No Rest for the Wicked is Moon Studios' Lord of the Rings, says CEO

Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler has compared its new game No Rest for the Wicked to Lord of the Rings, stating there's plenty to come after the game's 1.0 release – so don't expect a third Ori game “any time soon.”

The dark fantasy action-RPG released in early access earlier this month, but after its upcoming full 1.0 release Moon Studios plans to work on the game for “another five to 10 years” according to a post by Mahler on social media site X.

“Folks, we're nowhere near done with No Rest for the Wicked. There is so much that we've already built that none of you even know about and we want to deliver this in a masterful way!” said Mahler.

“No Rest for the Wicked is like our Lord of the Rings. And to further use this analogy, what we've done so far is akin to doing a 'test screening' of the first bits. 1.0 will be our 'Fellowship of the Ring'. And as you all know, there's lots to come after that.”

He concluded: “This is our Magnum Opus. We always had lofty ambitions and we said we're going to contribute in a huge way to the ARPG genre – and that is our intention.”

To a response asking if the team is working on a third Ori game, Mahler replied: “I hope now you folks understand why we won't be making Ori 3 any time soon!”

Indeed, Mahler has been busy on social media since the game's early access release. In another post over the weekend, I requested players leave a positive review on Steam to counter the negative comments left during its rocky launch.

“And yeah, mea culpa, we definitely should've managed expectations a lot more right from the start,” said Mahler. “I knew it'd be a challenge to market Wicked since we're trying to make something new that's based on what came before us, so to some degree it was clear that we'd disappoint this or that camp.

“And since we ran out of time to truly optimize the crap out of Wicked (which is obviously still going to happen, just look at what we did with Will of the Wisps after we had some performance struggles on Xbox One at the start), we got the full brunt of it.

“In all honesty, I wish we would've just been able to ship a month later, but sometimes that's just not how things work out.”

Last week Mahler defended the studio's decision to release the game in early access and stated PlayStation and Nintendo must also “embrace” it.

Oh and if you wondered why every Moon Studios game begins with a storm, it's a reference to Zelda: A Link to the Past!

“After a brutal start, No Rest For the Wicked's early access build settles into a compelling gameplay loop, but a lack of standout moments tempers expectations,” reads our Eurogamer early access review of No Rest for the Wicked.