Traveller's Tales Games' ability to recreate the actual LEGO playsets in digital form has been one of the reasons this line of games took off like it did. Sure, it was LEGO that created the sets and minifigs so that they looked like the licensed product that was being used, but TT has not only been able to recreate all of those same pieces, but add a personality to the characters to make them lovable. LEGO The Lord of the Rings continues that trend as everyone looks just right, and I'm talking about everyone from the lowest Hobbit to the complexly built Sauron shown in the game's opening sequence that follows the One Ring's history.
LEGO Batman 2 was the first of these games to use voiceovers. Previously, facial expressions and gestures were enough to convey the story being presented, provided you already knew the story because you had seen the movies or read the books that was the source material. In this case, LEGO The Lord of the Rings not only uses fully-voiced characters as seen in Batman 2, but it takes the audio straight from the Peter Jackson film trilogy.
I have to admit, it was a little awkward hearing the voices of Elijah Wood, Sean Bean, Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen come from LEGO figures, but you get used to it. Also, for those that think sticking to pre-recorded dialogue means the comedy that has always been present in the TT LEGO games is gone, think again. It's amazing how putting different actions to the same dialogue can drastically change the feel of a scene. Plus, I noticed some editing and rearranging of the dialogue on more than one occasion to help keep the comedic style alive.
That being said, I felt like dialogue clips were often cut just a little too short and words or sentences ended rather abruptly. Obviously, when dealing with pre-recorded audio, and especially when you might want to shuffle the dialogue around some, this is going to happen, so I don't really think it's worth making a fuss over. Besides, it was fine more times than not.