Return to Moria looks more like Lord of the Rings Valheim than ever before in new gameplay trailer

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria resurfaced at Summer Game Fest, and the survival-crafting game looks more like Tolkein Valheim than ever before.

The brief trailer features voiceover from John-Rhys Davies, who plays Gimli in the Peter Jackson film trilogy. While Gimli Lockbearer is a character in Return to Moria, a new press release only confirms that Davies is the narrator for this trailer - not that he actually has a role in the game itself.

The footage shows a look at crafting big underground structures, digging deep (and potentially greedily), and a healthy dose of combat against against creatures like spiders, orcs, and krakens. It looks like pretty familiar survival fare, but the dwarven aesthetics at a fun extra layer of flavor over games like Valheim.

The game features full, optional co-op, letting you take your custom dwarf online to play with friends as you dig deep into Moria. The story takes place after the events of The Lord of the Rings, and sees you attempting to reclaim the lost stretches of Moria, which is all procedurally generated here.

Return to Moria was scheduled to hit PC in spring earlier this year, but is now scheduled to launch fall 2023. While the game had previously only been set to launch on PC, developer Free Range Games has now confirmed that it's also on the way to PS5 and Xbox Series X and S.

The E3 2023 schedule is rolling strong even without the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Check out our Summer Game Fest liveblog for everything from today's show.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.