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The Last King of Gondor
Westnovote posted this on April 22nd, 2009.
Tagged as Angmar, Arnor, Evil, gondor, Lore, Mordirith, palantir, tolkien.
Categorized as Lore.
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1553
Great summary!
There was a discussion on the EU servers last year about the how the Osgiliath stone couldn’t be the one involved due to it being too large, which only left the stone that was lost in the Bay of Forochel.
One of the devs made a rare visit to mention that because the size of the Osgiliath stone is only mentioned in Unfinished Tales, and not Lord of the Rings, there license doesn’t allow them to make reference to it being of a larger size.
I get the impression that it was simply a detail they overlooked until too late, or they’d probably have reworked the story so that it didn’t contradict the lore in Unfinished Tales without actually making reference to it.
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The source material they could use didn’t contradict them in the size of the Stone, so they ran with whatever fit their ideas best.
We have similar instances where there was material outside their license that they couldn’t use so they amde their own version, such as the discussion between Gandalf and Thorin in the Dwarf prologue or even the name of Sauron in the guise of the Giftbringer Annatar/Antheron.
It is a bit jarring, but for me does not ruin the suspension of disbelief.
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Excelent!
One thing, where did you find that picture of Amarthiel? Its wonderful…
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Found the pictures here — http://www.massively.com/photos/lord-of-the-rings-online-book-12-gallery/
I think the Amarthiel image is concept art by Turbine. I agree with you, they are wonderful. I always liked the use of the mask on the in-game Amarthiel, but these pictures are actually quite scary.
@Thorn — I’ve not rolled a Dwarf character. What is the discussion between Gandalf and Thorin about?
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Excellent post! I think that overall Turbine has done an excellent job weaving their constructed content with the book lore in a believable fashion. Sometimes, they have to take a little creative license so that we will have a game to play
Another minor lore blip: Gollum was stuck in Moria when the Fellowship unknowingly stumbled upon him, so there is no chance he would have been in the Trollshaws for the instanced quest. Am I complaining? Not really, there probably won’t be too many opportunities for us to interact with him in-game so I appreciate that little interlude.
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[…] this excellent post at Mmeow today spurred me to write today’s entry. Since I began playing LOTRO, I’ve often […]
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This is a really excellent summary and while there are numerous technicalities that have been overlooked in various places, especially later in the story, the overall feeling of the epic adventure is one that reflects that of the original work.
I must say the summary also helped me a great deal to coalesce the epic quests in my mind. I did them over such a wide space of time that I had forgotten details and was really only experiencing the surface adventure and not the greater impact.
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Westnovote, the discussion between Gandalf and Thorin is about needing a burglar for the party of Dwarves, of course. But it deviates a bit from the discussion chronicled in Tolkien’s notes.
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