The rumours were true, Warhorse are making an open-world Lord of the Rings RPG alongside a new Kingdom Come game

Long road ahead

If you've been hanging on tenterhooks since May 1st, when Edwin reported on the rumours that Warhorse, the developers of medieval sandbox Kingdom Come Deliverance, were working on a Lord of the Rings RPG, then, firstly, that must have been very sore, sorry about that, but, secondly, the rumours were true. You may climb down from those hooks: Warhorse have confirmed they are creating an open-world RPG set across Tolkien's Middle-earth.

Not only that, the studio announced they are also making a new Kingdom Come game at the same time. Used a phrase laced with ambiguity, they called it a 'Kingdom Come adventure', so that could mean a third game in their historical series or a rhythm game where you clop your horses hooves in time to the beat of Greensleeves. At this point, we just don't know.

Now, back to the Tolkien game. The fact that Warhorse call it an 'open-world Middle-earth RPG', rather than a Lord of the Rings RPG suggests that the game will take place in a part of the timeline separate to Frodo's adventure. Embracer, the publisher rumoured to be backing Warhorse's game bought the rights to Middle-earth back in 2022 and, then, after imploding, spun out a separate company called Middle-earth Enterprises. So, in theory, they could set a game at any point in Tolkien's timeline.

Though, if they were to take a Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead approach to the hobbits' adventure, where you're exploring the world while Sauron's armies are on the march and you're weaving a narrative thread between those events, I would be on board. After all, Monolith did it well in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and sequel Shadow of War.

Just last week we learned that Amazon had cancelled its in-development Lord of the Rings MMO. They cagily added that they were exploring "a compelling new game experience that does justice to Tolkien's world". For all we know, this could be a rhythm game where you clop your balrog's hooves to the beat of The Green Dragon. This game from Warhorse is likely separate from Amazon's venture.

I am fascinated to see what Warhorse come up with. While I've not played Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, I enjoyed the first game's approach to building the people of its world. I remember hearing stories of a dragon in the game, despite it decidedly not being a medieval fantasy. And, if you track them down, you find that they're in fact alligator bones. But, within the historical fiction of this world and the people who live there, they've never encountered an alligator and the possibility and belief that dragons exist supersedes the reality. Now, what that will mean for a game actually set in a fantasy world, I don't know. Hopefully the developers can maintain their dedication to the bit.

We know exceedingly little about the Middle-earth RPG at this moment, only that it exists. So my interest in it is purely drawn from the attentive worldbuilding in the studio's previous work. Though, that also brings with it some hesitance. Warhorse's founder, Daniel Vávra, has made it very clear in the past that he is against games he calls "woke", even using the news that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 had won an award from Gayming Magazine for a same-sex relationship storyline as an opportunity to call out other games for "shoving it down anyone’s throat or trying to re-educate them like so many titles that are rightfully called 'woke' these days". (Though, he is currently working on a Kingdom Come movie and has stepped away from active game development.) Lord of the Rings is a series that has a complex relationship with race – as Nic wrote about on Eurogamer, the depiction of orcs is wrapped up in the idea of otherness – and many adaptations of the stories have been predominantly white and straight. There is an opportunity here to tell different stories in Tolkien's world or repeat those that came before. Either path is valid, developers are free to make the game they want to make. I just hope that if it's the latter, it's not a decision wrapped up in taking a stance that a fantasy world can only be portrayed in a certain way. After all, it's fantasy. It can be whatever the creators want it to be.