Children of Hurin

I'll admit it, I'm a fan of Lord of the Rings. Despite this fact, I've never played any of the games. The upcoming LOTR MMORPG seems especially interesting, but usually games that are based on existing franchises tend to fall short of their possible greatness. So I have my doubts. LucasArts is the one notable exception to this claim: over the years I've been impressed with how the Star Wars games (Jedi Knight, X-wing & Tie Fighter, especially) have made significant strides in expanding and enriching that universe.

But the LOTR games have always been a disappointment, from what I can tell. I've played bits and pieces of them, and honestly never had a desire to play any of them all the way through. It didn't help that Frodo's stare, the One Ring, and the lidless eye all were given way more screen time than they deserved in Peter Jackson's trilogy. And since the games were so tightly tied to the movie franchise, I was expecting many more hours of a CG Frodo gazing at his CG Precious.

But with the new book The Children of Hurin, I think we have reason to be excited:

"In this way, before the summer had passed, the following of Turin had swelled to a great force, and the power of Angband was thrown back. Word of this came even to Nargothrond, and many there grew restless."

The many restless of Nargothrond... My hope is that these folk will be too restless to stare longingly at the One Ring for hours on end.

There are, however, many reasons to suspect that the new book will not be made into either a book or a movie. CNN's report on the subject states, "This is a gloomy tale -- Hurin's children doomed to failure by Turin's hubris and, of course, the curse." A video game where the protagonist doesn't win? That's a twist worth thinking about.

What if a good LOTR game could be made based on the Children of Hurin, and what if that game flew in the face of all conventional wisdom by being a game in which the curse was more powerful than the game's protagonist. What if the world was in fact doomed, and nothing you could do could stop the power of evil? A game without a happy ending. A game you couldn't win. Now that'd be something.