If it seems like they're announcing a new LEGO game every week now, well, it's because they almost are. It was only last Monday that they revealed the trailer for The LEGO Movie Videogame and now we have LEGO: The Hobbit, another trek back into Middle Earth for the series. Check out the announcement trailer below!
LEGO: Lord of the Rings is one of the finest of the series and offers up a massive open world for you to explore- basically all of Middle Earth at your fingertips. LEGO: The Hobbit will likely be much more linear. It follows the first two films in "The Hobbit Trilogy", "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" and the recently released "The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug".
As in the lengthy movies (and short novel) you follow a young Bilbo Baggins as he's unwillingly recruited by Gandalf and a whole crew of Dwarves to help them reclaim their kingdom and, more importantly, their gold from the dragon Smaug. The game will allow you to use and combine the Dwarves' abilities, which will presumably be easier to differentiate in the game, and they're promising the most diverse quests of any LEGO videogame to date. It's a bit strange to focus on just the first two films of the overblown trilogy when they could just incorporate the third one and delay the release a little though, isn't it? The game's not coming out until next year, anyway, and it's not like we have a shortage of LEGO games. But hey, then they could make a LEGO The Hobbit Part II and confuse the hell out of everyone.
Don't let me come off like I'm being too hard on the game. It's remarkable how much the series has improved over the years, iteration after iteration, but there have been a TON of them. There have been 18 (!) licensed games released since LEGO: Harry Potter kicked things off in 2001, and that's not even including their own properties like the Wii U-exclusive Lego City Undercover or the Bionicle games. None of these games are as nifty as LEGO: The Last of Us, however.
LEGO The Hobbit will hit on an unspecified date in 2014 for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Vita, and PC. Sorry, Wii and DS owners- it looks like it's time to update your system.
