The Lord of the Rings: White Council cancelled?

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Mau ®

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And so the Breaking of the Fellowship happens after all, or so says yet another anonymous source anyway. In any case, anonymous or not, 1UP has received word that EA is cancelling one of their more ambitious projects, The Lord of the Rings: The White Council (a.k.a., Project Gray Company).

We're also very tempted to believe this, considering that there has been absolutely no update on the game since it was first announced in July of 2006. We've tried checking the official website for updates on the title as well, to see if perhaps we just missed something, but a glance at their forums has told us that even their followers have long been clamoring for something, anything, to let them know that the project is alive... and has also long been denied.

Meanwhile, 1UP's attempts to get a confirmation from Electronic Arts has resulted in the ever-cliché reply of, "No comment".

Sources

http://ps3.qj.net/EA-cancels-The-Lord-of-The-Rings-The-White-Council-/pg/49/aid/78340

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3156206

______________________________

If true then that's sad. Oblivion meets LOTR was always something I wanted ever since I watched the movies...
 
We also posted a story with further details. Steve Gray (as in the game's working title Project Gray Company) was let go, and the game apparently just fell apart:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/45235
Last night, we reported on a rumor that EA's announced open-world RPG The Lord of the Rings: The White Council had been cancelled. While Electronic Arts has yet to respond to our inquiries into the matter, we have now received confirmation from a reputable source close to EA that the project has indeed been dissolved. Furthermore, executive producer Steve Gray--whose name was originally attached to the game's working title of Project Gray Company--is apparently no longer with Electronic Arts.

Our source, who requested to remain nameless, indicated that the project's collapse appears to have been in part due to management issues, which resulted in an overall lack of sufficient development progress. The team assigned to the game has been broken up and reassigned to other projects. The Lord of the Rings: The White Council was in production for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
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Shame. Was really looking forward to this, too. Say what you will about EA, but I always thought they handled the Lord of the Rings franchise very well. I loved the games based on the movies.

I don't really think it's THAT odd that it's gone unspoken for since July...honostly, it's not THAT long of a time. But if that's the rumored word around, then I guess it must be near the truth.
 
i went to lunch with someone who knows people down there. said the design was just 'batshit insane'.
 
That stinks. I was looking forward to an Elder Scrolls style game with better NPC AI and interaction (which has pretty much been the same since Arena). Or at least NPCs that weren't so darn ugly.

I had thought the lack of hype was just EA's new PR policy - they really kept the lids on any information about the Pets EP for the Sims 2 until it was almost released.
 
Didnt think it would get canceled. Wasnt really pumped for this in the first place, especially after The Third Age. Oh well. So this means no Lord of the Rings for console RPG fans?
 
BrandNew said:
Shame. Was really looking forward to this, too. Say what you will about EA, but I always thought they handled the Lord of the Rings franchise very well.
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Have you played the three Lord of the Rings RPGs they've made so far, though? The console Third Age was just... really mediocre overall, and the two SRPGs (Third Age Advance and LOTR Tactics) are two of the worst SRPGs ever made.

It didn't exactly give me a warm and fuzzy for White Council.
 
BrandNew said:
Shame. Was really looking forward to this, too. Say what you will about EA, but I always thought they handled the Lord of the Rings franchise very well. I loved the games based on the movies.
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I'm a huge LOTR fan (both Tolkien lore and the movies) and I've had no interest in playing the EA LOTR games, to me they lack soul. I cry as a LOTR fan.
 
I agree with that the LOTR games from EA aren't very good, although the hack & slash games were fun for a while. But the concept of this game had huge potential. A RPG like Oblivion in the Lord of the Rings setting. A world with so much different landscapes, places, enemies. As a fan of the fiction it was a dream come true to walk in the mines of Moria, or through the city of Minas Tirith. And I really liked the artwork.

It's a shame, but it's better than when it would be released ant it's a bad game. And that's likely with EA. That MMORPG from Turbine doesn't really look too great. It's the colossal environments that's important and Lord of the Rings Online just doesn't catch that. The hack & slash games of EA, the best ones that's made in the franchise, did a better job with that. Very nice presentation.
 
ethelred said:
Have you played the three Lord of the Rings RPGs they've made so far, though? The console Third Age was just... really mediocre overall, and the two SRPGs (Third Age Advance and LOTR Tactics) are two of the worst SRPGs ever made.

It didn't exactly give me a warm and fuzzy for White Council.
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I haven't played the 3rd Age for Consoles, but I have played the two LOTR tactics games and while they weren't the best tactics games I've seen, they were hardly the worst, either. I really quite enjoyed the GBA game, and just bought the PSP game last week (on sale at Kmart for $15) and I didn't see anything glaringly wrong with it (though I only did the tutorial, so maybe it gets worse).
 
trancejeremy said:
I haven't played the 3rd Age for Consoles, but I have played the two LOTR tactics games and while they weren't the best tactics games I've seen, they were hardly the worst, either. I really quite enjoyed the GBA game, and just bought the PSP game last week (on sale at Kmart for $15) and I didn't see anything glaringly wrong with it (though I only did the tutorial, so maybe it gets worse).
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Nah, they really are, sorry.
 
Fady K said:
Your opinion, they are. His opinion, theyre not.

/
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Okay, that's fine, but I don't see what that has to do with the fact that Lord of the Rings Tactics and Lord of the Rings: The Third Age Advance are really ****ing awful SRPGs.
 
I just want a LotR RPG where I can travel anywhere in Middle Earth and explore every nook and cranny. That's probably never going to happen though.
 
Branduil said:
I just want a LotR RPG where I can travel anywhere in Middle Earth and explore every nook and cranny. That's probably never going to happen though.
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I think the closest you will gt is Oblivion though..
 
MMaRsu said:
I think the closest you will gt is Oblivion though..
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Oblivion doesn't take place in Middle Earth, which is the part I care about.

Someone should make a a freakin' huge mod of Oblivion with an entirely new map that resembles Middle Earth.
 
ethelred said:
Okay, that's fine, but I don't see what that has to do with the fact that Lord of the Rings Tactics and Lord of the Rings: The Third Age Advance are really ****ing awful SRPGs.
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The GBA version has a 73% average at gamerankings, the PSP version a 65%. If it were truly awful, it would be much lower than that. And neither has any bad user written reviews
@ Gamefaqs.

You might think they were awful, but the majority opinion seems to be they were average to good.
 
trancejeremy said:
The GBA version has a 73% average at gamerankings, the PSP version a 65%. If it were truly awful, it would be much lower than that. And neither has any bad user written reviews
@ Gamefaqs.

You might think they were awful, but the majority opinion seems to be they were average to good.
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Heh. 65% at Gamerankings hardly should evince a "majority opinion" of average to good. Besides being pretty flawed as a means of proving general quality (this is like citing Nintendogs' 40/40 Famitsu score), I thought it was widely understood just how rarely review sites gives out rankings that low -- 65 is never considered good given the general score inflation.

Anyway, having played just about every US-released SRPG imaginable (and a number of them that aren't) I'm fully comfortable with my dismissal of these games (and dreck like Onimusha Tactics) as being at the very bottom of the barrel. Especially LOTR Tactics, which recycles gameplay devices so bad that Vandal Hearts 2 got laughed out of civilized discourse for using them, which is completely broken from a balance perspective, which has pretty poor graphics, which doesn't even pretend to have a story of its own and so instead just actually airs direct footage from the LOTR movie trilogy. The Third Age Advance, I think, is pretty much the dictionary definition of shovelware.

I mean, okay... what is it you exactly find worthwhile or quality about these atrocious games?
 
It's true.

Basically, the project was a total cluster**** - not only did they have a ton of people working on it at Redwood Shores, but they had farmed out a lot of art and even design to other companies. Point of View in Orange County was one of the design companies, I know.

EA's LotR license expires at the end of 2007, and there was no way it was going to be completed by then, so they cancelled it.

While I agree it's a good concept, the fact that EA couldn't pull off a good FF-style RPG pretty much assured this outcome, given the additional scope a free-roaming RPG requires. Not to mention that they have a hard enough time managing their internal teams, adding the outsourcing on top of it was only going to make it harder.
 
I haven't played EA's hack and slash LOTR games, but their Battle for Middle Earth games are solid.

Nonetheless, this game sounded awesome in concept, it's a shame it got cancelled.
 
Ravidrath said:
EA's LotR license expires at the end of 2007, and there was no way it was going to be completed by then, so they cancelled it.
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Whoa, I didn't knew that. But isn't it obvious to extend that license? I mean; Lord of the Rings is a huge franchise and very important for EA. Or was there too much risk (that the license will not be extended and they will lose all rights)?

EA started early november a, yet not named, new LOTR game. So this one will come out before the end of 2007.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/thesims3/news.html?sid=6160951
 
Galdor said:
Whoa, I didn't knew that. But isn't it obvious to extend that license?
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I never saw the final numbers, but I heard that by EA terms the hack n' slash games were "failures". The numbers weren't as good as they expected, and the license fees and royalties was setting them back a lot of money, even though they appeared to be doing well in absolute terms.
 
Ravidrath said:
It's true.

Basically, the project was a total cluster**** - not only did they have a ton of people working on it at Redwood Shores, but they had farmed out a lot of art and even design to other companies. Point of View in Orange County was one of the design companies, I know.

EA's LotR license expires at the end of 2007, and there was no way it was going to be completed by then, so they cancelled it.

While I agree it's a good concept, the fact that EA couldn't pull off a good FF-style RPG pretty much assured this outcome, given the additional scope a free-roaming RPG requires. Not to mention that they have a hard enough time managing their internal teams, adding the outsourcing on top of it was only going to make it harder.
Click to expand...

How can a much smaller company like Bethesda do regularly monster-sized projects like The Elder Scrolls games so well and E.A. which "should" have monster resources and top-top-top-top talent just cannot ?
 
Panajev2001a said:
How can a much smaller company like Bethesda do regularly monster-sized projects like The Elder Scrolls games so well and E.A. which "should" have monster resources and top-top-top-top talent just cannot ?
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This seems to be a rhetorical question, not?
 
Development team: "EA, we actually need talent to pull something this epic off"
EA: "ohh god... screw it, get working on porting models for nfl '08"
 
ethelred said:
Okay, that's fine, but I don't see what that has to do with the fact that Lord of the Rings Tactics and Lord of the Rings: The Third Age Advance are really ****ing awful SRPGs.
Click to expand...

I thought Tactics was forgettable, but it was mediocre, not awful. Still, they could have made it a looooooot better.
 
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