How does one create a captivating videogame world? For the folks behind Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Mines of Moria, the devil is in the details. The above video is a developer diary in which art director Harry Teasley and lead world designer Matt Elliot give us a glimpse of recreating Moria faithfully from Tolkien’s fabled trilogy.
One thing about the expansion is certain – the scale is going to be massive. Teasley points out that the team sought to create the “most epic indoor adventure ever,” and it certainly looks like Moria won’t be any normal dungeon crawl. A point of emphasis was put on something called individual lighting. At some points in Moria, the developers dimmed the area lights to force players to rely on their own lighting sources. Think Silent Hill with a torch, minus nurses.
Included with all of this are some screenshots from an area in Moria called Silvertine Lodes. I haven’t read the trilogy in years, so my memory is a bit shaky, but I’m supposing that the landscape will be placed in a poorly lit, cavernous area. Also, Legolas sucks.
