If you thought The Lord of the Rings saga centered on just the events of Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith, then you're in for a treat when The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II ships next year. The sequel to last year's successful real-time strategy game, Battle for Middle-earth II will now let you battle in the other parts of Middle-earth. The game focuses on the Northern Lands, where the elves and dwarves warred against the goblins and other forces of Sauron. For details on the story and the campaigns in the game, we caught up with executive producer Mike Verdu. Meanwhile, make sure to check back on Monday; we'll have details on both the good and evil campaigns in Battle for Middle-earth II. And EA plans to release the public beta test of the game sometime next week.

　　An elven fleet awaits orders at the port of Grey Havens. Notice the giant eagles flying overhead.

　　GameSpot: Since the original Battle for Middle-earth, EA got the license to make games based on all of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. Briefly, how does this affect Battle for Middle-earth II?

　　Mike Verdu: We are now able to bring you something new in Middle-earth. This game feels both fresh and familiar at the same time. We're bringing more of Tolkien's world to life and adding some of our own texture, depth, and dimension. You'll be able to command vast elven and dwarven armies, terrifying dragons, huge giants, 17 new heroes, and a host of other new monsters, soldiers, and creatures. You'll fight epic battles in new locations in the Northern Lands, like the dwarven mountain stronghold of Erebor and Sauron's dark fortress of Dol Guldur on the edge of Mirkwood.

　　At the same time, you can revisit the iconic locations from the movie trilogy, bring the Fellowship into the action, and build up armies using the classic soldiers, creatures, and weapons from Isengard, Gondor, and Mordor.

　　GS: What are some of the new places that we'll see in Battle for Middle-earth II? For someone who has never read the books, could you explain the importance of some of these locations, and just how excited you are to re-create them?

　　MV: Dol Guldur is a good example of one of the new locations. This is Sauron's base of operations in the Northern Lands. He sends massive armies of orcs, trolls, Easterlings, and nazgul from Dol Guldur to wreak havoc on the elven and dwarven kingdoms in the North.

　　Imagine an immense evil fortress on the edge of a great forest, a structure so vast it can easily hold an army, surrounded by tall towers topped with flames and huge catapults, crowned by a malignant black citadel. The dark influence from this foul place corrupts the surrounding lands, twisting the trees of the forest into grotesque shapes. This is the setting for an epic siege: You'll have a chance to storm this fortress with armies of elves and dwarves supported by catapults, eagles, ents, and the Men of Dale.

　　The other locations in The Battle for Middle-earth II are similarly cool. You can defend the elven port city of The Grey Havens from an invasion by sea, drive off a goblin attack on the sacred city of Rivendell, assault a goblin city high in the Misty Mountains, fight a dragon deep in the bowels of the Blue Mountains, and defend the great dwarven city of Erebor from attack by a titanic enemy force that flows from Dol Guldur like a black tide. If you're playing evil, you get a chance to sack the Shire, lay siege to Rivendell, and wage war on the free peoples of Middle-earth in other iconic locations.

　　GS: In creating these new levels, how much did you rely on Tolkien's description of the place, and how much was conjecture by the development team? How difficult is it to flesh out a location that Tolkien only described with a few sentences in his books?

　　MV: Tolkien's Middle-earth is one of the archetypes of fantasy. The events and characters of The Lord of the Rings trilogy as depicted in the books and the films are essentially the mainstream history of this wonderfully imagined world. We know and love the story of the Fellowship and the battles between men and the forces of Mordor. We know what Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith look like because of the movies.

　　For The Battle for Middle-earth II, we are creating an intense experience around the events and characters in other parts of the world that haven't yet been visualized--where the places are just as amazing, the battles are even more epic, and the history up to now is more like a series of dispatches from exotic lands than a complete chronicle.

　　To bring these places--and these events--to life, we used both the books and the movie trilogy as reference and inspiration. We wanted our new locations and creatures to be true to the books and look like they would be right at home in the films. We worked with some of the best concept artists in the business, including a few who worked on the films, to develop the look and feel of everything that is new while staying authentic to the films. We believe the end result has that quality of being very fresh and yet familiar. If we are successful, what we have created will feel like a natural expansion of the world: We will have brought you new lands, new creatures, and new heroes in the world of Middle-earth.

　　GS: We know that we'll meet the elves and dwarves, as well as other races we didn't really see in the movies. Who will we meet up with? And what famous characters will we meet? We already know of Tom Bombadil, but we've heard that the Goblin King makes an appearance as well.

　　A Mordor fleet arrives to attack, and the battle is joined.

　　MV: The goblins are a new faction and they have a new leader who is carrying out Sauron's will in the northwest region. He's an evil hero and rides a scorpion. The goblins are really all about cool creatures and monsters. Playing the goblin side gives you access to half-troll marauders, spiderlings, spider riders, fire-breathing drakes, mountain giants, a variety of dragons, the Watcher in the Water, a wyrm that tunnels up from underground, and other cool units.

　　New heroes besides the goblin lord include the elf warrior Glorfindel, King Dain of the dwarves, the dwarven leader Gloin (father of Gimli), Thranduil of the wood-elves (father of Legolas), and a new dragon hero, among others. From the movies we are also bringing you the elf Lord Elrond, Arwen Evenstar, Galadriel, Wormtongue, Sharku the Warg Rider, the Black Riders, and many others. Finally, the dark lord Sauron himself makes his appearance as a controllable unit.

War of the Ring

　　Battalions of men attack a horde of goblins encamped atop a mountain.

　　MV: The War in the North featured in The Battle for Middle-earth II is roughly concurrent with the events shown in the three films, with some battles happening before or after. Sauron sent gigantic armies up into the North to defeat the elves and dwarves, and the battles that were fought in places like the forest of Mirkwood or the city of Dale were truly massive in scale.

　　If you play the single-player good campaign, you'll command the elves and dwarves in defense of the Northern Lands. If you choose to play the evil campaign, you will control Sauron's forces, and your mission is to conquer the North, not defend it.

　　GS: With all this attention on the new locations, will we still be able to play in the lands of the first game? For instance, will we see Minas Tirith or Helms Deep again, or is the sequel focused mainly in the new locations?

　　MV: Once you are finished with the campaigns, you can choose to refight the entire War of the Ring--in the South as well as the North--using our new Risk-style strategy metagame. You can pick a side and a starting location and conquer Middle-earth your own way, fighting against a strategic artificial intelligence for control of territories. Battles are resolved in real-time encounters (or autoresolved if the odds are greatly in your favor or against you).

　　The battles in a War of the Ring campaign can span the whole map of Middle-earth, including all the locations from the first game. That being said, because you are creating the campaign, you can have some interesting configurations for some of the more well-known battles. What if the dwarves allied with the Men of Gondor to defend Minas Tirith? What if Isengard took Helm's Deep and then had to defend it against an elven assault?

　　GS: What are the new factions, by the way? The elves, the dwarves, and who else? What are their respective strengths and weaknesses? How do they compare to the factions from the original game?

　　MV: There are the elves, who are fast, stealthy, and superb in battle. Their archers are without peer. The dwarves are tough, slow, and excellent defenders. Their fortified bases are an intimidating sight for any attacker, and dwarven heroes are fantastic fighters. The goblins are cool monsters that are aggressive and able to spread out and dominate territory quickly. They also have excellent siege capability, in the form of rock-throwing trolls and giants.

　　The factions from the original game make a return appearance (with some serious upgrades). Mordor and Isengard now have new heroes such as Sauron and Wormtongue, new units such as Mordor corsairs and the Wild Men, and new structures like fortresses, walls, and the like. Gondor and Rohan now combine to form the Men of the West, which is basically the Gondor faction from the original game, now with Rohan cavalry. The Men of the West also have the Fellowship and Rohan heroes, as well as new structures.

　　GS: How's the multiplayer, by the way? Will you be able to select from all the factions (from both the original and sequel), or will you only get the new factions? What kind of modes can you tell us about?

　　MV: We're enabling multiplayer for our custom heroes (you'll be able to create your own heroes and trick them out with gear, abilities, and special powers) and also for the new War of the Ring metagame described above. You'll be able to create your custom heroes and take them into multiplayer matches, although you won't be able to do this for ranked or ladder matches. You'll also be able to play a persistent War of the Ring game against another player using save files. Given that a War of the Ring game with multiple real-time strategy battle sessions might take days to play, we are letting players save out their games so they can pick them up again later.

　　We've also made improvements to multiplayer across the board with new starting options for games, a global chat system that works both in the game lobbies and in-game during an RTS match, different in-game feedback options, score stats, handicaps, and other cool stuff.

　　GS: Finally, do you have any final thoughts on Battle for Middle-earth II? And what's your favorite moment in the game so far?

　　MV: I'm proud of the fact that our team has created a game that tells new stories in new places in the world of Middle-earth while being true to the books and the films, and at the same time adds tremendous strategic depth and customization as it preserves the accessibility and ease of use that distinguished the first game.

　　Beware rock-throwing giants.

　　My favorite moment in the game? I've witnessed some very cool moments in playing missions and multiplayer games, like overseeing and commanding a giant fantasy battle that unfolds simultaneously on land, air, and sea, seeing the giant fortress of Dol Guldur revealed for the first time, seeing our cinematic sequences that blend fine fantasy art with computer-generated graphics, and watching our new big monsters fighting each other (eagles vs. wyrm, dragon vs. balrog, giant vs. ent, and such). But overall, I'd have to say that my favorite moment is the feeling of immersion and infinite possibility that I get when I first fire up a campaign mission, multiplayer, or skirmish game. This is the fantasy real-time strategy that I've always wanted to play.

　　GS: Thanks, Mike!