It Takes Over Two Hours to Do the Fellowship’s Walk Through Moria in This New Lord of the Rings Game
One of the most memorable scenes from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation is the Fellowship’s brutal journey through the abandoned, once great Dwarven city of Moria.
From Gandalf’s puzzle-solve to open the West Gate to the Fellowship’s dramatic battle against a cave troll in Balin's Tomb, from Gandalf’s dramatic last stand against the Balrog to the Fellowship’s last-ditch escape through the East Gate, Moria has cemented itself in the hearts and minds of Tolkien fans the world over as an iconic location within Middle-earth.
Upcoming crafting and survival game The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, which is set in the Fourth Age (70 years after the destruction of the ring), revolves around the dwarves themselves and their bid to reclaim their lost home following a call to arms by Gimli himself.
The game’s version of Moria is enormous, and includes all the landmarks you’d expect and where you’d expect them to be. Procedurally-generated environments fill in the spaces between the likes of the Endless Stair, the Crossroads, the Chamber of Mazarbul, and Durin’s Bridge, allowing for the sheer scale suggested by the books and films to be realised in video game form.
Speaking to IGN in an interview at gamescom 2023, Free Range Games game director Jon-Paul Dumont said internal testing had timed a Fellowship run at over two hours of real time, depending on how things go with those pesky orcs, and how well equipped the player — or players — are.
When you start Return to Moria, you can’t simply walk from the Doors of Durin (West Gate) to the Dimrill Gate (East Gate). A mysterious force blocks the dwarves’ progress. As you play through the story, you learn the nature of this force and how to counteract it,
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