Warner Bros Interactive announces new Lord of the Rings franchise

Warner gets a whole new franchise, starting with The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest. Joy?

A release just slid in across the wire from Warner Bros. Interactice Entertainment announcing a whole new range of Lord of the Rings titles, across a range of gaming genres. Given that I finally re-activated my Lord of the Rings Online account this morning, I was pretty pleased at the idea of even more Tolkien-inspired gaming around the corner. 

And the first game in the lineup is The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest. Aragorn! You can't go wrong!

Then I kind of sobered up, and remembered the fiasco that was the recent Lord of the Rings: Conquest. from EA and Pandemic Studios... yeah, that sobered is up a whole lot.

Warner Interactive's new franchise is courtesy of both New Line Cinema and The Saul Zaentz Company, which means the games can draw on both the films and the literarary works of Tolkien himself. To be honest, while games like Lord of the Rings Online, who only have access to the literary works, are pretty damn good, the film tie-in angle has not really delivered a lot of quality and depth.

The other thing that worries me is that Warner is very much trying to appeal to the family market. "It is the first game," says Martin Trembley, Warner Interactive's President, "allowing kids and their families to interact in their favourite locations and stories from The Lord of the Rings with accessible gameplay." Kids and families get referred to a lot in the release, and that's a little discouraging.

Then again, Aragorn's Quest is only coming out on Wii, Nintendo DS, PS2 and PSP, so we're not expecting a hardcore title.

That said, the announcement also promises that future games will appeal to hardcore fans and gamers as well as more casual types. We can only hope.