Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 developers Warhorse Studios are refusing to confirm or deny a rumour that they’re making a Lord of the Rings game for Embracer. This could indicate one of two things: firstly, they are making a Lord of the Rings game for Embracer. And secondly, they are not making a Lord of the Rings game for Embracer. We can rest assured, at least, that they’re making a “huge, immersive RPG”, in the words of content director Ondrej Bittner. Huge AND immersive? Sounds like Orc mischief to me.

The original rumour came from a Polish Tolkien podcast last month, in which localisation specialist Ryszard Chojnowski (who has worked with CD Projekt and BioWare, among other credibility-conferring big shops) mentions hearing about the LOTR game from someone else. Warhorse didn’t respond to my request for comment at the time, but they’ve now addressed the rumours on Reddit, albeit in a way that makes me think of Gollum planting biscuit crumbs on Sam.

“Obviously we can’t comment on future projects, at least not until we’re in the future (but if you have a time machine, please show us!),” reads one post from community manager Tom Grey. Bittner had slightly more to offer in another post. “Voilá there is a response!” he wrote. “But unfortunately not the one you hope for. We are hard at work on … something. I cannot disclose details but I can tell it is a huge, immersive RPG.”

The idea of Warhorse making an LOTR game fills me with a mixture of yearning and misgiving and good humour. Yearning because it’s been ages since the last proper singleplayer LOTR game, and Warhorse are pretty good at this role-playing lark. Misgiving because Warhorse’s co-founder Daniel Vávra backed Gamergate and continues to have a tortured relationship with ‘anti-woke’ politics, though he’s since stepped away from active game development at the studio. And good humour, because Warhorse’s brand has hitherto been ‘what if we made grown-up RPGs based on real medieval history without any silly elves or dragons’.

Judged purely in terms of prior projects, I would rather Warhorse make a LOTR game like this than, say, Crystal Dynamics, who are also rumoured to be adapting Tolkien. It’s possible both rumours are true, of course: LOTR is big business.

Ah, I do wish somebody would commission a new singleplayer Lord of the Rings game, in these days of live servicing. Then again, so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. I’m going to spend mine carving out another dwarven condo in The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria.