though, our protagonists, on their own, are not enough.
Let’s look at Frodo specifically. He’s at the heart of the story of Lord of the Rings. The success or failure of the good guys basically boils down to whether or not he can destroy the ring. And he cannot. When he gets the chance to destroy it, he can’t bring himself to. He doesn’t have the will. He’s still super heroic, but his abilities alone can’t win the day. That goes for any number of these heroes. Aragorn, Gandalf, and the gang are powerful, but they’re never going to be powerful enough to defeat Sauron and his minions. That kind of flies in the face of the way we usually play games.
Think of Dark Souls as an example: you fight against incredibly hard enemies in those games, but the goal is to upgrade your character enough and become skilled enough to beat them. Ultimately, unless you quit or destroy your controller, you’ll eventually be enough to defeat whatever the game throws at you. That’s kind of the point. However, in a good adaptation of Lord of the Rings, you’d probably be forced to realize that you aren’t enough, no matter what you do.
There’s a kind of despair baked into Tolkien’s world that no video game adaptation I’ve played has been able to capture. I mean, the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King game keeps in the part where Frodo refuses to destroy the ring, but when Gollum then takes the ring, the game returns control to you and you wail on him and push him into a volcano. The focus is back on you and your ability to beat enemies and win the day.
Which leads us to...