This could have been The Elder Scrolls in the Lord of the Rings world. The White Council was set to have an open world
When Electronic Arts acquired the Lord of the Rings brand, it was expected that the company would have a representative capable of competing with the Elder Scrolls series. LotR: The White Council was to be an RPG with an open, living world.
EA Redwood Shores studio has earned the trust of Lord of the Rings fans thanks to the warmly received Return of the King and the experimental, yet successful Third Age, which combined the universe of The Lord of the Rings with solutions typical of Japanese RPGs. Sometime after the release of the latter, the team received a special task from their parent company, Electronic Arts: to develop a project that would serve as a response to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and would take players to Middle-earth. Thus was born the idea for The Lord of the Rings: The White Council.
Open Middle-earth
The creation of EA Redwood Shores, which was undoubtedly one of the most ambitious projects of this team, was created under the code name Project Gray Company. The main draw, and the feature that sets this game apart from other Middle-earth titles, was intended to be the open world. The developers wanted to provide us with a vast territory that we could freely explore.
The devs planned to set the game's action before the events of The Lord of the Rings and allow us to play as a human, dwarf, elf, or hobbit. Regardless of the chosen race, our character was to become an agent of the titular White Council, a group that brings together the Istari and the most powerful elves, fighting against Sauron.
It's hard to predict what territory the open world of the described game would cover. Nonetheless, from the concept sketches provided by the developers, it appears that we would have received a variety of locations reminiscent of those from Peter Jackson's film trilogy. Among these, there would be places inhabited by humans, elves, and dwarves, as well as the dark wastelands of Mordor.
Living Middle-earth
It also largely remains a mystery what the gameplay in The Lord of the Rings: The White Council would look like. EA Redwood Shores revealed some of the cards it had been hiding.
That's why we know that the devs planned to tackle the concept of a "living" world, with artificial intelligence managing its inhabitants, using solutions created for The Sims 3.
Furthermore, the creators disclosed that while the story quests would drive their project, similar to The Elder Scrolls series, nothing would stop them from entirely ignoring these quests and setting off in search of side missions or simply not focusing on quests and having their own adventures in Middle-earth.
Of course, there would also be no shortage of opportunities to reach for a weapon here. The title would allow us to become a warrior, a ranger, or even a wizard, and the choice of profession we make would determine the fighting style of our character and their preferred weapon. The implemented combat system was intended to merge tactical skills from the Third Age with impressive real-time battles, seen in The Return of the King.
"The White Council" was to be based on both the film trilogy and the content of J.R.R. Tolkien's novels, to which Electronic Arts also had rights. Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to see what the developers had prepared for us based on this rich source material.
Early end of the project
The Lord of the Rings: The White Council was announced in July 2006. The creators provided us with bits of information about their project and released the previously mentioned concep arts along with some behind-the-scenes production materials. Unfortunately, in February 2007 it was announced that due to "management problems" this project was delayed indefinitely. Given that EA has already lost the rights to the Lord of the Rings brand, there is little chance of this project being revived.
What happened next?
The Lord of the Rings: The White Council in the Electronic Arts catalog was replaced by The Lord of the Rings: Conquest from Pandemic Studios, which was a completely different title, drawing heavily from the Battlefield series or Star Wars: Battlefront, emphasizing multiplayer gameplay.
A hazy idea of what an RPG set in the Lord of the Rings universe might be like was provided by the action RPG game, with a focus on "action," called Lord of the Rings: War in the North, which was released in 2011. Nonetheless, it was far from being "Oblivion in Middle-earth."
EA Redwood Shores was the only one to emerge unscathed from this turmoil (at least temporarily), and in 2009 it was renamed Visceral Games. Its further fate is a subject for a completely different story...
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