I just remembered an incident my friend had while we were playing Lord of the Rings: Conquest.
Once you complete the main storyline, which follows the major battles (and some fictional ones) during The Lord of the Rings, you get to play a second fictional storyline.
The storyline basically starts with Frodo climbing Mount Doom with the Ring, seperated from Sam, and the Ringwraiths manage to resurrect the Witch King. The Witch King then kills Frodo, and retrieves the One Ring, giving it to Sauron.
As a result, Sauron becomes all-powerful, and ressurects his fallen comrades (like Saruman and Lurtz and others), and begins a campaign against the allied forces of Middle Earth.
You carry on playing through these different missions, where you essentially play backwards from the normal story, and destroy the enemy, at places like Gondor, Moria, Rivendell and even Weathertop.
Finally you get to the last mission, where the forces of Sauron have conquered everyone and the last remaining force is that of the Hobbits in the Shire.
They're of no threat to Sauron, but Gandalf has decided to defend these people to the death, so you push on.
If you're unfamiliar with the game, you essentially play as one of 4 generic classes (knight, archer, mage and rogue), and you're a generic troop in the army, an Orc in this playthrough.
But, every now and then, at certain points in a mission, and if you're doing well enough, you get to choose to play as a Hero Character, who is a named character from the series.
My friend and I are on the co-op Evil final mission.
We've done most of our objectives. It's time for the final objective. A fight to the death against Gandalf.
To get to him you have to cross a small bridge and enter an open field.
My friend's screen goes dark, and he gets given an option.
He can select to play as the Dark Lord, Sauron.
He chooses it. He's playing as Sauron, a towering monster, tall as an Ent and weilding an unbelievable giant mace.
He's laughing himself giddy at the idea of him smashing Gandalf to pieces.
He swats a few hobbits away, like they're nothing. He laughs more.
He presses forward, crushing hobbits underfoot.
He approaches the bridge. He can see Gandalf, all in white, stood ahead, surrounded by hobbits. He sees his prey.
He's not paying attention.
He steps forward onto the bridge.
A Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains, aiding Gandalf and the hobbits, swoops down from the sky above Sauron.
It reaches it's talons out and grasps the Dark Lord by the shoulders.
It continues forwards, picking up the towering behemoth.
It carries him upwards, into the sky, away from Gandalf, out of the map, still in sight.
It drops Sauron from a great height.
Sauron falls, behind the foliage of the map.
"Sauron has been defeated".
My friend sits there, gob open, just staring, silent in shock.
I'm sat next to him pissing myself in laughter.
The Dark Lord Sauron was defeated by a lone eagle dropping him from a height.
It really is true. The Eagles could've done absolutely everything in Lord of the Rings!
