When Warhorse casually announced recently via X that it is currently working on the long-rumored Middle-earth RPG it had previously denied involvement in, it was music to the ears of many fans of both the studio’s past work and The Lord of the Rings alike. There is little doubt that the Kingdom Come: Deliverance team, who also happens to consist of passionate LotR fans, could pull off the definitive open-world RPG that Middle-earth has always deserved, and that alone makes the idea of eventually playing it feel like the kind of thing only dreams are made of. However, apart from the quality the Lord of the Rings RPG is expected to have, it’s also highly likely to be the most grounded video game the franchise has ever seen, if the studio’s previous work is any indication.
Of course, by “grounded,” I don’t mean it will be magic-free or even that it will forego the kind of cinematic spectacle the franchise’s books and films are known for. On the one hand, calling something “grounded” does imply realism, but if anything is true about a historical game series like Kingdom Come: Deliverance and a fantasy franchise like The Lord of the Rings, it’s that realism is ultimately defined by its space. For one, realism is, in fact, rooted in real world history. But for the other, realism is defined by the fantasy world of its own making.
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Hogwarts Legacy showed how beloved fantasy worlds can become RPG homes, and Middle-earth may be the best possible test of that idea.
Warhorse’s Desire for Authenticity Will Undoubtedly Drive Its Take on Middle-earth
With the Middle-earth RPG apparently only in pre-production at the time of writing, Warhorse has yet to reveal any details about it apart from its setting and genre. As such, the only frame of reference we currently have for what the game might be like is the studio’s Kingdom Come: Deliverance series. But while it’s easy to look at each RPG’s open-world design, combat, and even story as examples of what the Middle-earth RPG could be like, considering Warhorse’s priorities behind those things could be a more telling sign of the kind of Lord of the Rings game we’ll be getting.
What’s That Weapon?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
What I’m really getting at is just how important authenticity is to this developer, perhaps even more than gameplay gimmicks and impressive visuals. If there is one thing that separates the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series from other RPGs, it’s a philosophy that centers around ensuring the bulk of what players see and experience on screen is an authentic representation of the reality it’s aiming for. And in the case of those games, it’s medieval Bohemia.
Warhorse has long made it clear that its goal with Kingdom Come: Deliverance was always to give players a chance to experience medieval history in a way that made them feel like they were legitimately there, not because everything looked real, but because it all felt real. From the way people interact with one another and the way the cities are designed to the way a sword feels when it swings, or the fact that not everyone alive during that period knew how to read, Warhorse’s intentions were always to ground players in a world that, despite bending to modern gaming expectations here and there, asked them to meet it on its own terms rather than theirs.
Ultimately, it accomplished this with painstaking research, even involving historians in the development process of both games to ensure there were few noticeable gaps between real history and virtual representation. In the end, players were given two open-world games that accomplished something only a limited number actually manage. When they stepped into the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series, players were entering a living, breathing world not far from their own, while most games in the genre tend to offer something closer to an escape from reality rather than a deeper dive into it.
If there is one thing that separates the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series from other RPGs, it’s a philosophy that centers around ensuring the bulk of what players see and experience on screen is an authentic representation of the reality it’s aiming for.
That approach doesn’t always mean everything in a Warhorse game is going to be 100% accurate, though, as that’s impossible. These are, at the end of the day, video games, and video games still need to be fun. And since reality doesn’t always equate to fun, embellishments and exaggerations must be offered as compensation. Even so, it proves the studio’s desire to root its work in a degree of authenticity that escapes most modern RPGs—and most games, for that matter. That, in a nutshell, is what could make the upcoming Middle-earth RPG the franchise’s most grounded entry yet.
Middle-earth Deserves Warhorse’s Knack for Authenticity
History and fantasy are two very different things, with the former having almost zero pliable boundaries and the latter offering an immense amount of freedom to those with a desire to create within its space. That changes, though, when a world like Tolkien’s Middle-earth, which comes with its own internal history, languages, cultures, maps, and genealogies, enters the picture. It’s one thing to create a fantasy world players have never heard of, but it’s an entirely different thing to adapt a fantasy world that countless individuals are not only already familiar with but also incredibly knowledgeable in.
And yet, after seeing what it was able to accomplish with Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its recreation of medieval Bohemia, it’s reasonable to expect Middle-earth will be treated similarly. The same care and attention to detail that went into ensuring players were getting an accurate representation of KCD‘s real-world setting and time period will likely be put into Tolkien’s world as well. Where other Lord of the Rings games have either only adapted the films or narrowly followed Tolkien’s lore, Warhorse’s open-world RPG could be the first game to make Middle-earth actually feel like Middle-earth.
And therein lies the take that this could be the most grounded Lord of the Rings game yet. The more Warhorse aims for accuracy when rebuilding Middle-earth, the more believable the world will be. On its own, Tolkien’s world already feels like something that could actually exist in another reality, so Warhorse doesn’t need to go beyond those borders to prove anything. Instead, resting neatly within them is probably the best course of action here, and it’s one the developer is likely to take. That spells good news for Lord of the Rings fans like myself.
- Created by
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J. R. R. Tolkien
- Where to watch
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HBO Max
- Movie(s)
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The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
