Wars of the Firstborn: Year Three news

Hello followers,

Today, Wars of the Firstborn mod celebrates 3 years since it's announcement and for this, we will discuss a bit things that happened in the last year.

The last year has been challenging, no doubt, and also full of breaks I had to make due to many personal endeavors, some positive, some less so. However, progress has been made and we are still approaching a release. My absence in the the updates section does not mean progress hasn't been made in the backstage or changed in any way my plan for releasing this mod as soon as possible. I know these are not as entertaining to read so let's focus on the positive side of the year.

The highlight of this year are, undoubtedly, the Mirkwood Heroes. Special care has been put into flashing out every aspect of them on screen so I detailed a bit the process of how I made them come to life (visually).

Thranduil required the most effort as he is seen both in his regal king outfit and his battle armor, all of these being available also mounted on his beautiful elk steed. For this I took and extra care to represent accurately all these visual aspects as seen in the movie. The biggest challenge has been creating new animations to fit his personality and also his weapon set, Thranduil has a very particular way he uses his sword in battle gear, unique among all other units in the game. He has a total of 36 new animations.

Legolas was probably the most "worked on" of all the heroes overall. However, most of the heavy lifting was done in previous years so the main focus was to make a more accurate model that is in line with the rest of the new visual update of the mod. As stated before, Legolas now has a full toggle ability which meant a total new set of animations for him using his knives. Moreover, I always disliked the choice of him not having cape animations. And I took that personally!? So in the mod Legolas has 2 full animations sets with functional cape bones. I have kept the bow animations as in the original game, however his knife animations have been inspired from the LOTR movies but also paying some homage to another beloved video game, The Return of the King. While initially he will be seen as in Moria, he can later receive his Lothlorien gift, adding his Galadhrim bow and cloak. Legolas has a total of 46 modified or new animations.

Tauriel was in all aspects easier than the previous heroes to make. Due to the fact that we wanted to tie her along with the light armored units of the faction, we chose to show her wearing her huntress armor. For that I drew heavy inspiration from the scouts of the faction, both visually and animations. While Tauriel does not have new animations, she has a toggle between her bow and her daggers which required some animations conversions.

Surprisingly, Galion does not seem to have that many photos across the internet of his face and outfit. This meant I had the opportunity to improvise a bit around what is seen in the movies. The centerpiece of his outfit is his not so secret stash of two wine bottles attached to his waist, in a very elegant leather satchel. Pretty proud of this detail.

While Radagast is not part of the main heroes of Mirkwood, he is present in the faction through the Evenstar powers. Personally I have always found Radagast in the movies a tad too goofy, both in personality and in his outfit. For that I wanted to redesign him more accurately to how I imagined him while still keeping the elements that I did like from the film. There have been some influences from Gandalf and Saruman (being an Istari), and Radagast from War in the North video game.

Personally, heroes are always a challenge for me to do. Being obsessed with accuracy, I find it very difficult to capture a characters likeness. Sometimes I spend way too much time on it, more than is probably necessary but at least I know I gave it my best. Yet, heroes always feel like a lot of pain for little gain, we never see an army of Thranduils.

This concludes the year "in review" of the mod. More updates about Mirkwood will come in the coming weeks. You can share your thoughts in our discord channel you can find the link on the main moddb page or at the bottom of this article. Also, we share there bonus stuff in the #sneak-peek channel for the very curious ones.

Sincerely,
NewErr and the Wars of the Firstborn team