From a guy with a LotR username and avatar, this is complete bullshit post-controversy justification with an unsound explanation probably stolen from Reddit that holds no water against even the most novice of Tolkien fans. They wanted sexy lady for the advertisements, maybe even the controversy, but to claim that Shelob is similar enough to Ungoliant to transform into her? Insane. Literally all spiders are decendants of Ungoliant, and there's no reason to assume Shelob is "more directly" related than any other spider. So unless every spider can transform into a sexy lady, garbage excuse. This also doesn't explain why Shelob would even want to turn into a sexy lady in the first place. Evil creatures in Tolkien's world abhor beauty, even that kind of beauty.
Not even to mention the bogus and downright insulting implication that Galadriel or the diplomats at the Council of Elrond were "secretly evil" for sending the Fellowship on a "suicide mission." It wasn't some kind of suicide mission, it was the literal last hope for the world and was heavily debated, before it was decided that literally some of the most powerful individuals in the know world, including a fucking Maiar and royalty from every race, were sent on a difficult but necessary mission that they fucking volunteered for. Elrond didn't force Frodo into some dumb quest, he felt an obligation to save the world as his fate; to twist this blatantly black and white good and evil story into some grimdark Warhammer fantasy in order to justify having titties is ridiculous.
I could accept the Shelob thing if they admitted their true intentions were to appeal to the 20 year old male demographic that wants to bloodbathe in orc guts, same reason they got that ~topical comedian~ to do Whedon voicework for the "unsure orc", but to try and explain it by twisting Tolkien's lore is insulting both to his works and to the fans.
in a game where youre possessed by the soul of some elven lord and defeat sauron in a QTE as well as many, many other bizarre lore defying things im okay with shelob choosing to be a lady sometimes. thats relatively minor compared to everything else in these games yet this is what people are crying out against??
Just pretend it's a really bad fanfic or a generic fantasy game and try to enjoy the gameplay.
Had to do this to enjoy the first game, and it wasn't so bad.
[QUOTE=LeonS;52576981]in a game where youre possessed by the soul of some elven lord and defeat sauron in a QTE as well as many, many other bizarre lore defying things im okay with shelob choosing to be a lady sometimes. thats relatively minor compared to everything else in these games yet this is what people are crying out against??[/QUOTE]
Eh, the whole "Elven Wraith" thing was poked at as well especially on /r/tolkienfans when the first game was released, but at least in that case, it was a result of looking at the lore with a very loose interpretation in order to get an interesting core concept working that still felt true to the original source material. Sure, it's pretty inaccurate, but generally at least, Celebrimbor was a real character, and you know, probably hated Sauron pretty bad, and while wraith possession is pretty damn silly, it was merely a plot device to allow you to focus on the primary gameplay mechanics, having a normal guy with super powers in the LotR universe. Same goes for the QTE thing; imperfect solution but a gamey solution to a common mechanical problem in games with boss fights at the end of the game. Remember Dying Light?
This just reeks of WB meddling though. Celebrimbor was a nifty, albeit misconstrued, nod to some deeper lore of the novels, and some of the new creatures were obviously completely fabricated, but weren't exactly insulting to the lore; Shelob transforming into a sexy lady for some temptation cutscene is such an obvious result of producers having a checklist for requirements in their AAA sequels, including the lovely microtransactions recently revealed, that it's difficult to imagine the imaginative minds behind the original game decided to throw in such a tonally inconsistent and unnecessary scene.
Every debatable aspect of the original game served a very important purpose to driving the gameplay mechanics, whether that was having to explain why some random Gondorian has super powers, or whether that's having to make the Sauron boss battle feel different than every other battle in the game while probably limited on development time, the decisions always seemed to be tied to the gameplay first, making sacrifices to the lore to keep the game fun while still making throwbacks to the source material. Shelob being sexy has literally no impact on gameplay as far as I can tell, and seems to be a short cutscene of exposition before she returns to monster form for a boss battle; I cannot for the life of me understand why this juxtaposition between Galadriel and Shelob needed to be made, as they are simply not on the same level, and the "temptation of the 'good' ring" can be done without shoehorning Shelob in for some ~nifty references to the books~. The scene doesn't serve gameplay, and doesn't really serve the plot; it's fan service, but done in the worst way possible, not only not appealing to fans, but probably not appealing to the horny 20 year old boys that WB knows are the prime demographic for this violent power fantasy video game.
s*x sells
[QUOTE=burgerdemon;52577441]s*x sells[/QUOTE]
Lol is your fucking mom watching you post or something?
[QUOTE=IKTM;52577672]Lol is your fucking mom watching you post or something?[/QUOTE]
No there's a moth in my room i dont want it to see those words
[QUOTE=IKTM;52577672]fucking[/QUOTE]
great you just got him grounded
The lore of this game is complete trash to the point where it may as well not even be in the LOTR universe. Extremely disappointing, a lore friendly game about hunting orc leaders could've been great. The entire thing has always screamed focus group to me. Like the developers don't really care about LOTR, they just got a collection of what was popular at the time and slapped a LOTR license on it to make money. The shady microtransaction shit in this sequel only cements that theory.
Games like this are the reason the Tolkiens refuse to licence more games right?
[QUOTE=Duskin;52578378]The lore of this game is complete trash to the point where it may as well not even be in the LOTR universe. Extremely disappointing, a lore friendly game about hunting orc leaders could've been great. The entire thing has always screamed focus group to me. Like the developers don't really care about LOTR, they just got a collection of what was popular at the time and slapped a LOTR license on it to make money. The shady microtransaction shit in this sequel only cements that theory.[/QUOTE]
I think the fact they tried to build the game on top of existing lore that 99.9% of players wouldn't know anything about rather than make everything up out of thin air (i.e. Celebrimbor) means someone did actually care
Then much like for the microtransactions some WB executive stepped in and said "yeah but what if the bad giant spider monster was a sexy lady instead, that'll make for better marketing" and sadly you really can't tell him to fuck off since he's the one writing your paychecks
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