Warner Bros. Pictures72 years after its publication, The Lord of the Rings has left a massive mark on pop culture. Essentially every popular work of fantasy, from A Song of Ice and Fire to The Wheel of Time, has taken immeasurable inspiration from Tolkien’s 1954 masterwork, and its version of the Hero’s Journey has paved the way for countless storytellers both in and out of high fantasy. With an estimated 150 million copies sold, it’s easily one of the most widely read books of all time.Of course, many people’s first exposure to The Lord of the Rings doesn’t come from the page. There were animated movies in 1978 and 1980, there’s Peter Jackson’s earth-shatteringly successful trilogy, there are several Middle-Earth themed concept albums, and characters from the franchise even recently appeared in a Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond expansion. LotR has also been explored in a wide variety of video games, and while most of them build off the canon of Jackson’s trilogy, a recently announced project could allow fans to explore Middle-Earth in a whole new way.Peter Jackson’s three-film adaptation remains the benchmark for most video games set in Middle-Earth. | Warner Bros. PicturesWarhorse Studios, the Czech video game developer responsible for the hugely acclaimed Kingdom Come: Deliverance games, has announced that they’re working on a Lord of the Rings video game alongside the third KC:D installment. Details are extremely sparse, but the game was described as an open-world RPG, which is similar to their flagship original franchise. The announcement comes with a little irony, as the previous director of the KC:D games, Daniel Vávra, stepped down to develop a movie based on the series mere months before the announcement that Warhorse would be making a game based on what’s arguably the best fantasy adaptation in history.The most recent game based on LotR was last year’s Tales of the Shire, a quaint lifestyle simulator set between the events of The Hobbit and Fellowship, but there hasn’t been a modern game in the franchise that proved nearly as successful as Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor or its sequel. Both games were action-adventures noteworthy for their Nemesis System, which was designed to create personal interactions between the player and the game’s enemies by having AI foes remember and learn from previous combat encounters. With the immense success of the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series, Warhorse’s LotR game might give the Shadow games a run for their money.Shadow of Mordor gave fans a taste of open-world LotR antics, but Warhorse’s game could take it even further. | Warner Bros. InteractiveWhile plot details are still under wraps, it’s exciting to imagine just how Warhorse will approach the world of Middle-Earth. The game could, of course, be set during the events of The Lord of the Rings, but considering how much supplemental material was written by J.R.R. Tolkien and his son Christopher, it could easily take place elsewhere during the history of Tolkien’s universe, similar to The Rings of Power. We likely won’t get any significant updates on the project for a while, but just the announcement is enough to inspire giddy excitement in fans who have long awaited the opportunity to explore Tolkien’s world with the kind of hands-on immersion that only an RPG can provide.