The Lord of the Rings: Gollum offers an authentic take on Tolkien's Middle-earth
Between Amazon’s recent Rings of Power series and no less than five games on the way from Embracer, there’s a wealth of Lord of the Rings stuff for fans to enjoy. But then, is Tolkien ever really out of fashion?
That includes The Lord of the Rings: Gollum from German studio Daedalic. It’s been in development for some time and is due out later this year – I recently visited the Hamburg studio to go hands-on with the game.
Despite inspiring countless video games, only a couple based directly on Tolkien’s work have truly stood out. After playing the game, I’m not so sure Gollum will reach the heights of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its innovative Nemesis system, but it’s certainly shaping up to be an authentic take on the original source material that lore enthusiasts will pore over.
That’s largely thanks to co-author of the game Damiri Knapheide, the studio’s resident Tolkien expert who’s in the process of writing a PhD on the author. And he’s not so worried about competition from other forthcoming games and media.
“As a fan, I like to see more,” he said. “We’re definitely coming out this year, but now it’s polishing. The other games and movies? I’m not so concerned about them, because we’re really in this tunnel, we have to get our thing done and we have to get it to the market.
“I’m happy that it’s still something people are interested in. I love Lord of the Rings so obviously I’d love for other people also to show that they are interested and to take inspiration from it.”
So why Gollum? After all, by comparison to skilled warriors and powerful wizards, his weak physicality seemingly doesn’t immediately lend itself to game design.
Actually a prototype Gollum game was created by a smaller studio which Daedalic took on. “We noticed that was a good choice because we have this timeframe where we have space where we can do our own interpretation,” said Knapheide.
“We have this little creature… Gollum, experiencing the world of magic, wonder, evil, good, from a small perspective. He doesn’t know it all, he’s not the big hero, big fighter.
“He has a lot of problems and he’s not a very sympathetic creature, so we made him a bit more cute,” jokes Knapheide. “He’s suffering and Gandalf has a lot of pity for him and there’s a reason for that, because he was just a tortured being and he wasn’t a good guy. So basically we tried to make him a bit more sympathetic, show his good side as well.”
Gameplay is mostly split into three areas: platforming, stealth, and puzzling.
Platforming, or parkour as Daedalic calls it, has an almost Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia feel to it. Gollum can scamper up walls and along them too, and leaping between platforms is methodical and intentional rather than a twitchy test of speed. Stealth sections are a bit basic – throw rocks to distract enemies, duck under water to avoid their gaze – but have a similarly puzzly sense to them.
