Special effects of The Lord of the Rings film series Later on, the scenes were merged using digital effects. Besides Weathertop, many of the other scenes in the Lord of the Rings trilogy were shot in this way, first by filming the scenery or set miniatures, then the actors on a studio set, and merging the two together. An example of this is in the Mines of Moria, when the Fellowship was fighting the Cave-troll in Balin's Tomb, and again when the Fellowship is on the Khazad-Dum stairs and bridge. Gandalf has his own particular scene with computer graphics as he grapples with the Balrog as they fall to their
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age of 2003, with the release of "The Return of the King". Executive producer, Steve Gray, who had worked on "Final Fantasy VII" and directed "Parasite Eve" for Squaresoft, explained he had wanted to make a "Lord of the Rings" RPG since the 1990s, but had never gotten the chance, until EA acquired the rights to the film trilogy. As the game was under development, various ideas were rejected as the team settled on an approach. For example, initially, the developers planned to have an Active Time Battle combat system, before going with the Conditional Time Battle system. Another rejected idea