Ah, yes, then you might want to give Shadow of Mordor a pass. It's about as Peter Jackson-y an interpretation as can get. Admittedly I really liked the Jackson version of Lord of the Rings, and it's certainly possible to spend most of the game not thinking about Lords and Rings and Mordor and stuff, but it can't be avoided altogether and if you're not a fan, this would likely turn you off.

I want to return to Horizon for a change of pace from Persona as well, to take advantage of its big rolling vistas and its way of encouraging you to check stuff out. Horizon's unstructured, rambling style, and its habit of really knocking your socks off with moments of visual arrest, really can't be beat in anything available right now.

We basically share that view, xtal. I enjoyed the Hobbit but found Fellowship of the Ring unendurable, just unpleasant to read, like a bad textbook. I'd tried a few times to finish it but never succeeded until the movie came along, and I thought to myself if someone saw all of this in those books, then I should read them. And I managed the entire trilogy, though in the end I'll take the films any day.

It's the same way I feel about Lovecraft. Ideas? Great. Execution? Should have left it to someone else.

Peter Jackson must have spent all his directorial mana on that trilogy and his films before it, because he hasn't done anything since that comes close to the visual strength of his early career. 

Shadow of Mordor is impressive partly because it feels like it could be part of the movie canon, so I definitely can't recommend it to anyone who was unhappy with the films. Still, there are elements of the game design itself that are just amazing. The Nemesis system is famous, of course; I also loved the elegance of the hand to hand combat. Only real drawback there was that once mastered from a controller standpoint, there wasn't much challenge left in the game.

But the books have... Tom Bombadil and Goldberry! The books are like... stop.... STOP... SINGING... the world is going to end and everyone is SINGING!

Then the Elvish. Oh sweet Jesus the Elvish. Pages of E'lu'aaa'lilmardil 'a 'find'el 's'i'l'maril eathrua'etc'etc'etc'etc

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

Plus there's no Cate Blanchett in the books. I mean there's the character she plays but there's no actual her. Anything with Cate Blanchett is inherently superior to anything without, right? Isn't that a universal rule of some sort?

Perhaps I am a Philistine. I certainly approve of Tolkien's contribution to the world of literature (so long as I don't have to read it again) and -- as my name implies -- I err more on the Mervyn Peake end of the spectrum when it comes to preference for foundational fantasy literature. It's not surprising that the language and structure of LoTR turned me off, given the effort Tolkien put in to make it a scholarly work and/or to make it read and feel like a traditional fable telling. The result, though, felt to me like a college textbook in a context where I wasn't wanting to read a college textbook. It could be a simple matter of expecting one flavor and getting another.

Except Tom Bombadil. I can't stand that guy. Someone should have told him to cut Tom fricking Bombadil. Aside from the character's general skill at being irritating, it's sort of a rookie mistake when it comes to fiction, isn't it? We have this terribly powerful object that needs to be destroyed and it's going to be really hard to do. There is this one WOODLAND GOD who's hella powerful himself and could easily deal with it for us, and he lives like fifteen miles away too, but... er... um... he's too scatterbrained! That's it! 

No. Just no. Just cut the character and, if you must, put his dialogue elsewhere (which I believe they did; I think Gandalf had some Bombadilian lines in the movies).

Welsh and Old English befuddle me, I admit. All that Ydrwwwyl and ddwwdylwdd and cnn-y-nnc and such. Especially when "Ydrwwwyl" is actually pronounced, you know, something like "Gloomtuber-on-Fen" or whatever. You have to applaud their efficiency, though... we have 26 letters, but looking at Welsh they must have had only three or four. Yet they understood each other!

Botch and Gregg are our Culture Ambassadors!

I'm not certain who's really thought of as tops in fantasy these days either. George RR Martin seems to have fallen out of favor somewhat given that his books have gone rather off the rails (though HBO is doing a great job of fixing the breaks he's introduced). Tolkien gave us Tom Bombadil, which is hard for me to overlook, but nobody can argue that his contribution was otherwise seminal. It's the same with Lovecraft, whose work is even more unpleasant to read in my opinion. Yet we do appreciate him! If it weren't for Lovecraft, tentacles would be limited to Japanese pornography. Horror would be lacking a crucial appendage.

My kitten knocked the Horizon disc off the TV table and batted it across the floor. I finally found it again last night, underneath the dryer. To my relief, the disc was Important Side Up during her assault, so it still worked fine when I tested it out. Also, it's fluffy and smells nice.