Sneaky stealth game The Lord of the Rings: Gollum will release on 1st September for PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, developer Daedalic has announced. A Nintendo Switch launch will follow later this year, although there’s no exact date for this as yet.
“The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, based on the legendary The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books by JRR Tolkien, tells of Gollum’s experiences from behind-the-scenes in the first chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring,” writes Daedalic. “After losing his precious ring to Bilbo Baggins, Gollum decides to leave the Misty Mountains and embark on a perilous journey that leads him from the dungeons of Barad-dûr to the realm of the Wood-elves in Mirkwood.
“In order to survive the dangers of his journey through Middle-earth, Gollum has to sneak and climb and use all his cunning.” As part of a hands-off preview last week, I got to see some of this cunning in action.
Gollum is certainly an agile creature, with the ability to scale walls with ease (he has had 500 years to hone his skills by this point, after all). However, he is much weaker in combat than your typical hero, and as such players must account for and adjust for this weakness in order to prevail against the adversaries in Middle Earth – including some boss fights.
That said, don’t go into the game expecting Gollum to get stronger as the story progresses. Rather, the abilities Gollum has at its start are the same abilities he will have when it concludes. “This makes sense in the context of the lore of the game,” said Daedalic. “The events that happen during the game happen in a pretty compressed amount of time compared to Gollum’s overall lifespan, so it didn’t seem very logical that he would gain new abilities [throughout].”
This has inherently turned The Lord of the Rings: Gollum into one big puzzle. Rather than taking on orcs and such head-to-head, Gollum must use the environment and his “Gollum Vision” to bypass encounters and gain the advantage.
This was shown off in the preview I saw with Gollum throwing a rock at a nearby light to plunge a patrolling orc into darkness. In their confusion, the orc soon fell to their death without Gollum ever laying his fingers on them.
In short, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum isn’t going to be an expansive action game, but in fairness, it was never intended to be. As well as seeing more of the stealth gameplay, I got to see the split personality mechanic in action.
“Players will be the protagonist and antagonist at the same time, unified in one person,” the preview’s narrator stated.
“[Gollum] has to deal with his Hobbit-self – Sméagol. It’s up to the players if they want Gollum to have the upper hand when it comes to making important decisions, or if they prefer to allow Sméagol to take over.”
During the preview, I saw both sides of Gollum’s personality argue over whether or not a beetle could be trusted. Gollum wanted to eat the beetle, suspecting it was a spy from Mordor. On the other hand, Sméagol wanted to watch the beetle and felt it was simply an innocent creature.