Following outings in the Star Wars universe in Star Wars: Battlefront and its sequel, developer Pandemic has confirmed that it’s currently immersing itself into J.R.R Tolkien’s world in The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, which is being worked on for the Microsoft Xbox 360, and announced today.

[Screenshots Source: VE3D]

Its makers claim that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest will allow players to finally fight the entirety of the key battles upon Middle-earth in the way that they want; featuring (for the first time) the chance to conquer the world as the legions of Sauron’s army, including Cave-trolls, Oliphaints, the Balrog and Sauron himself.

“Our Pandemic Studios creative teams have years of expertise bringing giant battlefields to life,” says Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager. “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.”

“We’ll freely admit that we’re rabid fans of The Lord of the Rings fantasy,” says 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.”

“We are thrilled to be working with Pandemic Studios on this game,” commented David Imhoff, Senior EVP of Worldwide Licensing & Merchandising for New Line Cinema. “They bring not only their incredible technical and creative abilities but also a great passion for The Lord of the Rings.”

We’ll get to see if all of these enthusiastic words translate into a quality product when Conquest is released this coming autumn.