How Turbine plans to make Helm's Deep matter
Turbine's latest Lord of the Rings Online dev diary is worth reading if you're wondering how the dev team plans to generate suspense in a narrative where it doesn't actually exist. We know how the battle of Helm's Deep turns out, in other words, and so gameplay in LotRO's forthcoming expansion presents a design challenge when it comes to keeping players engaged.
Turbine's solution involves the moment-to-moment state of a battle whose ultimate outcome is already decided. "How many soldiers survive the wall, how many banners were burnt down, how many injured Rohirrim survived a diversionary assault," the firm asks. "All of these questions, and more, matter for various quests and objectives within Helm's Deep."
