Yeah, that's probably it.
Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War might also be related to it considering how that went all alternate-timeline stuff.
They also mucked around with the Nazgul a good bit, along with fudging with the timeline. For instance, two of the Nazgul are Helm Hammerhand and Isildur.
Yeah, but I think he was brought in to fill a gap or something. Sauron had his corpse brought to him after Gladden Fields and turned as retribution for cutting the One Ring from his finger.
But, but, but Sauron was barely alive back then! It took him centuries to gain his strength back!
The first Shadow of Mordor is broadly accurate, few artistic licenses aside. The second is just completely off the rails, though. Helm Hammerhand is actually more egregious than Isildur, because Helm was born and died in the Third Age, a full milenia after the Nazgul actually showed up. The game also acts as if the Nazgul can die, which they can't, it's their whole shtick. Even the Witch-King wasn't killed off but reduced to a state of impotence (and would have returned to his proper form if given enough time).
They also gave Helm a hammer, which just kills the whole fun of the guy (his alias of Helm Hammerhand wasn't because he wielded a hammer but because he punched people to death).
Even in the first game, though, there's a broad problem with Celebrimbor (the Token Good Teammate of Feanor's lineage) being basically Feanor 2.0.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Isn't Celebrimbor being Fëanor 2.0 basically in keeping with Tolkien's works?
That's actually something I'm interested in for this series. With the emphasis on the Second Age it looks like we'll get to see Eregion for the first time in live action. I wonder who they'll cast as Galadriel, Celeborn, and Celebrimbor. Moreover what version of the story will they go with for these people? Tolkien never did settle on a definitive version of events and repeatedly changed their backgrounds.
I wonder if they'll touch on the mention that, during the War of the Last Alliance, even the Beasts and Birds took sides in the conflict.
I feel like it depends on what that means. It could just refer to both sides using animals as transport and messengers.
Disasturbator
And spies,there was a bit in lord of the rings where birds were used by Saruman
New theme music also a box
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Now I wonder if the Eagles ended up being an active part during the whole war too or if they swooped in to help the good guys at the end.
Man, I hate the fucking Eagles.
Edited by alliterator on Aug 13th 2019 at 7:30:46 AM
Celebrimbor's shtick is that he's the Token Good Teammate of Feanor's lineage. When he first shows up in the Silmarillion it is to repudiate and distance himself from the heinous deeds of Curufin (his dad) and Celegorm (his uncle), pretty much abandoning his family henceforth. Even his role in Sauron's plan is shown as him being more of a Horrible Judge of Character who doesn't realize Annatar was actually Sauron until it was too late (in his defense, he wasn't the only one to make this mistake). Once he does, though, he goes to war against Sauron and dies after being tortured to death but refusing to disclose the location of the 3 Elven Rings.
You could even interpret Celebrimbor's desire to forge the rings of power as an attempt to atone for his grandfather's sins, an attempt that ends in tragedy but still an effort nonetheless.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Villains making use of the animals to spy on people has been a thing since the Silmarillion; Beren for instance didn't kill any animal in the wilderness that wasn't being used by Morgoth, which got him into the good graces of the other wildlife.
Animals in LOTR seem more intelligent in general. There's the fox and the robin from LOTR and The Hobbit too.
Making Shelob a sexy lady was so dumb, Shelob was a stupid ugly spider that ate tons of orcs and got killed by a hobbit. They should have just made an oc. Celebrimbor was actually my favorite character in those games, and I feel kind of guilty about that because as you guys mentioned, his whole deal was being a good guy. But, I think the writers did at least try to stay true to the themes of LOTR with the "power corrupts" message.
Sam didn't even kill her, he just hurt her enough to make her run off in search of easier prey.
Also I wouldn't call Shelob stupid either - she was pretty much obsessed with feeding herself, but remember that she also made a deal with Gollum at one point.
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Plus she was essentially a demigoddess. While the ability to transform into a sexy lady is fairly weird and narmish, it's probably not entirely out of the realm of possibility even if the text doesn't support it.
Her mother was some sort of primordial chaos monster that even the gods didn't understand, who just liked spending time as a giant spider. So I'm sure she can take whatever form she feels like.
At least the game made it clear that she preferred her giant spider form, and was just appearing as a human woman to make Talion comfortable. Every time he enters her lair, she's lurking as a spider out of sight, but is careful not to let him see her like that.
The much bigger problem I had was the implication (and by "implication," I mean "everything short of literally saying it outright") that she and Sauron were in a sexual relationship at some point, and the reason she's fighting against him now is because he set her up to get killed the second it was convenient for him. It turned her into a bog-standard Woman Scorned.
Evil shapeshifters in Tolkien don't last long: their deeds eventually "lock" them into a single, hideous form. Morgoth was a evil shapeshifter, but after he destroyed the trees he was locked into a ugly, ogre form. Sauron was a evil shapeshifter, but after he sank Númenor, he was locked in a (unspecified) lesser form. Ungoliant, for her part, is never said to have any shapeshifting abilities, but if she did, all logic dictates she'd also be locked in her spider form for her deeds. And even if Ungoliant was a shapeshifter, we have no reason to believe the Spiders of Mirkwood (also her descendants just as Shelob) could somehow transform. It's a leap, particularly given Shelob does not display Ungoliant's other powers in any way: namely Ungoliant's tendency to weave webs of unlight, while Shelob just weaves regular, very strong webs (if she didn't inherit this, much stronger trait of Ungoliant's biology, why would she inherit a purely hypothetical shapeshifting ability?).
If Ungoliant had shapeshifting powers and if Shelob had them (two huge leaps) she'd have been stuck to a ugly form form eons ago at any rate. If she somehow bypassed the Shapeshifter Mode Lock, that just raises a lot of further questions, namely as to why on Earth Shelob didn't choose a better form to lure Frodo rather than a goddamn giant monster spider.
But all of that is just canon problems. Indeed, the key problem is the fantastic decision to make her a Woman Scorned raven-haired pretty lady.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
If Ungoliant wasn't bound in her spider form already she certainly was after birthing her children. I don't have my books on hand but I believe Tolkien said certain things work better for creating a Shapeshifter Mode Lock. Bearing children is one of the big ones.
Considering all the lore problems in the game, "this shapeshifter probably shouldn't actually be able to shapeshift" isn't particularly high on the list. I mean, the first game takes place just a few years before Fellowship and yet the tutorial mission is the Black Gate falling out of Gondor's hands and into Sauron's, even though that should have happened like a thousand years ago.
And I don't even have a problem with Sauron and Shelob having been allies. That's fine, and of course Sauron betraying her is perfectly in character. The Woman Scorned part is literally my only problem with it, but it's a pretty big problem.
If I had to guess, this seems like a reaction to the one-two punch of the Hobbit films and the later seasons of Game of Thrones. The Tolkien Estate is probably hedging their bets.
With that said, I find it unlikely that it is a full "stay 100% faithful to the source material" mandate (as observed, that'd be impossible given how inconsistent Tolkien's canon is due its unfinished state) and more a "we get the final say and you need to be broadly true".
"All you Fascists bound to lose."