The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (video game) game was a financial success, selling over one million units across all platforms, it was heavily outsold by EA's "The Two Towers", which sold almost four million units. Vivendi initially planned to make two sequels to the game, covering all three books in the trilogy, but the first sequel, called "The Lord of the Rings: The Treason of Isengard" (a discarded title for Tolkien's "Two Towers" book), developed by Surreal Software and slated for release in late 2003, was cancelled late in development. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is an action-adventure game played from a
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II to the effect. Water was chosen as the first graphical component of "The Battle for Middle-earth II" to take advantage of DirectX 9 programmable shaders. These additions were part of an overall Electronic Arts strategy to continue the "Lord of the Rings" experience that began with the trilogy film series. As cinematic director of "The Battle for Middle-earth II", Richard Taylor was responsible for designing the game's opening and closing sequences, as well as campaign and mission introductions and endings. As the first Electronic Arts video game to be given free rein on material from "The Lord of the Rings"