Former WB director says Lord of the Rings: War in the North should never have released at the same time as Skyrim

A game designer who used to work at Warner Bros Games says he’s happy to see The Lord of the Rings: War in the North getting a new port, because he doesn’t think it was given a fair appraisal the first time around.

Christian Allen, who has 24 years of experience in the industry and was a design director at WB Games during the period when War in the North was originally released, took to X to say he was happy to see the announcement of the game’s new Legacy Edition on modern platforms.

War in the North was released 15 days before The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, and Allen claimed that he was one of the people arguing at the time that it was a bad move to release it so close to Bethesda‘s game.

“15 years ago I argued vociferously not to release this up against Skyrim, as it wouldn’t get a fair shake,” he wrote. “I got overruled. Nice to see it get a proper release.”

Stressing that he didn’t work on the game directly, Allen praised the team at Snowblind Studios (which merged with Monolith Productions in 2012) and said he felt bad that their game was either unfavourably compared to Skyrim, or outright ignored in favour of it.

“I was just on the studio leadership team,” he told one user on X. “The folks from Snowblind deserve all the credit. Great to see it get a resurgence though, at the time it really seemed to get lost in the wash, and every review just compared it to Skyrim (as I predicted they would).”

“I think it only got like one review the week it launched,” he told another. “If I recall correctly there was hardly any marketing, either they wrote it off or thought hardcore Lord of the Rings fans would just know about it, somehow.”

Allen also suggested that the decision to release the game at that time was likely driven by the need to do so during Warner Bros’ current fiscal period at the time.

“Quarterly revenue motivations drive more decisions than people realize,” he wrote. “It’s a big challenge with stock-price driven organizations. Must be hard to be an exec and go ‘well, this game will do better if we hold it until March, but my bonus will take a 50% hit’.”

The new port, which is called The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition, is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, Switch and PC at a price of $19.99.

It includes a number of new features designed for modern platforms, including support for 60 frames per second (except on the original Switch), the ability to lock on to enemies, auto saves, extra save slots and an improved AI featuring visible health, mana and EXP bars.

Aspyr has handled development and publication of the new Legacy Edition version, which it says is under licence from Warner Bros. It also teases that more ports of legacy Lord of the Rings titles are to follow.