Some thoughts about Middle-earth in video games

I have noticed that when you talk about Middle-earth in video games you often talk about specific games and rarely the general use of Tolkien's works. Of course, it makes sense that you want to talk specifically about the latest game or the one you enjoyed the most. I have played most of the Tolkien-inspired games that have been released since 2002 and want to share my opinions about the different ways video games adapt the books of Tolkien (or the movies of Peter Jackson).

The size of Glaurung

I just wanted to share some of my thoughts considering Glaurung, probably known to anyone who has read The Silmarillion and/or The Children of Húrin as the father of dragons. His size is never clearly specified by Tolkien and different people seem to have widely different opinions on this. That being said I do not claim to have a correct answer to this, I just want to say what I think and why.

The Tolkien Iceberg(s)

There is this picture where The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion are part of an iceberg, that I have seen quite a few times on different occasions. The Lord of the Rings represents the visible and smaller part of the iceberg while The Silmarillion represents the much larger part. People seem to agree with this metaphor since it keeps coming back. However, I do not think this gives a fair picture of The Lord of the Rings.

Hunt for the Ring: The latest LotR-themed board game

This game has already been released, though it can not yet be ordered where I live. In other words, I have not got a chance to play it yet, but I am really excited for it.

The Silmarillion to music

A few years ago I thought "What if you put background music in The Silmarillion audiobook?". I started whatever software I used back then and put the first three minutes of The Silmarillion and the track "The Burning Bush" from the movie The Prince of Egypt together. I did this all out of curiosity and did not expect it to be good but I was quite amazed by the result, so now I listen to it every once in awhile because it is so pleasing.

Orcs and goblins, same thing?

In large fantasy worlds, like that of Warhammer or Warcraft, orcs and goblins are very common. These are often treated as different species and by all right, there are great differences between orcs and goblins in these worlds. This is probably a cause of the common perception that orcs and goblins are always two completely different creatures, which is not the case in the world of Tolkien.

The Fellowship of the Ring Video Game: Bad but unique

I have a great nostalgic relationship to two different video games that are based on The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Both of these came out in 2002 when I was about eight years old and did not have a lot of video game experience. Apart from some games on Sega Mega Drive and Game Boy that I never managed to finish, Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were among my very first video game experiences. The Fellowship of the Ring is widely considered to be a bad game and I totally understand why, I can even agree to some extent. Right now, however, I want to say some things about what this game did that most other LotR-based games did not.

Some points about tengwar and cirth

I have come across a lot of misunderstandings regarding the different writing styles of Middle-Earth so I thought that I could make an attempt to sort some things out. First off, just to be clear, tengwar is NOT a language. It is simply a system of letters that can be used to write different languages, which is also true for cirth.

Welcome to Tolkien Time

My plan with this blog is basically to talk about anything that has anything to do with Tolkien, first and foremost I will of course focus on his works and different kinds of adaptions of them. That being said I do not plan to talk simply for the sake of talking, I will use this blog to share my ideas and opinions whenever I feel like it so the time between posts may vary a lot. I don't have much more than that to say, so welcome to Tolkien Time.