Kingdom Come Studio Officially Creates a Lord of the Rings RPG

Warhorse Studios, the developer behind the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series, is creating a Lord of the Rings RPG.

The Czech developer announced the as-yet-untitled “Middle-earth open world RPG” on its official X page, where it also announced that it had begun development on another Kingdom Come game. We don’t have much more to go on at the moment, with the studio promising additional details at a later date.

If you’re a keen observer of video game rumors, you’ll know that there have been rumors about a Warhorse-developed LotR game for some time now. With Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its excellent sequel 2025, the studio proved it knows how to make story-driven open-world RPGs, and Middle-earth probably isn’t a big step up from the medieval Bohemian setting of those games. Add a few orcs and a few dragons and you’re good to go.

What will be interesting is whether Warhorse decides to stick with the first-person perspective of its recent games, or whether it takes a more realistic approach. Witcher 3-similar approach. The Kingdom Come: Deliverance games are also known for their decidedly realistic and challenging gameplay, so it’s easy to imagine a LotR equivalent in which you play as a hapless hobbit or rookie soldier.

The news comes as Warhorse Studios’ parent company, Embracer Group, announced plans to spin off its Fellowship Entertainment multi-studio division into a new publicly traded company. In addition to building on the Tolkien-related intellectual property rights it first acquired in 2022, Fellowship Entertainment will also double down on Embracer’s other successful franchises, including Tomb Raider and Dead Island, as well as the aforementioned Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Warhorse’s in-development RPG may also not be the only game based on Tolkien’s universe that we have to look forward to. Although Amazon recently canceled its Lord of the Rings MMO, it still has a deal with Embracer to make games using the IP. Amazon Gaming chief Jeff Gratis said Eurogamer last week, his team “continues to explore an exciting new gaming experience that does justice to Tolkien’s world.”