With The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, Free Range Games and North Beach Games are taking the Lord of the Rings franchise in a direction that it's never been before. While Return to Moria certainly sounds promising, the development team would be wise to pull inspiration from recent successful titles, most notably, Valheim, which laid out a useful blueprint for future survival crafting titles to follow.

The announcement trailer for Return to Moria highlights a few key differences between the title and a game like Valheim. Most apparent is the fact that Return to Moria will take place exclusively underground whereas Valheim offers a more expansive, open-world experience, but all the principles that made Valheim so successful can still be applied in Return to Moria despite these differences.

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Return to Moria Needs to Put Exploration and Adventure First

Return To Moria Elven Entrance Fellowship of the Ring

If Valheim's success proved anything, it's that even in a survival crafting title, base-building needs to be tied to exploration. While Valheim's recent Mistlands update beefed up the game's crafting, Valheim has always woven its two central aspects together so tightly that neither can be neglected. In order to progress through the game, it's necessary for players to explore, gather materials, and defeat difficult bosses, but it's also essential that they have a strong base of operations from which to work. Return to Moria needs to build from this same idea. After all, The Lord of the Rings is the ultimate story of adventure, and any related title, regardless of the genre, should strive to pay homage to that.

For Return to Moria, adventure needs to be necessary to unlock better technologies and building components. For example, Return to Moria could make it so that delving deep enough reveals a relic of the Dwarves' and Elves' friendship that existed during the Second Age, which then grants the player access to Elvish architecture or other abilities. While there is plenty of lore to draw from, Return to Moria could play relatively fast and loose with the canon material, as the history of Moria is not as fleshed out as other aspects of the franchise.

Return to Moria Needs Major Boss Fights

Balrog Return to Moria

Return to Moria needs to take notes from Valheim and include major, difficult boss fights, that constitute major milestones for the player. The Balrog that Gandalf encounters is slain in the Third Age after the Fellowship encounters it, but there's an extensive compendium of creatures for Return to Moria to draw from, and it's not completely out of the question that there would be another Balrog lurking in the depths under Moria. It could be the case that defeating a Balrog gives the player fire-based powers or access to higher smelting temperatures, thus allowing them to craft better armor and weapons.

Even if Return to Moria wants to leave the Balrog out of it, it can still pull interesting monsters like the Watcher in the Water⁠, which in the interim between the Third and Fourth Ages could have slithered back into the waters beneath Moria. Since Moria is home to some of the most powerful beings that audiences ever see in the Lord of the Rings franchise, the setting lends itself perfectly to the adventure-based, boss-central progression of a title like Valheim. As players delve deeper in Return to Moria, they should face more difficult challenges, but also unlock greater rewards.

For what it's worth, Return to Moria could also structure a progression system around recovering ancient artifacts, much like Balin's ill-fated expedition when he returned to Moria before the events of Fellowship of the Ring. Whichever direction the developers decide to go, Return to Moria would hugely benefit from a system that delineates clear and obvious milestones of players' progression.

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria launches for PC in Spring 2023.

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