This year, the world of Middle-earth will be returning to the screen with The Rings of Power. This will be the first live-action TV show set in the Lord of the Rings universe, and it will mark a grand return for the fantasy world after The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies released in 2014. While The Hobbit movies were not critically acclaimed, the Lord of the Rings series is still considered to be among the best that fantasy has to offer. All eyes are on Amazon to see if it can deliver that same level of quality with The Rings of Power, and it may make Middle-earth a major topic of discussion again.
The Rings of Power will put the spotlight on this world again, and the video game industry should respond. There have been many video games set in Middle-earth, and there has been no better time for new ones. Right now, fans of the series have The Lord of the Rings: Gollum to look forward to, but Middle-earth should have even more games in the pipeline. As Amazon expands the world of the Lord of the Rings through various streaming products, the video game industry should also be expanding it in other ways.
Rings of Power Can Renew Interest in Middle-Earth
The last time that Middle-earth appeared on-screen was The Hobbit. These three films were box office hits, but they were far from critical darlings. While The Lord of the Rings is considered by many to be one of the best trilogies around, The Hobbit trilogy was not met with great reviews. This came down to many reasons including the fact that the smallest book was split into multiple movies, and there was an overuse of CGI in these outings. The trilogy came to its conclusion in 2014 with The Battle of the Five Armies, and Middle-earth seemed to vanish from the big screen.
On the smaller screen, The Lord of the RIngs was explored through a couple of different video games. In-between the release of The Hobbit and The Rings of Power, there was the very popular Middle-earth series by Monolith and a couple different mobile games. The Middle-earth games told a brand-new story in The Lord of the Rings universe, but the series has not had a new entry since 2017. Now, fans of The Lord of the Rings only have the Gollum game and a survival crafting game set in Moria to look forward to.
The release of The Rings of Power will make Middle-Earth visible again, and it may create a renewed interest in the world. The Lord of the Rings fans have never stopped caring about the franchise, but the general audiences may have moved on to other fantasy worlds like Game of Thrones. If The Rings of Power is good then it could pull back audiences to Middle-earth, and it would make people care about the world again. This newfound interest in the franchise would need to be directed somewhere in-between seasons of The Rings of Power, and that is where the video game industry comes into play.
There is So Much Video Game Potential for Middle-Earth
The video game industry has shown that it can already make some pretty fun fantasy games and Lord of the Rings titles. While The Lord of the Rings: Gollum may become a hit, the series deserves other games that do not put players in the shoes of Gollum. Fans of the series want to explore Middle-Earth and participate in major parts of its history, and they do not all want to do that as Gollum. Middle-Earth is vast and filled to the brim with story potential that is just waiting to be tapped by developers.
These new video games could come in many forms and would give players a plethora of different experiences. Monolith Productions could finally deliver a third entry in the Middle-earth series, a developer could remake The Battle for Middle-earth for the current generation, Warner Bros. could get a studio to make a new version of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, and there could even be a brand-new game set during the time of The Rings of Power. There are so many old games that could be brought back, and there are so many other stories that the industry could tell.
Middle-Earth deserves a boatload of video games to build it out. The Rings of Power will surely reignite passion for the franchise, and there should be video games that take advantage of this newfound interest. Even if The Rings of Power is not reviewed well, there could be many Middle-earth games to explore to keep the world alive.