New Lord Of The Rings Open-World RPG Gameplay Splits Fans
Published Jul 2, 2026, 5:00 AM EDT
Jared is a writer, editor, and Communications Studies graduate who loves popular nerd culture (almost anything to do with Marvel, DC, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings) and the interactive storytelling medium. Jared's first console was the PS1, wherein he fell for Spider-Man, Spyro the Dragon, and Crash Bandicoot.
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The Lord of the Rings is one of the best and most adored fantasy IPs ever, but you might not know it if you only ever dabbled in Lord of the Rings video games. It’s been a whopping 23 years since Peter Jackson’s brilliant Lord of the Rings trilogy ended and the phenomenal Lord of the Rings: Return of the King game adaptation was released, though there still hasn’t been a Lord of the Rings game as great as it since (besides Monolith’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War, at least).
Ironically, the newly announced Lord of the Rings game from Warhorse is being called a ‘Middle-earth game,’ and there are already plenty of expectations that fans understandably have about an open-world RPG that’s being made by the developers of the Kingdom Come franchise. The Lord of the Rings IP would be a huge undertaking for any studio, but fans are beginning to acknowledge that Warhorse’s penchant for realism might clash with a franchise that couldn’t be more different.
On Reddit, fans are torn between their love for the Kingdom Come: Deliverance games and the Lord of the Rings franchise, and are desperately attempting to reconcile them intersecting somewhere in the middle. Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II are historically authentic with deeply immersive and hyperrealistic, simulation-esque features, while The Lord of the Rings is basically the acclaimed benchmark for high fantasy, delving into all kinds of fantastical races, lands, sorceries, creatures, and so forth, even if corners of Middle-earth like the Shire only ever hear tall tales of such adventures.
Some fans would be disappointed to see Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s friction-filled combat be inherited in this game. Similarly, users like JBSven and Large_Yams are worried about it being too much like Kingdom Come: Deliverance in that it has more or less unpalatable gameplay that not all players might find accessible or fun: “Controversial opinion but Kingdom Come is boring and feels like a grind.”
What fans can all agree on, though, is that an open-world Middle-earth RPG is finally the kind of Lord of the Rings game that fans have wanted, unlike the disastrous Lord of the Rings: Gollum. Interestingly, Warhorse is electing to dub it a ‘Middle-earth game,’ rather than a ‘Lord of the Rings game.’
‘The Lord of the Rings’ is the colloquial term that general audiences use as an umbrella for any and all J.R.R. Tolkien works that take place in Middle-earth (the whole world of Arda, really), though ‘The Lord of the Rings’ only concerns the content of its three-volume epic that revolves around the Fellowship and Frodo Baggins’ journey to destroy the One Ring. Either way, there’s no way that a Middle-earth or Lord of the Rings game could lean as heavily into realism as it does with the Kingdom Come franchise without jeopardizing what’s magical about the IP.
Warhorse’s untitled Lord of the Rings game is currently in development.
Created by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings is a multimedia franchise consisting of several movies and a TV show released by Amazon titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The franchise is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's book series that began in 1954 with The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings saw mainstream popularity with Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
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