Another Lord of the Rings-based game is in the works per a new partnership between Private Division, a publishing label within Take-Two Interactive and Weta Workshop. The new game, which will be set in Tolkien's Middle-earth, doesn't have any hard details as of yet.
If you've seen The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies, you're familiar then with Weta Workshop. The company has handled the visual effects of those films, as well as countless others over the last few decades, solidifying itself as one of the premier studios on the market.
Private Division is a publishing label within gaming giant Take-Two Interactive. The publisher is known for helping release titles such as The Outer Worlds, OlliOlli World and more. The partnership announced today sees the two working with Middle-earth Enterprises to produce a game set in Tolkien's world of Middle-earth using the "broadest creative license to interpret the underlying lore of the books."
It should be noted that the Tolkien Estate and Middle-earth Enterprises are not the same, and as such some of Tolkien's work is still not under the license, notably his work detailing the timless backstory of the world The Lord of the Rings is set within, The Silmarillion.
No real information on the type of game the two are making was given, so we don't know if this is going to be an upcoming online title to compete with The Lord of the Rings Online, or if we'll see a vast, open world RPG in the vein of The Witcher 3. But the name Weta Workshop brings a ton of Middle-earth cred to the project, given that so many of our ideas of what Tolkien's world looks like is because of the visual aesthetic from Weta. In the press release, Weta's Head of Interactive, Amie Wolken, does drop a hint, stating that the game they are working on is "so different from what fans have played previously."
No hard release date was also released, with the publisher stating that it's still in "early development. However, Take-Two did state that we should expect to see if during its FY2024.
Weta Workshop was acquired by game engine maker Unity, with the deal being announced as $1.63 billion back in November of 2021.
