Pandemic Studios, which was recently bought by Electronic Arts, has announced that it is working on a brand spanking new Lord of the Rings title.

The game will carry the name The Lord of the Rings: Conquest and will use the movie license.

Conquest is set to drop players into the battles of the films, with Pandemic telling us that players can “fight the entirety of these epic battles any way they want”. In a nutshell, that means that we'll be able to play as both good and evil.

As for which battles are on offer, the game's director, Eric Gewirtz, said in an interview^†, “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.”

The game is set for release on the PS3, Xbox 360, PC and DS.

“Our Pandemic Studios creative teams have years of expertise bringing giant battlefields to life”, uttered Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager. We'll give him that. Pandemic is the studio behind Star Wars: Battlefront and its sequel. “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 Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ realm”, he went on.

“We’ll freely admit that we’re rabid fans of The Lord of the Rings fantasy”, said Josh Resnick, co-founder and general manager at Pandemic Studios. “Our experience creating massive, rich, action-packed games means that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest will give fans exactly what they want: full control of the blade, bow and magic to fight its epic battles any way they want – even if they choose to play from the evil side.”

The last game based on the Lord of the Rings license from EA was Battle for Middle Earth II, while the company has The White Council in development.

^{†Source: IGN}