The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is almost ready to ship after a very extended incubation period. Daedalic has announced that their stealth action take on JRR Tolkien’s fantasy universe will be released on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on May 25th. A Switch version will be released later this year. While the game’s mechanics are already well-known, this promises to offer a fresh approach if you weren’t enthralled by Monolith’s Middle-earth games’ hack-and-slash.
Throughout the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, you play Gollum in a hitherto unrecorded narrative about his pursuit for (what else?) the Precious. He is definitely not a brawler, thus he must live by sneaking and climbing. And, significantly, the conflict within his perverted psyche plays a significant part. You must choose between giving in to Gollum’s darker inclinations and clinging to Smeagol’s kindness. While this is a new story based on the books, you’ll encounter familiar characters and explore a setting largely influenced by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films.
To say Gollum took a long time to complete would be an understatement. It was first shown in 2019, although it wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 2021. That year passed (the pandemic didn’t help), and even a proposed September 2022 release date didn’t happen after a delay that was only meant to last “a few months” as Daedalic polished the title.
The timing might be advantageous to the game. In 2019, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV series was still in its early stages, while the most recent major Tolkien game (Middle-earth: Shadow of War) was out of print. It’s a very different story in 2023. The Rings of Power programme on Amazon is a huge hit, and cinematic effects company Weta Workshop is developing its own game based on the series. There’s a newfound interest in hobbits and orcs, and Gollum may profit from it.
