Effects studio Weta Workshop has announced that it is teaming up with Take-Two's publishing arm Private Division for a new Lord of the Rings game. We
Effects studio Weta Workshop has announced that it is teaming up with Take-Two’s publishing arm Private Division for a new Lord of the Rings game. We don’t know too much about the game yet, but it’s expected to arrive in the 2024 fiscal year as defined by Take-Two.
What is Weta and Private Division’s new Lord of the Rings game?
This collaboration was announced earlier today via the official Private Division website. In the announcement, Weta Workshop’s Amie Wolken says the game will be “so different from what fans have played previously”, suggesting it’s not going to be similar to existing Lord of the Rings titles like Middle-Earth: Shadow of War or the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. Private Division says that Weta has “the broadest creative license” for interpreting the Lord of the Rings lore, which is pretty expansive; it’s difficult to guess at what the two companies could be working on, simply because there’s so much of Lord of the Rings to pore over.
As of today, Take-Two says the game is in early development and doesn’t have a release date right now. Evidently, however, this is one of Take-Two’s 70 new games currently in development, as it’s slated to launch in the company’s 2024 fiscal year. The two studios say they’ll share more information about this as-yet unnamed Lord of the Rings project in the coming months, so stay tuned for more news on it. I’m holding out for a sequel to The Third Age personally, although that’s probably pretty unlikely.
Isn’t Weta Workshop a movie effects studio?
Yes indeed. Weta Workshop is mainly known for its work on movie special effects; it’s based in New Zealand, which made it ideally situated to help out with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Despite this, back in 2014, Weta set up an “interactive game division”, according to the announcement for its new game. This title has been in development since at least November last year, when Weta teased it was working on an IP “very close to our hearts”. That project was almost certainly this newly-announced Lord of the Rings title. Weta’s interactive division has also been working on some rather interesting-sounding tech in collaboration with Magic Leap, according to its FAQ page, and although the Lord of the Rings project is likely to be a little more conventional, we can perhaps expect to see some of that innovative approach in this game as well.
We’ll just have to wait and see what Weta and Private Division come up with together. In the meantime, there’s plenty to get excited about when it comes to Middle-earth in the gaming world. The aforementioned The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is coming soon, of course, and there’s also the survival crafting game Return to Moria, which is slated for a 2023 release. If you’re a fan of mobile gaming, you might want to check out the Heroes of Middle-earth mobile RPG, too. We’ll bring you more on the new Private Division and Weta collaboration as soon as we get it.
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