The video games we get to play 

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is a survival-crafting video game coming to digital stores sometime in 2023.

We first saw Moria in Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring. At the time, the Dwarven stronghold was a shadow of its former glory: cold, dark, and occupied by the forces of darkness.

In this latest offering from Free Range Games, players will finally reclaim the city from the orcs and trolls that control it. More than that, they will return Moria to its initial splendor by building forges, furnishing halls, and excavating vital resources, while learning about the various dwarf clans, their histories, and violent encounters with Middle Earth’s most prominent races.

After seeing the story trailer from the 2023 Summer Game Fest, I have some thoughts. First, this concept makes sense. Rather than mining the past, the game will take us forward into the Fourth Age of Middle Earth. Sauron is dead and Aragorn has ascended to the throne.

Prequels are tricky because Tolkien gave us a mountain of information about the events that happened before and during The War of the Ring. Prequels are more likely to irritate fans by changing the lore. While Tolkien’s letters explore the Fourth Age, you still have more room to breathe.

Additionally, I appreciate this approach. Tolkien fanatics like myself love this world and relish any opportunity to simply exist within Middle Earth. We don’t need epic battles to keep us entertained. I commend the gaming industry for experimenting with ideas such as The Lord of the Rings: Gollum that immerse players in the mythology of Tolkien’s setting.

That said, The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is not my kind of game, and you won’t catch me playing. My concern is the reactions to the trailer, which have been mixed thus far.

I suppose treating some of these properties like sacred cows is a mistake. Maybe we exaggerate their importance, but you can’t deny that Lord of the Rings once held an elevated position in the entertainment industry.

Even when Harry Potter and Game of Thrones dominated the movie and television landscapes, Tolkien was still the most prominent name in fantasy. But then we got the Hobbit films, and the LOTR (Lord of the Rings) name took a hit.

Then The Rings of Power came out and again, I loved that show. But it divided fans. The Rings of Power pulled Lord of the Rings into the same muck that Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Marvel, and all the other volatile properties currently occupy.

I won’t say that Gollum was the final nail in the coffin, but it stripped away the last bit of shine LOTR enjoyed. That game sucked. And if you don’t believe me, consider this: the developers came out and apologized.

And now we have Return to Moria, which is interesting. But Lord of the Rings does not need ‘interesting.’ It needs a home run. Otherwise, it may eventually lose its place at the top of the fantasy pyramid.

I don’t have much hope in the upcoming The War Of The Rohirrim anime film. Some have argued that LOTR is flailing because the writers crafting these projects don’t care about the franchise.

Peter Jackson was a fan. The cast and crew spent many hours poring over Tolkien’s work while making the original trilogy. You can see their dedication to the source material in every frame of the original trilogy. I don’t know if I buy that argument, mainly because we don’t know enough about the people making these games and shows to measure their interest in Tolkien’s work.

At this point, we should just give up on all future endeavors and take comfort in the original trilogy. I don’t mind re-watching the four-and-a- half-hour extended version of The Return of the King for the twentieth time.

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