THE LORD OF THE RINGS: 
MIDDLE-EARTH II
(Published by EA Games)
PC & Xbox 360
After shipping Pacific Assault towards the end of 2004, I took some much-needed
time off to travel, going back to the east coast for Thanksgiving before
kicking off a 3 ½ week tour of Europe.
When I returned to EALA in January 2005, I was reassigned to the RTS
team as a designer on this project.
Making the switch from a mostly FPS background to working on an RTS was
a definite adjustment for me, as the tools and gameplay
conventions are pretty different.
However, as someone who has read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy multiple times over the years, it was
satisfying to contribute to a game in that world and to help flesh out and
realize previously unseen locales alluded to in the fiction. Ultimately, I found working on an RTS to be
a refreshing and eye-opening experience, and I think it has proven my
versatility as a game designer and adaptability to different genres. The RTS team at EALA, in particular, was very
professional and a real pleasure to work with, and out of all the games I have
worked on to date, this one has possibly received the best overall
reviews.
DOL GULDUR (Single
Player)
I worked on
three single player campaign missions for BFME2
(Evil Lorien, Good Grey Havens, Good Dol Guldur), and of the three, Dol Guldur was the only level I
worked on all the way from initial concept to completion (the other two I
offloaded from other designers). I
conceptualized the overall structure, layout, established placement of units
and structures, as well as pacing of gameplay beats
and events, wrote dialogue, and scripted, tuned, and debugged gameplay. Terrain
beautification was performed by other artists on the campaign team, while
detailing and creation of the larger custom set pieces were handled by concept
designers, then outsourced to external development
groups. So in other words, I can’t take
credit for how great this level looks! I’ve
included an image of the overall map layout, but it’s difficult to get a sense
of the scale and scope of the structure from the default in-game camera. Here’s a YouTube link to a prerendered cinema
showing off this fortress.
USER INTERFACE/SHELL
I’ve also
included some shots of the shell screens.
BFME2 had a full team
dedicated just to UI and my role was to orchestrate the overall functional
redesign of the UI (through flowcharts and functional mockups in Visio), and to
refine and improve upon the generally solid foundation provided by the UI in the
first BFME. I think the BFME2 Shell represents a distinct
improvement over the UI in Pacific
Assault, which I credit to the experience, hard-work, and talent of the UI
Team.
A public beta
demo for BFME2 was released shortly
before the game shipped. It’s pretty
hefty (over 1 gig!) so click the link below to download and install it if you
are interested in checking it out.