We’ve finally seen real gameplay of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. But it has us very worried. In our preview, you can find out what problems Gollum has to deal with shortly before release.
Uff. Excuse us. We really need to take a breath. Because we just watched 22 minutes of gameplay from The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. And if you remember, this sounded like an incredibly exciting project when it was announced. It was supposed to be one of the first games ever to use the next-gen power of the PS5, let us discover Middle-earth with new eyes and, of course, focus on Gollum as a tragic anti-hero. Great, right?
But our then world-exclusive preview already showed the first big question marks. Nothing about the graphics screamed Next Gen, the design of Gollum polarised, as Daedalic is not allowed to use the licence of the films, and stealth is not necessarily the first genre Lord of the Rings fans are currently longing for. Then came the postponement from 2021 to 2022 and suddenly it became suspiciously quiet about Daedalic’s expensive major project.
Now we finally got to see 22 minutes of beta gameplay from The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. But it gave us more of a headache than anticipation. Because so close to release, nothing here really looks like it should.
Gollum, is that you?
For all those who have lived in caves like Gollum up to now and don’t know what his first own game is actually about: it lets us experience a stand-alone story before the events from the books and films, starts with Gollum’s escape from Mordor and focuses on the character who is as controversial as he is ambivalent. But it is precisely with this character that the first shock moment of the presentation already awaits us.
The design of Gollum was already controversial after the first pictures – but in the meantime Daedalic has obviously tweaked it even more, because Gollum looks … let’s say … strange. We would love to show you the screenshot that made us shake our heads and laugh involuntarily, but we are not allowed to use any pictures from the presentation at this time. So we’ll try to describe it for you.
Imagine a bad-tempered, unrested child. Squinting. And has stolen his maths teacher’s black toupee and put it on. And then the whole thing in PS3 optics.
It sounds harsh to put it that way, after all Daedalic’s entire future as a development studio hangs on this expensive project they’ve been working on for a very long time. But that seems to be part of the problem. The design has been fiddled with for far too long. Since Daedalic only uses the book licence from Lord of the Rings, not the film licence, Gollum is not allowed to resemble his iconic design from the films. At the same time, he actually has to in order to work as a figurehead for the game. So what do they do?
Apparently they take the film design as a template and alienate it in several iterations until Gollum looks a bit like a parody of his film template.
And yet Daedalic has shown a much less bumbling hand with other well-known characters like Gandalf and Thranduil. They were obviously developed from scratch and based on their description from the novels. And the result is something to behold!
The Game of Big Abers
We also experience the presentation as very paradoxical in terms of level design. On the one hand, first images in the trailer show quite respectable locations of Middle Earth – on the other hand, in this showcase, as in previous gameplay videos, we again see almost only brown, dark caves. So here we have to trust the words of the developers that there are still great and varied levels to come.
We are also told that Gollum must always stay in the dark, because he is afraid of the sun and the moon. Great. There’s nothing better than really dark games. Sure, there are some really good ones, like the Arkham series, which looks great even in complete night blackness, but in terms of atmosphere and subtle light sources, Gollum can’t even come close.
We do see Thranduil’s halls, and yes, they are quite pretty to look at with their little waterfalls and floating lights, but as a fan of the films, you’re just used to a visual power that Gollum doesn’t come close to achieving.
And how we eventually move through these levels also feels pretty trivial. Although Gollum is supposed to be a sneaking game at heart, we hardly see any sneaking in the presentation. Mainly Gollum just runs from A to B, jumps and climbs a bit and otherwise doesn’t seem to encounter too many challenges. Yes, there is a stamina bar he has to watch out for when climbing and yes, he can strangle some enemies with a sneak attack from behind, but there is never any real tension – at least when watching.
At one point, two orcs meet him at a bridge. Gollum throws a pebble at a lamp, whereupon one of them takes three steps backwards in a slapstick-like cutscene and falls into the abyss with a silly scream. So of course the enemies don’t feel like a real threat and the thrills are extremely limited.
Although there are supposed to be “boss-like encounters” later on, Gollum does not learn any new skills or improve his skills in the course of the game. He cannot fight in the actual sense – apart from his strangle attack and throwing objects. However, this is only possible at fixed points in the levels, which, according to the developers, are more or less linear. Although there are supposed to be several routes from time to time that focus more on sneaking or climbing, for example.
Good idea, questionable execution
Similarly paradoxical so far in terms of story and atmosphere. Even if it is debatable whether Gollum can really be a charming game protagonist, the idea behind it is absolutely comprehensible and exciting. With his two sides, Sméagol and Gollum, we have two characters in one, so to speak, who fight among themselves for supremacy.
And that’s exactly what Daedalic thought when they built the decision-making mechanic for Gollum. Here we are supposed to have the possibility to have inner monologues with the good Smeagol side and the evil Gollum side and thus shape our story ourselves. This sounds great in theory – in practice we only saw Gollum thinking about eating a beetle in the presentation.
In addition, these decisions can only shape the plot to a very limited extent. According to the developers, there will be two somewhat different outcomes, but only one possible epilogue to the story, and that is quite logical. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum faces the classic prequel problem here: it must return to the status quo of the main storyline. All the more important that a rousing prequel shows us completely new sides of characters that let us see their story in a different light.
We have seen some good approaches here. While Gollum sneaks and climbs through the levels, he is questioned by Gandalf in the current timeline – we play Gollum’s memories of what happened. From off-screen we sometimes hear his comments and his view of things, as well as snippets from his time as Sméagol. He tells Gandalf, for example, that his family mistreated and disowned him. An emotional detail that we would have liked to know more about here – but it is unfortunately only touched on in a subordinate clause, at least in this scene.
And yet telling gripping stories is actually the great strength of Daedalic, who have shown a lot of heart and humour with their point & clicks like Edna Breaks Out and the Deponia series. At the same time, in their adventures for “The Black Eye” Satinav’s Chains and Memoria, they have shown how they can also tell somewhat more serious fantasy themes in a poignant way. So far we have not been able to see any of this in Gollum.
Now we have to emphasise again that we were only shown a beta version here and also only 22 minutes from it. The developers emphasised several times that they were still working on “all aspects of the game” and that we should not consider anything as final. But that is exactly part of the problem. Meanwhile, a release date of 1 September 2022 has been confirmed for PC and consoles – and yet Gollum still seems to be on shaky ground.
Yes, it is of course possible that we have simply seen unfavourable footage so far and that the story and gameplay are better presented in other levels. It’s also possible that the graphics will be improved a little. But in three months, miracles will no longer happen. And at the moment Gollum doesn’t feel like a game that every Lord of the Rings fan absolutely has to experience.
Editor’s Verdict
I’m actually the perfect target audience for Gollum: I love The Lord of the Rings, I love stealth games and Daedalic’s adventures have a really special place in my heart. So I wanted to welcome Gollum with open arms, despite or perhaps because of the unusual premise. But I’ve been disappointed on all counts so far.
I no longer feel any of the unique Daedalic storytelling that accompanied me throughout my youth, and even as a Lord of the Rings fan, I’ve hardly been offered anything here that sweeps me off my feet. No exciting new perspectives, no places where I would like to spend time and no real Middle Earth atmosphere.
And when it comes to gameplay, Gollum doesn’t show any courage or creativity – nothing here goes beyond rudimentary stealth gameplay that you’ve seen a hundred times before. So somehow the question remains why one should actually play The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. And I very much hope that we’ll get an answer to that by the time it’s released.
