The Stoor hobbit Sméagol, corrupted to the twisted shape of Gollum by one ring, is not the most obvious protagonist in a video game. But there is potential for the dual personalities in The Lord of the Rings’ most cunning character to be turned into fun gameplay. A battle between cowardice and vengeance, fought in the mind of your playable character, can develop into challenging choices and unique mechanics. Unfortunately, it seems that the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Gollum from developer Daedalic Entertainment is struggling to find such a captivating angle.
During a recent hands-off presentation, I was shown just over 20 minutes of beta gameplay footage from Lord of the Rings: Gollum. This was split into two locations in Middle-earth: Cirith Ungol, the trail that runs through the mountains of Mordor and serves as the stage for the game’s first chapter, and Thranduil the Elvenking’s Woodland Realm. While Gollum is inspired by the books rather than the movies, these places draw from more or less the same palette that was used for Peter Jackson’s fantasy epic, and they are therefore instantly recognizable.
The story, which takes place just a few years before The Fellowship of the Ring, sees Gollum desperately searching for his precious ring as he tries to stay out of Sauron’s clutches. This scenario forms the framework of a stealth game where you must avoid fighting at all costs so that you do not get caught by the servants of the dark lord.
Gollum is a linear game that consists of what Daedalic says are mostly demarcated environments, explored through a combination of stealth and climbing. While frequent use of both is required, there are sequences where you can choose your preferred approach. For example, a path patrolled by enemies may have an insidious route that you can follow among the shadows, so you can wait unseen for orcs to pass before moving into the next hidden spot of shrubbery. But the same path can also have walls covered with handles that allow you to scale over and around the same enemies.
Since Gollum is completely surpassed in strength by even the lowest ork, combat is completely out of the question. Enemies blocking your path must be dispatched using sneaker methods. The example from the presentation showed Gollum throwing a stone at a lamp to distract a orc, causing them to fall into a pit and be eaten by a resident giant spider, Shelob. This was clearly a scripted tutorial event, but hopefully later levels allow inventive and free form use of distractions and traps.
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Although Gollum cannot fight, he can murder via the well-established tradition of stealth takedowns. But suffocating ignorant enemies drains your stamina meter, and if you do not have enough stamina to finish the job, then it’s over. Daedalic explains that there is some leeway to escape enemies if they spot you, but being very close to alerted enemies will result in them catching you. This adds a significant risk of takedowns, but it raises concerns about how widespread instant-fail stealth will be throughout the game.
Fortunately, Gollum does not always have to get close to enemies, as he can sometimes simply climb past them. Instead of the ‘climb anything’ design of games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and recent Assassin’s Creeds, Gollum uses predetermined paths through the environment. That’s not a bad thing in itself – it’s undoubtedly better suited to the somewhat puzzle-adventure vibe that Gollum apparently goes for – but the visual design of the trails shown in the demonstration was, quite simply, ugly.
Among the gloomy cliffs of the Mordor Mountains were perfect, highly visible lines that Gollum could sparkle along. Vertical routes were covered with climbing vines that hung unnaturally, like thick blankets. Rock formations in Woodland Realm had strangely flat surfaces and rounded edges instead of naturally scratched finishes, which made the caves look strangely crafted. The only thing that reinforced that feeling was the many routes that had arrows painted on the surface to indicate the direction of travel, which seems completely out of place in Tolkien’s world. Could this not have been scribbles in Black Speech, similar to how God of War uses runes on his own climbing paths? Never mind the war for the ring, it seems like there is a war between environment and level design.
There is also a struggle to make the world separate from the most famous “Lord of the Rings” adaptation. Gollum looks and sounds mostly like the Andy Serkis version from the movies, except for his shock of black hair, where each side of his dual personality has similar vocal and movement features. It makes the performance seem a bit like an impression rather than a fresh interpretation of the book.
The two personalities Gollum and Sméagol become a gameplay mechanic in ‘moments of conflict’; scenarios where they quarrel and you have to select side. The example in the demonstration showed Sméagol wanting to befriend a beetle, while Gollum, who suspected it of being Sauron’s spy, insisted on crushing it. It was a rather overwhelming moment, but hopefully these sequences provide a stage for much more dramatic choices as the story unfolds. Daedalic promises that these choices will change the outcome of situations, affect how others perceive Gollum, and even dictate the fate of certain characters.
There’s definitely some BioWare-like potential in these choices, but I’m a little wondering why Lord of the Rings: Gollum doesn’t seem to be doing more with the concept. I can imagine a game where choosing Sméagol choices improves your climbing skills, and provides more options to suit the conflict-unfavorable side of the character, while choosing to focus on the Gollum personality that nurtures your stealth toolkit. But there are no unlockable skills; Daedalic confirmed that Gollum has all his abilities right from the start of the game.
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Without ability-based character development across the game’s scope, the level design must be incredibly varied and inventive to constantly offer engaging challenges and a sense of progression. But even Elvenking’s Halls part of the presentation, taken from halfway through the game, seemed to consist of little more than climbing ledges and pillars with no real need to overcome obstacles. Some climbing surfaces require endurance management to cross, but this did not appear to present any significant challenge. I am left with the impression of a game that will simply ask us to move from A to B down linear paths without much opportunity for experimentation or expression.
That is hopefully not the case. Hopefully, both parts of the game shown in the presentation are just bad examples of what Daedalic has done. Or perhaps Gollum’s strengths simply do not lie in what was shown; it draws, after all, from one of the deepest wells of fantasy-lore that exists, so perhaps a story of complex choice actually hides behind this boring part of gameplay. But so far, I am left with the overwhelming impression of a simple game that would have landed better in the era when Peter Jackson’s trilogy was still in theaters than it will be in 2022.
We’ll see if that feeling is right when The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is released on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S on September 1st.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.