It's not too surprising that the developers would use an established engine for a movie tie-in game. It wasn't widely anticipated that the Lord of the Rings movies would become such a global hit, which meant that developers had to scramble to get Lord of the Rings movie games out on time. This is why The Two Towers game was so lacking in content compared to Return of the King, even though it incorporated scenes from Fellowship of the Ring. It's more surprising that a golf game formed the basis for Return of the King, especially as it improved so much upon its predecessor.
The Lord Of The Rings The Return Of The King Game
One of the other reasons why the Tiger Woods PGA Tour engine was used was due to it being developed by EA. This gave the team making Return of the King free reign to use it, as EA had grabbed the rights to publish the Lord of the Rings movie tie-in games. The ability to easily use something like Unreal Engine 4 was still years away at that point in time and actually building a new engine from scratch was costly and time-consuming.
With much more ambitious level design, Return of the King manages to capture the scale and essence of its movie counterpart extremely well. This is only reinforced by the game's impressive visuals and sound design, with environments and character models looking as realistic as possible for 2003. Due to its faithfulness to the source material, and its high level of accessibility, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King quickly became a childhood classic for many, and it's still fondly discussed today.
It's about time that EA remastered its Lord of the Rings games. With the two titles already standing the test of time fairly well, it wouldn't take much effort for EA to remaster The Two Towers and The Return of the King, with a simple up-res to HD. Fans aren't looking for a fully-fledged remake; they just want to be able to easily play the games from their childhood with modern visuals and sound. None of their gameplay needs to be changed, as after all, their simplicity is what made them so accessible and beloved to begin with, allowing friends to just hop in straight away with no lengthy tutorial. It's money that's just lying on the table, waiting for EA to pick it up.
The game is set in the fictional world of Sanctuary, centred around the town of Tristram in the Kingdom of Khanduras. The protagonist is a lone hero who takes upon himself to find what is causing distress in the town's cathedral and is taken upon a journey that brings him down into the deep caves beneath the cathedral, all the way into Hell to combat Diablo, the Lord of Terror.
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