Fallout Co-Creator Tim Cain Almost Made A Lord Of The Rings RPG
Fallout and The Outer Worlds co-creator Tim Cain started a YouTube channel earlier this week, and plans to use the channel to talk about his time in the games industy, sharing some of the more interesting stories he’s been involved in during the course of his career. He already has a handful of videos up at the moment, but one of the more interesting involves his company Troika Games being approached by Sierra Entertainment in 2000 to make a Lord of the Rings RPG after it acquired the rights to the books.
First shared by PC Gamer, this video explains that Cain and his company had an idea to create a Fallout-esque RPG which revolved around a Shadow Fellowship that set out to clear the way for the main cast of characters. Working with an advisor for the Tolkien estate, Troika created a design document that included players finding a Ring of Power, a permanent corruption meter that would’ve punished you for using powerful items, and unique skill trees depending on which race you chose.
Sierra apparently “liked what they saw” and asked Troika to put together a demo, which Cain actually shows us towards the end of the video. It was a very rough demo due to the time constraints surrounding the project at the time, meaning there was no UI or combat, and a bunch of animations were missing, but Sierra liked what was being made. Unfortunately, this was Troika’s downfall, as Sierra was so impressed that it pulled development of the title internally, so Cain and the crew weren’t able to make the game properly.
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The demo itself can be seen in the back half of Cain’s video, and even starts via Arcanum’s main menu UI, as Troika didn’t have time to create a unique one. We then see the game itself, as a random Hobbit is plopped into the game, who then makes his way past a bunch of spiders to a small Hobbit-hole as the game chugs along trying to keep up. Cain explains that the surrounding environment would have been a lot more detailed had the developer had more time, but it was more than enough to show off as a proof of concept.
Cain doesn’t reveal what became of this project, but given that Sierra was disestablished only a couple of years after development was pulled internally, it’s safe to assume that it’s now lost to time. Still, just the idea of a Fallout-esque Lord of the Rings RPG developed by the series co-creator is probably enough to get LotR fans daydreaming about what could have been.
Source: www.thegamer.com
