AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
![]() ![]() ![]() “We’re just telling the best story we can,” said Roberts. Only Tolkien’s words and ideas hold that honor. … would have clean, believable relationships, and the details would just be informing their performance rather than the actual dialogue.”ĭespite how careful Monolith was in making Shadow of Mordor - earning the approval of Middle-earth Enterprises and piecing together bits of a fictional language with Salo - it can never say that the game is officially part of the canon. “Keeping that surface layer of the story accessible, like natural interactions that people would have. “When Christian’s writing the main story, he’s helping keep us grounded in terms of not going off the deep end, lore-wise, but keeping that lore as part of the underlying structure of how the world works,” said Roberts. Helping them in this regard was writer Christian Cantamessa, who previously wrote and designed Red Dead Redemption.Ĭantamessa had a “very clean, modern take” on Shadow of Mordor. Interactive Entertainment Loyal, but not obsessiveĪs excited as the team was with playing with the lore, Roberts said that sometimes, they had to take a step back and make sure they didn’t over-explain everything or obsessively describe small details that only hardcore fans would appreciate. I hope people dig into that and post it up online after we launch.” “It gives us a slightly differently flavor that’s more authentically Orkish. But if you’re really careful about reverse translating the Black Speech, here’s what it said,'” said Roberts. “I think it’d be cool to see once we release if people deconstruct it and go, ‘OK, the subtitle said this thing, which is what the English writer intended. Roberts wants to see if someone will try to re-translate the lines back into English. It’s from the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.įor the Tolkien scholars out there, Shadow of Mordor’s Black Speech could also serve as an interesting challenge. The following clip, however, gives you a good idea of what Black Speech sounds like. I asked him for an example, but the only ones he could think of were from important scenes in the game. does a cool job of making it fit more of the Orkish mindset …. ![]() “If you get that direct translation, it’s not necessarily as flowery or metaphorical as the English might’ve been when the writer wrote it. “One of the cool things about the Black Speech translations is that they fit the culture of the orcs more,” said Roberts. The developers “bounced a lot of things” off Salo, and sent him bits of dialogue to turn into Black Speech (much of it depending on Salo’s own inference).Ĭertain words and metaphors from the English lines didn’t always survive the translation. So to make sure that its orcs spoke in the proper tongue, Monolith brought in David Salo, a self-described “Tolken language student” who worked as a translator on both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies. Unfortunately, the books don’t have too many instances of it being spoken beyond just a few words and the inscription on the One Ring. Something that might sound less familiar to you is Black Speech, the language Sauron created for his henchmen in Mordor. If you at least saw the films, you know how subtle and intricate the Elvish languages are. Interactive Entertainment Making orcs sound more Orkish So we have multiple sets of eyes in case one of us missed a detail or overlooked something.” “They’re checking on that stuff for us as well. “That’s part of why we have Middle-earth Enterprises, too,” said Roberts. Going back and forth between the different books to maintain continuity was a “rigorous process” for Monolith’s fact-checkers, especially since Tolkien often revised his early work to make sure that some elements stayed consistent with his latest books. …’ And they basically said, ‘Yeah, that looks good.’” It’s filling in some gaps, and sort of illuminating a part of the past that people don’t know about, or wasn’t written about. “‘It’s not trying to tell a different version than what’s out there. … It doesn’t conflict with anything,’” said Roberts. “But in terms of the big ideas, we basically, ‘Here’s what we want to do with Celebrimbor, and here’s why we think it fits within the canon. ![]() Middle-earth Enterprises vetted all of Monolith’s ideas and scripts before sending back any notes. The story couldn’t contradict what Tolkien wrote about in his books. Monolith collaborated with The Lord of the Rings license-holder Middle-earth Enterprises on its depiction of Celebrimbor - and of Sauron and any other existing figures and locations. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |