The very first Battle for Middle-Earth game was a special thing for many gamers. Not only was it a fairly competent, well-balanced and fun real-time strategy to spend your time playing, but it also had a robust multiplayer component and featured everyone's favourite vanilla fantasy setting: Lord of the Rings!
It goes without saying that such a popular game with a rabid following would garner some attention even after the series has been given a direct successor. In this case, the attention has materialised in an actual remake of the original game - The Battle for Middle-Earth: Reforged
In a sort of a revival of their ModDB page after a short hiatus, the developers have released a brand new teaser trailer to mark their current achievements and progress, and have offered a quick FAQ to ease their fans' concerns for the time being.
As the developers are recreating the game from the ground-up on a brand-new engine, it is a given that the gameplay of the Reforged version may well differ somewhat from its original inspiration. The main difference will likely be in the fact that the units themselves will no longer stack with one another due to Unreal Engine 4's direct inclusion of a realistic physics engine.
Additionally, it would be wise not to expect a fully-fledged singleplayer campaign from Reforged, as the project is aimed primarily at the game's multiplayer component. Only if and once multiplayer is up and running in a decent state will the developers think about getting singleplayer reworked as well.
Though there is some worry as to how Warner might react to this remake, the developers are mostly confident in their abilities to work something out with the legal team, so there's no real need to panic.
That aside, replaying one such classic in Unreal Engine 4, no less, would certainly be quite a thrill if you've had the chance to play the original game back in the day. While it remains to be seen what comes of this project, the teaser is quite something indeed.
