EA announced The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth will feature “a more diverse and inclusive Middle-earth.”
The press release (via The One Ring), announces the launch of EA and Capital Games’ venture into J.R.R. Tolkien’s world. The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth is a free-to-play mobile RPG launching May 10th on iOS and Android with pre-registration available now.
The first gameplay was also unveiled, but it was the press release that may have revealed more. “Wanderers, warriors, wizards, and others show how the game leans on the existing lore to capture the essence of The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit; creating new stories from the Tolkien universe while also expanding it to create a more diverse and inclusive Middle-earth,” EA boasts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elj7do86Tx0
The game also appears to feature a new non-Tolkien created narrative, the press release outlines, “As the player discovers a mysteriously abandoned new Ring of Power, visions of their potential journey flash before our eyes – battles and adventures feature beloved and classic characters.”
The press release goes on state, “The upcoming mobile game from EA Mobile and Capital Games will present new ways for fans and new players alike to experience beloved elements of the IP while creating their own novel experiences comes via the re-imagined ‘styled realism’ The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth art style – highlighting the animated, fantastical and magical elements of our characters and world while remaining grounded in reality; and also allowing players to experience the stories ‘between the lines’ of the original canon to expand on Tolkien’s texts.”
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This diversity is unlikely to just being able to command the forces of good and evil- as the store page for the The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth notes. The series has seen increasing efforts to add race-swapped characters that betray the original setting and author’s intent.
Magic: The Gathering previously created a Black Aragorn, and Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power introduced race-swapped Dwarves and Hobbits.
YouTuber European Lore reacted to this new information about the upcoming The Lord of the Rings game saying, “This is precisely and exactly the kind of nonsense that I’ve been talking about, well, for the longest time.”
“The fact that we don’t really need, as people like to say, ‘more Tolkien content’ because all that we can get is just garbage, garbage entertainment that is only suitable for being in a dumpster, in a trash can, in a dust bin, my dear friends,” he added.
