We talked to THE Tolkien Professor about the Gollum and Moria Lord of the Rings games

destructoid.com:

It’s fair to say that The Lord of the Rings (and by extension, The Legendarium, a catch-all term that covers J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth works) is a huge part of my life. I’m writing this now listening to the soundtrack of the Peter Jackson trilogy, after having come back from a four-player session of The Lord of the Rings LCG co-op card game. Oh, and I went to a Tolkien-related academic conference this past weekend: Mythmoot 2022.

It was there that I caught up with Dr. Corey Olsen, The Tolkien Professor (more on that peculiar emphasis in a moment) to talk about his involvement with the Return to Moria game, as well as some thoughts on the upcoming Gollum project.

For hardcore Tolkien fans, Dr. Olsen needs no introduction. But I’m going to do one anyway! Dr. Olsen has a PhD in medieval literature, and has risen the ranks as one of the most preeminent modern Tolkien scholars worldwide. This came to a head in 2012, when he founded Signum University, an online graduate school focusing on literature and philology. He also has done consultation work for myriad Tolkien-related projects (including video games), and hosts a comprehensive podcast that not only covers Tolkien, but academia in general. So about that name. At multiple academic conferences I’ve attended online and in-person, the anecdote of disputing Olsen’s title of The Tolkien Professor is commonplace. But the story always ends the same: they check Dr. Olsen’s credentials, and submit that the moniker is legit. We even got another one of those tales from esteemed professor Michael Drout at this year’s Mythmoot; jokingly pointing out that he called his spouse into the room to listen to a rant, incredulous that anyone would call themselves The Tolkien Professor.

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