The Lord of the Rings Conquest Unveiled has word that Pandemic is working on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, a LotR-inspired variant on the gameplay they created for Star Wars: Battlefront. They help fill us in about the project by offering a Q&A with Eric Gewirtz, and far from a Tolkien conversation, this interview runs five pages. Here's a bit describing what the game will entail:

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?"