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You could always lol at how the Gollum game that's coming out looks like it was developed in 2006.
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Aug 15, 2022 15:48
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just give me more orc murder simulator
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Aug 15, 2022 15:52
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WoodrowSkillson posted:just give me more orc murder simulator Probably gonna be a while before a Russo-Ukrainian War game comes out
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Aug 15, 2022 15:53
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Judgy Fucker posted:Probably gonna be a while before a Russo-Ukrainian War game comes out 
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Aug 15, 2022 16:05
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Dwarf Fortress but with Dwarves.
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Aug 15, 2022 16:15
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keep punching joe posted:Dwarf Fortress but with Dwarves. That's actually coming next year! https://www.pcgamer.com/co-op-survival-crafting-comes-to-middle-earth-in-lord-of-the-rings-return-to-moria/
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Aug 15, 2022 16:25
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It has a single player mode. I hate how every game has to hit those marketing buzzwords
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Aug 15, 2022 16:26
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William Bear posted:That's actually coming next year! Well holy smokes.
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Aug 15, 2022 16:29
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skasion posted:Elf lord dating sim Which son of Feanor will catch your eye??
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Aug 15, 2022 16:32
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Can I mentally lathe a stardew valley clone where you are Sam replanting the Shire.
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Aug 15, 2022 16:36
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Phy posted:Which son of Feanor will catch your eye?? You play Andreth, trying to get the good ending where you live happily ever after with Aegnor, but the game makes it impossible to avoid the bad ending where Finrod lectures you about free will.
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Aug 15, 2022 18:16
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i want a city builder in the style of banished
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Aug 15, 2022 19:00
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A video about those Shadow of War/Mordor games came into my youtube feed today and it got me wondering.....did "Tolkien purists" piss and moan or make as vocal of an uproar about the absolute insanely stupid creative liberties with the lore those games took or is it just because this time those changes made for Rings of Power involve black people and women? I know the answer is obvious but I forgot completely about how wild some of the choices they made in those games were but I dont remember nearly as much collective anger from the internet. IE Isildur and Helm the Hammerhand becoming Nazgul lol
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Aug 17, 2022 23:41
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AccountSupervisor posted:A video about those Shadow of War/Mordor games came into my youtube feed today and it got me wondering.....did "Tolkien purists" piss and moan or make as vocal of an uproar about the absolute insanely stupid creative liberties with the lore those games took or is it just because this time those changes made for Rings of Power involve black people and women? There was some backlash, yes, but I don't recall it being quite this strong. Sexy Shelob definitely caused an uproar though.
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Aug 17, 2022 23:47
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I'm still mad about sexy shelob, yes
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Aug 17, 2022 23:47
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I think that the purists mostly sensed that those ones in particular were a lost cause. I don't think purism is even the best angle to approach the Sexy Shelob howler. It's simply sexist.
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Aug 17, 2022 23:53
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AccountSupervisor posted:A video about those Shadow of War/Mordor games came into my youtube feed today and it got me wondering.....did "Tolkien purists" piss and moan or make as vocal of an uproar about the absolute insanely stupid creative liberties with the lore those games took or is it just because this time those changes made for Rings of Power involve black people and women? There was definitely a lot of pissing and moaning, particularly about Sexy Shelob, but nothing on the scale of Rings of Power. And yes, it's exactly why you think it is. Though to be fair, the games themselves were fairly decent which probably gave them a bit more leeway. If they'd been terrible, the outcry would've been worse than it was.
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Aug 18, 2022 00:04
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I’d read the term Sexy Shelob on SA several times and I never actually knew what it was about. I just looked it up, and my, what a choice that was. I can understand if they wanted a female antagonist, but why go about it this way? And what was the game’s rationale for how she was supposed to be able to assume a human form anyway?
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Aug 18, 2022 00:04
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Daughter of a potential Maiar and therefore able to take on the fair form of elf or man?
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Aug 18, 2022 00:09
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MrMojok posted:I’d read the term Sexy Shelob on SA several times and I never actually knew what it was about. Because Shelob is either a child of Ungoliant, or some related type of Ainur that came into Arda in the early days. That's the theory anyway. My beef with those games (as more of a purist) is more that it is really a modern fantasy style of game pasted over LOTR. LOTR is "different" enough from modern fantasy that I don't think that style of game really fits - Tolkien never quite went into detail about magic systems, or combat styles, or whatever like modern fantasy novels tend to do. So modern games that take place in Middle-earth tend to import a lot of the modern fantasy conventions, which of course mostly started with LOTR's influence in the 60s and 70s affecting things like D&D, but then filtered through decades of development and gamification (for better or worse). It bugs me in the same way some of the anachronistic things that pop into the movies bug me, things just feel out of place (e.g. Gimli talking about nervous systems)
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Aug 18, 2022 00:18
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hannibal posted:Because Shelob is either a child of Ungoliant, or some related type of Ainur that came into Arda in the early days. That's the theory anyway. My beef with those games (as more of a purist) is more that it is really a modern fantasy style of game pasted over LOTR. LOTR is "different" enough from modern fantasy that I don't think that style of game really fits - Tolkien never quite went into detail about magic systems, or combat styles, or whatever like modern fantasy novels tend to do. So modern games that take place in Middle-earth tend to import a lot of the modern fantasy conventions, which of course mostly started with LOTR's influence in the 60s and 70s affecting things like D&D, but then filtered through decades of development and gamification (for better or worse). It bugs me in the same way some of the anachronistic things that pop into the movies bug me, things just feel out of place (e.g. Gimli talking about nervous systems) I mean, Tolkien himself mentions a freight train or locomotive at the beginning of FOTR. I know the whole “this is a modern translation of the Red Book of…” bullshit but that’s just papering over a mistake. I find complaints about anachronisms pretty tedious in the grand scheme of things.
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Aug 18, 2022 00:36
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It's not the anachronism that bothers me about Sexy Shelob, it's that it just strikes me as crass commercial capitalism sexualizing literally anything vaguely female because sexy art sells more copies of the game than a non-sexualized spider would. You might as well make one of those facebook boob "milord" games starring Rosie Cotton as the arm candy. It's just crass and shallow and sexist. AccountSupervisor posted:A video about those Shadow of War/Mordor games came into my youtube feed today and it got me wondering.....did "Tolkien purists" piss and moan or make as vocal of an uproar about the absolute insanely stupid creative liberties with the lore those games took or is it just because this time those changes made for Rings of Power involve black people and women? I'm not particularly excited bout the new adaptation but it might surprise me and be great. I'm kinda not really expecting it to be "Tolkien" at all -- they're "adapting" a few pages of Silmarillion out into a five season epic, it'll fly or fail on the merits of the current writing staff, not anything Tolkien put on a page. That said, I suspect the main differences between the reaction to Shadow of Mordor and the "reaction" we're seeing these days is because of a few reasons: 1) Shadow of Mordor came out in 2014 before the culture of making GBS threads all over every new adaptation of everything for being "too woke" had really taken off online (I feel like it got started and became a self-perpetuation shitball somewhere around 2016) 2) The new adaptation is casting black people and women, yes. Mahoning posted:I mean, Tolkien himself mentions a freight train or locomotive at the beginning of FOTR. I know the whole “this is a modern translation of the Red Book of…” bullshit but that’s just papering over a mistake. I find complaints about anachronisms pretty tedious in the grand scheme of things. There's something more interesting going on there actually, I feel. All the "anachronisms" (umbrellas, trains, etc.) are mentioned in Hobbiton. It's because as we move forward in the story, we're moving backward in British Time, from the Edwardian era back through the middle ages (Bree, Rivendell), through Anglo-Saxon Britain (the Rohirrim) to High Roman Britain (Gondor). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 01:14
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hannibal posted:Because Shelob is either a child of Ungoliant, or some related type of Ainur that came into Arda in the early days. That's the theory anyway. My beef with those games (as more of a purist) is more that it is really a modern fantasy style of game pasted over LOTR. LOTR is "different" enough from modern fantasy that I don't think that style of game really fits - Tolkien never quite went into detail about magic systems, or combat styles, or whatever like modern fantasy novels tend to do. So modern games that take place in Middle-earth tend to import a lot of the modern fantasy conventions, which of course mostly started with LOTR's influence in the 60s and 70s affecting things like D&D, but then filtered through decades of development and gamification (for better or worse). It bugs me in the same way some of the anachronistic things that pop into the movies bug me, things just feel out of place (e.g. Gimli talking about nervous systems) Yeah, I think I see what you mean. Tom Bombadil isn't powerful because he's a level 300 arch-something with a +7 to BLT who takes half damage from AGV. He's just Tom Bombadil.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:17
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Ungoliant might be a Maiar though there’s no especially good reason to just assume that but regardless even if it/she was any offspring would not have any ability to change their form as seen with Luthien and her being half Maiar.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:19
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Ungoliant is from beyond the walls of Night, isn't she? I thought, whatever she was, she was categorically not part of Eru's creation
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Aug 18, 2022 01:24
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Mameluke posted:Ungoliant is from beyond the walls of Night, isn't she? I thought, whatever she was, she was categorically not part of Eru's creation She's not categorically ANYTHING because everything we've got is explicitly the elves going "we don't know this is our best guess." However... she straight up lived in Valinor before Morgoth recruited her. The place where Valar and Maiar live. Which kinda... gestures frantically in a certain direction.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:31
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Mameluke posted:Ungoliant is from beyond the walls of Night, isn't she? I thought, whatever she was, she was categorically not part of Eru's creation I think that it's a pretty radical reading to reach a conclusion that would imply that anything isn't part of Eru's creation. More likely she is a part of it that the elves, or Manwë, or the other Valar and Maiar in general, don't understand well, being associated with darkness and all.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:35
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reignonyourparade posted:She's not categorically ANYTHING because everything we've got is explicitly the elves going "we don't know this is our best guess." She lived in Aman, not Valinor. There is a big difference. Large parts of Aman just aren't inhabited. Valinor is the part of Aman that the Vala and Maia live in, they explicitly did not live in the place that Ungoliant came from.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:36
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She’s not in Valinor, she’s clung on to the foot of the Pelori so she can hide in the mountains shadow. She’s drawn to the light from outside, but doesn’t dare come into it alone. Imo, creation of Iluvatar who came down from the Void. In the Book of Lost Tales the spider, in keeping with the more “mythic” or archetypal character of the writing, is clearly darkness/void incarnate.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:43
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I forget where I heard it, but I read something in a fan speculation that Ungoliant could have been something created from the dissonance that came from Melkor causing trouble in the singing part of the Silmarillion.
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Aug 18, 2022 02:55
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Absolutely everything in existence is the work of some part of Illuvatar’s mind in service of his grand design. This fact is what ultimately drove Melkor to dive into deeper depths of resentment and then hatred toward any and all things. But there are pretty compelling theories that some of the more mysterious and unexplained things such as Ungoliant or the Nameless Things deep under Moria may be the byproduct of Melkor’s discord introduced during creation. These would be things that not only predate the first Elves by essentially infinite time but would also predate most if not all of the Ainur descending into Arda for the first time.
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Aug 18, 2022 02:58
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I promise I only do this like once a year but Maia, Vala = singular Maiar, Valar = plural
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Aug 18, 2022 02:58
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Data Graham posted:I promise I only do this like once a year but Graham I am pretty sure you did this about two weeks ago in your Rings of Power thread!
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Aug 18, 2022 03:04
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ok once a year starting ... now
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Aug 18, 2022 03:08
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Personally I find the too often argued take that the Silmarillion is written in the form of an unreliable and biased narrator pretty dumb and really just an unnecessary attempt to be contrarian. Yes it is accurate that it’s essentially the in-universe Elvish biblical account of creation and the early days of Arda but the difference between that and the real life Bible, and especially even older mythological tales, is that several of the key figures who took part in these events were still alive and well in the LoTR. Galadriel was only one generation removed from the first born Elves and grew up with them. And plenty more Elves, including those who were among the very first awoken, are still hanging around in Valinor with the lower case G gods who know first hand everything since before the universe was a thing. So they really do know first or second hand what happened in mythological times.
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Aug 18, 2022 03:10
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AccountSupervisor posted:A video about those Shadow of War/Mordor games came into my youtube feed today and it got me wondering.....did "Tolkien purists" piss and moan or make as vocal of an uproar about the absolute insanely stupid creative liberties with the lore those games took or is it just because this time those changes made for Rings of Power involve black people and women? In addition to what's been said before, video games are even below animated works in how much book purists care. Live adaptations are far and away most expected to become the platonic idea of the source material; everything else gets held to lower standards. Shimrra Jamaane posted:Personally I find the too often argued take that the Silmarillion is written in the form of an unreliable and biased narrator pretty dumb and really just an unnecessary attempt to be contrarian. Yes it is accurate that it’s essentially the in-universe Elvish biblical account of creation and the early days of Arda but the difference between that and the real life Bible, and especially even older mythological tales, is that several of the key figures who took part in these events were still alive and well in the LoTR. Galadriel was only one generation removed from the first born Elves and grew up with them. And plenty more Elves, including those who were among the very first awoken, are still hanging around in Valinor with the lower case G gods who know first hand everything since before the universe was a thing. So they really do know first or second hand what happened in mythological times. I get what you mean, but I just think about Elrond there neither confirming nor denying anything in Bilbo's poem about his dad.
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Aug 18, 2022 03:34
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My read on Ungoliant is that it's a spin on the CS Lewis "There are other worlds and God/Christ show themselves in different ways in these places" idea - something from another world that has forced its way through the void/nothingness. You know, just typing it out now this is also starting to remind me of Milton's Satan carving a path through the chaos and Sin and Death following. I might do a close reading some time of relevant passages in both and if I find something interesting I'll post.
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Aug 18, 2022 03:48
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Personally I find the too often argued take that the Silmarillion is written in the form of an unreliable and biased narrator pretty dumb and really just an unnecessary attempt to be contrarian. This isn't talking about "we can't trust what the text tells us" though, this is specifically talking about the text going "we don't know for sure." The subject of conversation isn't the general case it's Ungoliant Specifically.
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Aug 18, 2022 03:52
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Shadow of War rules and sexy shelob was fine. Sauron has just become a werewolf and a giant bat for no reason in the past, so its not like shapeshifting has hard and fast rules in Tolkien. The point is her character seduces talion with words anyway, she is hardly even sexualized other than not being an ugly woman. People should have been more up in arms of her purported romance with Sauron than her taking on another form temporarily. It's made explicit to the player that she is using that form to make herself more amenable to Talion to manipulate him, and since he is a giant idiot he falls right into it. The stuff with the Nazgul was fine. I thought it was at least an interesting attempt at a fresh spin on a part of the story. Tolkien never named the nazgul besides Khamul anyway. It was a neat idea to imagine that the 9 have not been static since they were turned, but instead Sauron has continued to use the 9 rings for men to corrupt further, more advantageous victims like Isildur, Helm Hammerhand, and then Talion later after he kills/frees Isildur. Oh also people got mad that one of the playable characters in the first game was a woman, and in the second game its a black dude from Umbar that grew up and served in Gondor's army. WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 04:00
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Data Graham posted:I promise I only do this like once a year but drat, I'll turn in my Tolkien Superfan card now.  Mahoning posted:I mean, Tolkien himself mentions a freight train or locomotive at the beginning of FOTR. I know the whole “this is a modern translation of the Red Book of…” bullshit but that’s just papering over a mistake. I find complaints about anachronisms pretty tedious in the grand scheme of things. True, but that's not one of the characters saying it. The nervous system thing is a movie example, I know, but to me it takes me out of the world a bit.
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Aug 18, 2022 04:02
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