Why EA's Lord of the Rings starts with The Two towers

Why is EA's 2000s cult classic "The Lord of the Rings" first game called "The Two Towers" and not "The Fellowship of the Ring"? Many people thought about this question and only recently the answer was found.

The answer was given in a recent issue of Retro Gamer. We learned from lead designer Jason Epps that due to time constraints, the first game was modified to combine the stories of the first two films into a trilogy released and sold alongside The Two Towers in the early 2000s.

Stormfront actually started work on the Lord of the Rings games about one year before the release of The Fellowship of the Ring trilogy, but during development, they realized they couldn't release the game on time with the first film. They aimed to release the game around the time of the second film.

Since considerable work had been done by then using the early materials from the first film in the trilogy, the publishers and developers decided to include materials based on The Fellowship of the Ring but called The Two Towers version to tie in with the second movie as it premiered. Epps said that the game was a blend of both films, due to their use of material from the first film to get the story of The Lord of the Rings started somehow. Just imagine trying to unravel this web in the first days of the Internet.