Hogwarts Legacy is the Definitive Blueprint for an Open-World Lord of the Rings RPG

Very few fantasy worlds are better suited to a massive open-world RPG than Middle-earth, and yet The Lord of the Rings has still never had its Hogwarts Legacy moment. There have been great Lord of the Rings games before, especially the Shadow of Mordor series, but the franchise has never received a modern RPG that lets players create their own place in Tolkien's world, walk its roads, choose their identity, and experience Middle-earth in the way Hogwarts Legacy allowed players to experience the Wizarding World.

But now, with rumors that a new Lord of the Rings game is in development as a third-person action title designed, in some sense, to compete with Hogwarts Legacy, it feels like the franchise's big gaming moment might finally happen. It's still unconfirmed, so it should be treated carefully, but the premise alone points to what Middle-earth has been missing for years. A definitive Lord of the Rings RPG shouldn't simply chase Hogwarts Legacy's commercial success or copy its open-world checklist. Rather, it should learn from the thing Hogwarts Legacy understood best—that when a fantasy world is beloved enough, the most powerful thing a game can do is give players a believable life inside it.

Hogwarts Legacy Understood the Power of Letting Players Belong Somewhere

Players can cast spells in Hogwarts Legacy, they can fly a broomstick, and they can rescue beasts. However, while all of those things matter, the game always understood from the beginning the thing that mattered most. By letting players become a student at Hogwarts in the 1800s, get sorted into a house, attend classes, explore Hogsmeade, roam the Forbidden Forest, build relationships, and learn magic, it allowed them to feel like they, not a character, existed within the Wizarding World. Hogwarts Legacy's official description even sells that idea by making it all about becoming "the witch or wizard you want to be," which is really the heart of why it ended up achieving such success.

The key was that the social and cultural identity Hogwarts Legacy gave its open world ultimately mattered more than the size of its map. Hogwarts wasn't simply a castle full of rooms, chests, and side paths. Instead, it was a school, which meant the game could make exploring the world more about the routines of classes, houses, professors, classmates, common rooms, and the occasional trip to Hogsmeade that players already associated with the series. In doing so, Hogwarts Legacy wasn't just a big open-world map players were crossing off, but something more like a life they were stepping into, even when the surrounding open-world design unfortunately relied on habits all too familiar to the genre.

Middle-earth Needs That Same Player-Shaped Opening

Middle-earth has the same advantage that made Hogwarts Legacy such an easy sell, in that its world already means something to the people who love it. The Shire, Rivendell, Rohan, Gondor, Moria, Mordor, and all the roads between them are each rooted in a different culture, history, tone, and visual identity.

That's why an open-world Lord of the Rings RPG would need to begin by asking who the player is in that world, rather than simply dropping them into a large map and surrounding them with familiar landmarks. A Hobbit leaving home, a Ranger moving through the wild, a Dwarf returning to a lost hall, an Elf caught between memory and duty, or a soldier of Gondor living under the shadow of war would each create a different relationship with Middle-earth before the first major quest even begins.

That kind of "player-shaped opening," for lack of a better way of putting it, feels especially important because The Lord of the Rings already has one of the most iconic stories in fantasy. A new RPG wouldn't need to make the player the secret hero behind the Fellowship or wedge them into every recognizable event from the books. It would actually be stronger if it used Middle-earth's depth to create a life that feels like it's a part of the larger legend rather than retelling the same stories.

Middle-earth has the same advantage that made Hogwarts Legacy such an easy sell, in that its world already means something to the people who love it.

Recent rumors have suggested a major new Lord of the Rings game could be designed to compete with Hogwarts Legacy, though that remains unconfirmed. However, if that comparison ends up being even partly accurate, there's an opportunity there for Middle-earth to finally get a game that lets players feel like they're a part of the world rather than just the one sitting in the driver's seat of someone else's story.

It was once rumored that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 developer Warhorse Studios was developing an open-world Lord of the Rings RPG, but the developer recently denied those rumors.

A Lord of the Rings RPG Should Learn From Hogwarts Legacy’s Weaknesses Too

While a Lord of the Rings RPG should absolutely learn from what Hogwarts Legacy did well, it should also be careful not to inherit the weakest parts of its open-world design. For as successful as Hogwarts Legacy was, its biggest criticisms often came from the way its open world felt more like a standard checklist with repetitive activities, collectibles, and camps that ultimately pulled attention away from the school fantasy that made the game so appealing in the first place.

That's the exact trap Middle-earth would need to avoid. A Lord of the Rings RPG can't afford to turn its world into a bloated, cluttered map that's about finding every chest or completing every puzzle. Tolkien's world is powerful enough without all of that, to the point where a ruin in MIddle-earth should feel like the remnant of a forgotten kingdom, not just one more place to collect a slightly better pair of gloves. If Hogwarts Legacy proved the value of letting players belong in a beloved fantasy world, its weaknesses prove that belonging can weaken when the world adopts the open-world design that is no longer as universally accepted as it once was.

That's true when it comes to progression as well. Hogwarts Legacy's progression revolved around gear, upgrades, and other loot in a way that made sense for a modern action RPG, but the fantasy of being a student at Hogwarts has almost nothing to do with those things. That kind of system would actually make more sense in a Lord of the Rings RPG, but arguably only to a certain point. Rather than relying solely on gear progression, it could lean more into things like reputation, skill, relationships, survival, crafting, and knowledge of the world. Middle-earth has enough cultural texture that its RPG mechanics should come from the world itself just as much as they do from classic progression systems like gear and loot.

While a Lord of the Rings RPG should absolutely learn from what Hogwarts Legacy did well, it should also be careful not to inherit the weakest parts of its open-world design.

And the same goes for side content. Hogwarts Legacy had plenty of things for players to do, but too many open-world activities can make doing them redundant and meaningless. A Lord of the Rings RPG would be better served by fewer distractions, for one thing, but also ensuring those distractions have a stronger narrative or cultural purpose. This is actually one of the reasons The Witcher 3's side quests have earned so much praise, because they were deeper, more memorable, and ultimately more meaningful than the average open-world optional activity. The lesson isn't that a Lord of the Rings RPG should be smaller or less ambitious, but that it should preserve that feeling of a journey, rather than how many icons it can fit into one map.

A Lord of the Rings RPG Should Build a Life in Middle-earth, Not Just a Map

Ultimately, Hogwarts Legacy is the blueprint for an open-world Lord of the Rings RPG because it understood that beloved fantasy worlds are places players want to feel like they belong in, not just places they want to visit. A massive Middle-earth map would be exciting, but it would only matter if the player had a believable identity inside it. The real dream is feeling like the character walking through the Shire, Rivendell, Rohan, or Gondor has a reason to be there, a culture behind them, and a journey that feels unique without hijacking Tolkien's own stories.

So, in many ways, Hogwarts Legacy is a blueprint of what should be done with a Lord of the Rings RPG, as well as what shouldn't be done. Its strongest lesson is that player authorship can make a famous fantasy world feel newly alive, while its weaknesses show how quickly that fantasy can thin out when antiquated open-world habits take over. If a new Lord of the Rings RPG really is chasing that same scale, its best move would be to keep the sense of belonging, leave behind the excess, and make the journey through Middle-earth matter as much as the destination.