New Lord of the Rings RPG announced?

EA's Redwood Shores studio is currently developing a next-gen RPG under the working title Project Gray Company, and is inviting gamers to offer comments on the design of the game as more details are revealed.

Few details with regard to format choice and gameplay style have been released to date. Instead, the game is described as a next-gen RPG providing an "experience that allows the player to be the hero in an expansive open world".

We also know that the game will use the same artificial-intelligence technology as was used in The Sims 2, and will be structured around a number of story quests.

While there's no information about the plot or in what type of world the game will be located, we're going to go out on a limb and speculate that Project Gray Company will be based on the Lord of the Rings license. The small offering of concept art on Project Gray Company'sofficial website seems to boster this theory (tell us those aren't Uruk-Hai faces in the picture above), as does the fact that "Grey Company" was the name of a band of rangers who fought alongside Aragorn in J.R.R. Tolkien's books.

Project Gray Company's forum, also on the official site,invites discussion on what makes a great RPG, and asks gamers to offer comments on the design of the game as more details are revealed.

April 24,2006