Monolith Productions has worked on two Middle-Earth games based off J.R.R Tolkien’s legendarium, Shadow of Mordor (2014) and Shadow of War (2017). They are working on their next game right now and have multiple job openings at the studio.

Monolith Production’s Next-Gen Ambitions

As we have uncovered in the past regarding Rockstar Games, the next game by Monolith Productions is likely targeting next generation of systems i.e the PS5 and the next Xbox. Just having a look at their job listing, it appears that they are now using buzzwords like “next big gaming innovation.” This can be a key to figure out what they are planning for their next game because the Nemesis system of Shadow of Mordor was always hailed as a great new gaming innovation.

First up is an opening for Advanced Software Engineer, Pipeline. It asks the applicant to join a team that will work on the “new Open World Pipeline” at Monolith Productions. While Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War offered large open areas, they were not truly open world games. It seems like the next step for Monolith is to go full open world.

Are Monolith Productions Finally Going Full Open World?

They seek a person who has knowledge of “in-depth understanding of modern, real-time Open World content generation pipelines.” The task is to develop “new pipelines enabling creation of a single scalable, stream-able contiguous open world that players can immerse themselves in for our next big gaming innovation.”

The most recent job listing for a Senior Software Engineer, Gameplay, calls for someone who wants to join Monolith for “creating game systems for exciting, cutting-edge action games.” If I had to make a bet, their next game is going to be another Middle-Earth release but with a bigger scope this time.

This could mean an evolution for Monolith Productions’ in-house LithTech engine as well. They last updated the engine for Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (code-named Firerbird) to support larger scale battles as well as the expanded Nemesis system. This new game they’re working on, which we’ll assume is an open world Middle-Earth game, could lead to them improving the engine to support their open word ambitions.

It is exciting to imagine what is currently in development at Monolith Productions, and while Shadow of War might be a little disappointing, it was a still a fun game that just strayed away further from The Lord of the Rings lore and suffered as a result.

What do you think of the news? Would you like another game in the Middle-Earth series? Let us know in the comments below.