The unexpected drop of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition last week surprised a lot of us — and now developer and publisher Aspyr has confirmed that it’s just the beginning. In their official press release, Aspyr stated that fans “can look forward to even more classic releases by Aspyr from the beloved franchise in the future,” hopefully signaling a deliberate effort to bring old-school Middle-earth gaming back to modern platforms.
While the films by Peter Jackson were dominating the cultural conversation, EA Games was producing some of the most-loved titles tied to the license. The Two Towers and The Return of the King (both published by EA in 2002 and 2003 respectively) translated the battle sequences of Jackson’s trilogy into satisfying hack-and-slash gameplay, with actual film footage and Howard Shore’s score woven throughout. The Third Age was a turn-based RPG that shadowed the Fellowship’s journey– though it it played loosely with Tolkien’s narrative.
As Push Square reports, War in the North – Legacy Edition — the 2011 co-op action RPG developed by Snowblind Studios — has now landed on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC, with Aspyr handling the remaster duties. The game, which follows three original characters through the northern conflict running parallel to the War of the Ring, has always had a devoted following despite limited post-launch support from its original publisher.
Beyond War in the North, the titles most likely to resurface under Aspyr’s revival program include the EA action classics — The Two Towers, The Return of the King, and The Third Age — alongside The Hobbit (2003, also published by EA) and Conquest (2009, Pandemic Studios’ large-scale battle game). All of these titles have been dormant on modern storefronts due to licensing complexities, making Aspyr’s apparent acquisition of remaster rights a significant development. No titles beyond War in the North have been officially named yet.
