Helm’s Deep Landscape: Massively Article

Massively released a great article looking at the lands of Western Rohan coming with Helm’s Deep.

One of our concerns was that after the expansiveness of East Rohan, the wast would be, well, more of the same. Lots of fields, horses galore, and so on. While the horses are still ever-present (this is Rohan, after all), West Rohan establishes a unique identity as a land that’s more developed, more diverse, and more wounded. The theme of the region is simple: War is coming — and is in fact already here.

It is really good news that the diversity of Rohan continues in this expansion.  I was also worried that it might just be more of the same.  It is good to know that is not the case.

Turbine wanted to include a lot of ambient storytelling with the expansion, so players will stumble upon burned down villages and other visual cues that won’t be part of a specific questline. The team said that the story and setting of Helm’s Deep will be one of the darkest that the game’s seen to date.

We are at a time in the story where things get really dark and so it is good to know the game is following the same path.  I am really glad there is “a lot of ambient storytelling” as those are usually some of my favorite moments in LOTRO.

We were treated to our first-ever look at the Glittering Caves. This area won’t be accessible on landscape, but will only be seen during the portion of the epic battle that takes place in here. Making this cave visually striking and unique took a lot of manipulation of the game’s tech, but the end result is pretty impressive.

While it is sad that we can only enter the caves for the battle, they still seem to be an amazing work.