RigaMortus said:
They didn't portray it as a psychic ability at all. They showed Aragorn bending down and picking up the hobbits belt, then studying. Then they show him finding foot prints and indentations in the ground. And they show him following those marks towards Fangorn forest. To say it seemed like a psychic ability would mean he was just standing there concentrating and envisioning what happened.
If it's the split screen thing that confused you, they only showed that to show Aragorn was right. He didn't actually see or picture the hobbits escaping, they just showed that for the audiences benefit.
what a time for them to have gotten rid of the eyerolling emoticon....
I was not confused about anything, dear, I understood the scene and the split screen, and I didn't like
what he was saying. It wasn't just "look, hobbit tracks goign this way" he recreated things happening at the same time which could just as easily have been juxtaposed tracks, laid down minutes apart. In fact, the whole point of what I responded to was the fact that he hadn't just seen that they left the area, but described the course of the battle. I found it unrealistic. Unrealistic enough that I made a psychic ability comment.
On the other hand,
MerakSpielman said:
The Prince: There was a mighty duel. It ranged all over. They were both masters...
The Prince: Someone has beaten a giant...
contained just enough informations to show that he was right while being completely realistic. The twin tracks moved all over, on dusty ground, and in many areas would have shown matched long scuffs as two accomplished fighters did their silly little scooting back and forth of fencing. The giant prints, giant kneeprints and drool marks showed easily that two men of very different sizes fought and the smaller one won.
A similar scene was used in the Stargate episode where they first introduced the ancients. Looking at some tracks, Bratac didn't just follow them but saw that most were serpent gaurds, one was a woman, and the woman was being taken against her will.
of course none of those scenes took place in an area which was churned over by scores of horses and subsequently had a lot of big men dragging orc corpses across it get them into the pyre.

but more to the point, conveying information about the tracks rather than just following them is one of the uses that the PHB doesn't give but that I use liberally in my games when I have a tracker, while the effect of unrelated traffic before or after the tracks were made is a circumstance ignored by the PHB but which I enforce. Somehow I don't feel the need, as some have suggested, to 'warn the players beforehand that I'm nerfing the ability'.
Kahuna Burger