Gamertell

Pandemic Studios has revealed that it is currently working on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, a spiritual successor to the Star Wars: Battlefront series which allowed gamers to relive some of the greatest battles of the franchise in a third-person action game.

Conquest will take a similar route, thrusting players into Middle Earth’s most famous battlefields, where they can pit almost all of the LOTR characters against each other.  From nameless orcs and trolls to main characters including Gandolf and Sauron, players will get to control them all, with up to 150 characters on screen at once.

The single-player mode will consist of two distinct campaigns, including one that looks at what would happen if Sauron had taken control of the ring.  Multi-player, meanwhile,  will allow up to 16 players to wage war, either online of via 4 way split-screen play.

“Our Pandemic Studios creative teams have years of expertise bringing giant battlefields to life,” Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager, told IGN.  “We’ve always wanted to harness our experience in a fantasy universe with warriors, archers, mages and castle sieges. Of course, there is truly no better fantasy world to recreate than the enormity of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ realm.”

LOTR: Conquest is aiming for a Fall 2008 release, for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.

Site [LOTR: Conquest] Read [Wired] Also Read [IGN]