Lord of the Rings: the Battle for Middle-Earth II Xbox360 Interview

[JamieSI]

Strategy Informer (http://www.strategyinformer.com/) has posted up an interview with Louis Castle, Executive Producer for The Battle for Middle earth II for the Xbox 360. In this interview we ask Louis lots of questions about making a good RTS for a console since this hasn't really been done yet. Here's a snippet:

seriously don’t think so. Every test group and fan base we have talked to continues to be amazed at how easily they take to the controls. PC gamers who have not played a strategy game for a few years and console players who have never played one have remarked on how quickly they were doing exactly what they wanted to do. The goal of any interface is for it to disappear so that the player can express themselves in the game’s world. I feel we have really accomplished that goal. The concept of commanding entire armies is very exciting and will certainly be a new experience for some players but I’m quite confident they are up for the challenge and reward.

More can be read here (http://www.strategyinformer.com/xbox360/lordoftheringsthebattleformiddleearthii360/interview.html).

Do you think they'll be able to make the first good RTS crossover?

[zorper]

Yeah, you can make a good console RTS. But that is all it's going to be, a "console RTS". A console RTS is never going to be as sophisticated as a PC RTS. You decide if that's better or not.

I enjoyed Goblin Commander. It was a fun little game. Is it even in the same universe as Starcraft or AOE? No.

[Grimgrock]

Do you think they'll be able to make the first good RTS crossover?

When I can plug a mouse and keyboard into my console, yes, I think they'll be able to do that.

[GrinR]

If it could be done with Starcraft64, it can be done with the 360.

I'm one of maybe 4 people who played Starcraft64, and as far as I'm concerned it was the easy equivalent of playing with KBM.

[Citizen Philip]

Yeah, you can make a good console RTS. But that is all it's going to be, a "console RTS". A console RTS is never going to be as sophisticated as a PC RTS. You decide if that's better or not.

I enjoyed Goblin Commander. It was a fun little game. Is it even in the same universe as Starcraft or AOE? No.

I think I played that too. It was.. odd. Took me over an hour to figure out what I was suppose to be doing. It was an RTS, but it wasn't.. or it was.. but I was confused.

[zorper]

I think I played that too. It was.. odd. Took me over an hour to figure out what I was suppose to be doing. It was an RTS, but it wasn't.. or it was.. but I was confused.

It was a cool little game. You can find it in the buck bin now. Controlling the 'super big guy' or whatever each clan had was fun. You built things, battle did occur in real time, and you sent forces to places on a big map. But it wasn't what anyone here would call a 'real' RTS.

[Reanimated]

What I want to know is why the game was delayed to August 1st when it went gold weeks ago.

[devicelimit]

Probably manufacturing problems.

[danhoo]

DId anyone ever play Army Men: RTS on a console? Ok, granted, it's an Army Men game, which generally means "poke my eye with a hot poker before I'll play it", but it was developed by the good folks at Pandemic Australia, and IMHO, it was reasonably playable for what was a basic RTS on a console.

[Dakar]

This will be a bad game because the PC version is pretty damn bad and it can't get any better from there.

[Watership]

This will be a bad game because the PC version is pretty damn bad and it can't get any better from there.

Gamerankings.com

LOTR: Middle-earth II - PC
Avg Ratio: 84%
With 14 reviews at 90% or higher.

By what values are you saying the game was 'Pretty damn bad'?

[CPaladino]

I was actually one of the guys AT that EA Summit in Seattle, and I thought that the controller schema was pretty damn fine.

Is it a PC controller? No - the mouse and keyboard beats it. If you have a PC get the PC version (cheaper, make maps, co-op, 8 player max)

If you don't have a PC, or never played an RTS before I think it's goign to be a solid game. I'm worried that it's too foreign for non-PC non-RTS folks.

-Chris
www.dreamstation.cc

[Montolio]

What I want to know is why the game was delayed to August 1st when it went gold weeks ago.They had to pull out the pre-order maps ... can't have those things just going for $60 now can we :rolleyes:

Luckily we'll be able to microrapement them from Xbox Live. Yes, I've been listening to the podcast over at 1UP Yours (1upyours.1up.com/) and I'm still pissed about the GRAW DLC cost. I'll get over it.

The podcast was great ... I learned the editors there can do very odd things with Corona bottles, was painted with a broad-brush as a troll because I ( by I, I mean all of us ) hang out at Evil Avatar, Microsoft is holding-up the Prey demo and heard a very interesting theory on how Halo 3 will end.

If any of the editors from the podcast happen to be reading through the thread, here's a big fuck you from the regulars here.

Love the show, don't love that comment.

Edit: Disregard the 1UP comment ... I'm late (www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14311&page=1&pp=10)to the party.

[KamaItachi]

Every mention of this game comments on how good and intuitive the controls are. The last console RTS I played was Dune on the Megadrive, but from my friends I have garnered that console RTS controlls haven't evolved very much since then.

I'm actually pretty interested in picking this up, but I'm just really curious as to what they've done here that really improves the situation.