Hm, interesting. Pandemic Studios, creators of the well-known Star Wars: Battlefront series (a company now owned by EA, just like BioWare) has unveiled that they are working on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, a Tolkien-flavored spin on the Battlefront concept.

We've got every single battle from the movies and then some. We've got Helm's Deep, Pelennor Fields, Minas Tirith, The Black Gates, and then we've got a bunch of other cool stuff like the Mines of Moria. Weathertop, The Shire. We've got a whole level where you get to play as the evil guys, running through The Shire, trampling Hobbits and burning the place to the ground.

And really we've focused equal parts on the good perspective and the idea of re-creating cinematic moments from the films -- not faithfully so much, but just kind of allowing the player to experience moments that are like the films -- but also really, for the first time, letting you get the chance to play as all of the bad guys. Play as the Balrog, play as Sauron and Sarumon, and really kind of live out that fantasy fulfillment of "what would it be like to really just destroy Middle-Earth? What if evil had won?"

I found Lord of the Rings games about as fresh as the third season of Prison Break. So not that fresh really. But then again, we are talking about a company wholly owned by the monster-milking corporation known as EA. And EA's gonna keep milking until Gandalf's nipples turn blue.