The book toy and the coloring of the 3 targets look out of place. I thought for sure we were going to be seeing an LCD type toy in this area. Personally I thought it was going to be Bag End and the door would open to reveal the LCD behind it. Sadly that doesn't appear to be the case I was expecting more from JJP in this area.

Here's kinda what I thought the Bag End toy would look like.

bag end.jpg

If the rumored LCD toy is not coming I rather see 3 or 4 more drop targets in that area with just a stationary Bag End model above it. At least the drops would do something gameplay wise and a Bag End model toy would look much better then the book.

I understand that the area can be modded but for the price of the game it should be more impressive / interactive out of the box.

Ugh. At this point I wish they would replace the 3 stand up targets below it with 3 or 4 drop targets or at the very least replace the book with a model of Bag End. The book looks out of place and odd in this game.

Agree. I thought the barrel models would have been up higher. Even if the book was replaced by a Bag End mode the barrels could have been placed higher with a spacer or just by making the barrels longer.

Agree. Wireform VUK's would look much better in this game.

Here's one from LOTR

vuk_LOTR.jpg

Sadly I feel the same way. Jack mentioned something last night about not building a game with a calculator and how the WOZ team took that literally and then something was said about TH. It was something along those lines but it sounded like build of materials cost was more important this time.

I'm thinking that the book has to be a placeholder at this point. That's my hope at least.

Below is picture of some of the games playfield plastics that Jack released months ago. We can see the bag end plastic towards the left side of the picture. The plastic in the picture appears to look slightly different then the one in the game at expo.

plastic.JPG

Also, the latest CAD drawing of the playfield says "Bag End" in that area. If JJP was intending to use this area as a spot for a book wouldn't they have just referenced it as "Book" and not "Band End"?

bag end area.JPG

Agree. In the whitewood that was the case.

wireform vuk.jpg

I'm thinking the ideas about the book toy area as a 5" display representing a book is something we may very well see in the game. That seems to go well with the inserts below the Bag End area as well as the wood look on the playfield plastic near it that may represent Bilbo's desk.