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It feels like every year we're talking about another The Lord of the Rings game being spun up by some dev studio - but today's announcement feels a little different. Warhorse Studios — the team behind the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series — has publicly announced that they're making "an open world Middle-earth RPG". Hurrah!
This project is now in the works alongside another KCD adventure following the recent and successful launch of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Here's their announcement, with a tease that the team is "excited to tell you more" about both of these projects:
The jury's still out on how Warhorse will handle a LOTR game, but it's hard to say that the studio hasn't earnt the right to give it a shot. KCD2 was immensely popular and very successful to boot, and this famous old IP has struggled to find a home in the AAA space since Monolith's Middle-earth double act during the Xbox One era (R.I.P. Monolith). We're curious to see how it goes.
And, well, that's about all we know so far. Given that KCD2 took almost seven years to make following the first game's 2018 launch, we're not expecting either of these new projects to launch anytime soon. Will the LOTR game be a Project Helix release? Who knows, but it seems likely at this point!