Lord of the Rings: Gollum
A familiar story from a different perspective.
GOLLUM IS NOT A FIGHTER, SO STEALTH PLAYS A PROMINENT ROLE IN THE GAME.
An air of mystery has surrounded The Lord of the Rings: Gollum ever since it was announced by Daedalic back in March 2019. The studio has outlined its grand vision for the game: to tell the story of the destruction of the One Ring from the perspective of Gollum, rather than the Fellowship.
But now, finally, I get to see the game in action, and get a sense of how it might actually play. Alas, it’s a hands-off demo, and the developer playing it says the build is ten months old. So I’m not getting a totally accurate picture of what the finished game will be like.
Gollum has been imprisoned in Barad-dûr, the colossal tower built by Sauron in the fiery heart of Mordor. The Dark Lord’s stronghold looks massive from the perspective of the diminutive former hobbit. Luckily he’s an expert climber.
The developer controlling the demo notes that Gollum has been clambering around Middle-earth for around 500 years, and has developed superhuman strength and climbing skills as a result.
He can run on walls, swing on poles, slide down cliffs, and crawl up certain surfaces. He may be a wretched monster tormented by the power of the One Ring, but he’s very nimble on his feet.
In the build I’m shown, Gollum’s animations are in pretty rough shape. I watch him scramble around Barad-dûr, and it feels very… placeholder. There are no smooth transitions between his various
states – running, climbing and swinging – which makes it look stiff and robotic.
Gollum is trying to reach the immense gate that leads out of the tower. There’s no map screen or minimap in the game, so you have to pay close attention to the environment to find a way your way there. At one point Gollum acquires a handdrawn map scribbled by an orc, but as you might expect, it’s not that easy to read.
The scale and detail of the tower is impressive. It’s all jagged obsidian spires and snaking rivers of bubbling lava, which is exactly the kind of interior decoration you’d expect from an edgelord like Sauron.
Daedalic says its approach to level design in the game will give players a lot of freedom. There will, apparently, be multiple ways to get through an area, which I get a sense of as I see Gollum picking a route through Barad-dûr.
Gollum is not a fighter, meaning stealth plays a prominent role in the game. Another of his abilities is having a keen sense of hearing – especially in the dark.
MY PRECIOUS
This wasn’t implemented in the demo I saw, but in the finished game you’ll be able to see sounds, helping you find enemies and predict their movements. If you manage to isolate a lone orc, Gollum can knock them out – but this takes a long time and generates a lot of noise.
One of the most interesting things about Gollum is the raging internal battle between his current self and Sméagol, the hobbit he used to be before the ring polluted his mind. At certain points in the game you’re forced to make a choice, deciding whether to react to something as the violent, bitter, duplicitous Gollum, or the meek, kindly Sméagol.
It’s an intriguing concept, but I was thrown off a bit by the portrayal of the character. This game is based purely on the books – as a fan of the films I struggled a bit with hearing someone other than Serkis performing the role.
That’s gonna take some getting used to. But Daedalic has promised that it will remain faithful to the source material, which means we might not see anything as egregious as ShadowofWar’s bizarrely sexy Shelob here.