I’m a big Hobbit and Lord of the Rings fan. The whole world that Tolkien created fills me with an immense amount of wonder and awe. While I have no desire to come face-to-face with a goblin anytime soon, I would relish the opportunity to explore Middle-earth with a backpack full of lembas bread and a pint of Prancing Pony in hand.
That’s why when I was walking through X the other day, I stopped and did a quick double-take. In a welcome change from some of the trash on social media these days, my algorithm offered me a beautiful, photorealistic re-imagining of The Argonath Lord Of The Rings scene, rendered in Unreal Engine 5.
For a minute and a half of peace, I was transported from my desk to a small boat on the Anduin River, watched over by two monumental statues made famous in The Fellowship of the Ring. After replaying the video, I quickly got in touch with the footage’s creator, Micah Malinics, to find out more about his project and – importantly – if I’d ever get a chance to play this fanfic for myself.
“The idea for the scene actually came from a challenge I gave myself, which was ‘What games should exist but don’t? and after writing down a bunch of ideas, I was really drawn to a bunch of the Lord of the Rings ones,” Malinics tells me via email.
“So I was actually going to do a little ‘proof of concept’ LOTR adventure like this silly Shrek western I made, but after a friend shared Leo Torres’ beautiful river jungle scene, I immediately wanted to do the Argonath scene from Fellowship of the Ring as first person experience.”
On the technical side of things, this scene was created in Unreal Engine 5.4 with heavy use of Lumen and Nanite. “The scene still ran at a stable 30-50 fps on the RTX 3080Ti. And on other PCs you could still lower the graphics,” adds Malinics.
“The fluid system is completely dynamic, so it automatically interacts with the geometry in the scene. That’s the most impressive part for me, and it’s all a result of the masterful Fluid Flux plugin.”
The Malinics scene, which was shot in “six days from start to finish,” can be seen via the video below.
Malinics now wants to work on some of the other ideas he noted during this brainstorming session. This includes the Helm’s Deep scene with a dynamic weather system that changes from the iconic sunset moment before the battle to a stormy night. And of course there would be that marching army of Orcs.
“I’ve also been playing a lot with the movement mechanics, and it would be fun to create a little moment where you’re hobbits running away from the Ringwraith on your way to the prancing pony,” he continues. “There’s so much you could do there that it could almost be its own escape-the-monster game. I’m hoping to do both at some point – because using this technology, it’s a blast to recreate Tolkien’s world and of course Peter Jackson’s films are the ultimate visual inspiration.”
However, while all these new ideas are waiting to be realized, Malinics tells me that “if there was enough demand for the Argonath scene”, it could be released as a playable project.
“[Unreal Engine] I could do it like a master, but the issues with releasing it are a good amount of project cleanup, some optimization, and there are some areas that aren’t fully built for a 360 viewing experience, so I’d have to go back and finish and build those parts of the environment,” he says.
“The project is currently a whopping 100GB so not release friendly yet haha.”
Malinics originally wanted to expand this scene so that the ship could dock on the beach after the Argonath passes, and the player could then walk along the beach. “This creator also inspired me to add goblins in the woods that you can drive around in a boat,” he says. However, at this point it would be “more of an easter egg” than a playable experience.
“If I had more time, I would have added them, but I started to wait to finish this scene.
So, in short, “it’s just a matter of prioritizing time,” Malinics says of this playable demo, before adding, “If there’s a big rally and demand, I’m happy to give it time. Otherwise, I have some other great stuff I’m really excited to make and I think people will enjoy it too!”
In the meantime, you can check out a time-lapse shot of Malinics creating their Argonath scene in Unreal Engine 5 below.
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“I hope the project is an encouragement to other artists and creators, 3D content creation is really becoming more accessible and I hope the next generation of users will be able to create full-fledged games like this in the near future,” Malinics concludes.
“The technology is totally there!”