When Warhorse casually announced recently via X that it is currently working on the long-rumored Middle-earth RPG that it previously denied involvement with, it was music to the ears of many fans of both the studio's previous work and The Lord of the Rings equal. There is little doubt that Kingdom Come: Deliverance team, which also happens to be made up of passionate people LotR fans, could deliver the definitive open-world RPG that Middle-earth has always deserved, and that alone makes the thought of eventually playing it feel like the stuff only dreams are made of. But aside from the quality The Lord of the Rings The RPG is expected to have, it's also highly likely the most grounded video game the franchise has ever seen, if the studio's past work is any indication.
Of course, by “grounded,” I don't mean that it will be magic-free or even that it will forgo the kind of cinematic spectacle that the franchise's books and movies are known for. On the one hand, calling something “grounded” implies realism, but if anything is true about a historical game series that Kingdom Come: Deliverance and a fantasy franchise that The Lord of the Ringsit is that realism is ultimately defined by its space. First, realism is in fact rooted in the history of the real world. But for the other, realism is defined by the fantasy world it has created.
Hogwarts Legacy is the definitive blueprint for an open world RPG
Hogwarts Legacy showed how beloved fantasy worlds can become RPG homes, and Middle-earth might be the best possible test of that idea.
Warhorse's Desire for Authenticity will undoubtedly drive 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 other than its setting and genre. As such, the only frame of reference we currently have for what the game might look 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 Middle-earth RPGs can be, considering Warhorse's priorities behind those things might be a more telling sign of the kind of The Lord of the Rings games we will get.
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What I really get is how important authenticity is to this developer, maybe even more than game gimmicks and impressive visuals. If there is any difference Kingdom Come: Deliverance series from other RPGs, it's a philosophy that revolves around ensuring that 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 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 there, not because everything looked real, but because everything felt real. From the way people interact with each other and the way the cities are designed to the way a sword feels when it swings, or the fact that not everyone who lived in that period knew how to read, Warhorse's intentions were always to put players in a world that, while bending to modern gaming expectations here and there, asked them to face it on its own terms rather than theirs.
Ultimately, it accomplished this with meticulous 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 got two open-world games that accomplished something that only a limited number can actually pull off. When they stepped into the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series entered players into 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 any difference Kingdom Come: Deliverance series from other RPGs, it's a philosophy that revolves around ensuring that 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 that everything in a Warhorse game will be 100% accurate, because that's impossible. These are, at the end of the day, video games and video games still have to be fun. And since reality does not always equal pleasure, 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 eludes 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 imagination are two very different things, with the former having almost zero flexible boundaries and the latter offering a huge amount of freedom to those who want to create within their space. That changes, however, 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 that players have never heard of, but it's quite another to adapt a fantasy world that countless individuals are not only already familiar with, but also incredibly knowledgeable about.
And yet, after seeing what it could accomplish with Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its recreation of medieval Bohemia, it is reasonable to expect that Midgard will be treated in the same way. The same care and attention to detail that went into ensuring the players got an accurate representation of KCDThe real world setting and time period will also likely be put into Tolkien's world. There others The Lord of the Rings games have either merely adapted the films or closely followed Tolkien's stories, Warhorse's open-world RPG may be the first game to make Middle-earth actually feel like Middle-earth.
And therein lies the belief that this may be the most grounded The Lord of the Rings the game yet. The more Warhorse aims for accuracy as he rebuilds Middle-earth, the more believable the world becomes. On its own, Tolkien's world already feels like something that could actually exist in another reality, so Warhorse doesn't need to step outside those boundaries to prove anything. Instead, resting within them is probably the best approach, and it's one the developer will likely take. That means good news for The Lord of the Rings fans like myself.
- Created by
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JRR Tolkien
- Where to look
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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
