The books are centered around someone not traditionally viewed as strong sacrificing almost everything to preserve the freedom of Middle-earth. Regardless of how much content was made just for the games, the fact remains that Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War take place in Mordor, a land that Tolkien created. However, if we are looking at whether or not Tolkien would have approved, the answer is most likely no. There is nothing wrong with this premise in principle. Now, the games do address this idea of subjugation, and it is a truth that is harder to ignore, especially as the second game goes on, and you realize that Celebrimbor isn’t your ally. You are a powerful entity breaking into the minds of slaves and stealing them from their original master to fight other slaves. When you look at it through that lens, you as the player gathering your army is not just about adding troops to your ranks. Their entire purpose is to do what the ultimate baddie tells them to do. However, when you think about it, they are barely more than slaves themselves. There is nothing they will not do at the behest of their master. It is no doubt that the Orcs/Uruks who fight for Sauron are evil. What is the ultimate goal for this fan-fiction version of Celebrimbor in the games? Where does he gather enough strength to bring Sauron to his knees as he did once before when the One Ring was initially forged? There is only one group plentiful enough to make a real army in Mordor: the Uruks. However, when you add in the factor of the second ring, we hit a point where Tolkien would have never wanted to think about the games again. Of course, you are fighting thousands of Uruks, so you need to be a good fighter, or you’ll die. In fact, that was the reason why Isildur failed to destroy the ring. Despite all of those attributes, it is still clear that even he would fall victim to the ring’s temptations before ever making it to Mordor. Aragorn is powerful, just, valiant, and everything you would want in a great king. There is a reason that Gandalf was almost frightened by the prospect of being the one in control of the ring. The ring corrupts the mighty easiest of all. Instead, the books make that clear that such a plan has a zero percent chance of success. If the books were more traditional, the ring would have been given to Aragorn, who would carve his way through every Orc in his path before valiantly throwing the ring into the fires of Mount Doom, with his best buddy Boromir backing him up. The best way to do that? Give it to somebody who is humble, kind, and does not want power. The entire purpose of destroying the ring is so that the free peoples of Middle-earth do not have to live the rest of their lives under the heel of Sauron. One of the most important aspects of Tolkien’s main The Lord of the Rings trilogy is that power does not save the day. Nor would he approve of the sociopathic “barely less evil than Sauron” Celebrimbor, who is drastically different from the one Tolkien created. She is supposed to be a giant spider, the daughter of Ungoliant, not a succubus. However, there is no way that he would like the sexy Shelob. He might be neutral on the characters in the games, given that most of them are not his nor are they a part of his stories. either Sure, the books do not shy away from violence, but Tolkien would probably have a negative view of how slaughtering everyone, and everything is the main objective of the games. On the other hand, the combat aspects of Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War probably would not appeal to him all that much. It is unlikely that he would say “Yes, that’s exactly how I envisioned it, too,” but that’s just the nature of adaptations. He would be impressed to see Mordor brought to life with graphics that frankly still hold up in 2022. It is no secret to anyone who has read two sentences of anything that Tolkien wrote that he really, really really enjoyed writing about the settings of his stories.
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