The Lord of The Rings: Gollum is the latest game from the lore of the infamous franchise. The latest game allows players to experience middle earth through Gollum’s feet. The game looks stunning and will create a new story that will move alongside The Lord of The Rings books. With new titles being teased every day, suck as Black Myth: Wukong and Gotham Knights, Gollum is also leaving its mark, further increasing the anticipation among the fans.
Daedalic hasn’t shown us an actual gameplay trailer yet, however, they have shown a teaser for the game. To say it looks amazing won’t do much justice to it.
The game will focus on stealth and the cunning abilities of Gollum. For the most part, it won’t be button-mash friendly as players will have to make choices regarding their playstyle, which would affect the narrative of the game. Similar to Prince of Persia, the game focuses on stealth and parkour with less focus on fighting. this aspect of the game justifies the personality of Gollum as he mostly uses deceit to his advantage.
Gameplay
The game would progress in two different ways. Firstly, the player will stealthily navigate their way around Mordor and the lurking enemies. And Secondly, make choices that are proposed by Smeagol or Gollum, as they fight for control. This added feature of split personality of the character brings a whole new life to the game.
The lead game designer, Martin Wilkes, spoke that the gameplay mechanics are much like Prince of Persia. There is much more parkour and stealth involved as compared to combat. You are able to kill enemies, however, it’s mostly through the use of throwables.
Killing your way through the game might sound easier, but the developers have added consequences to such actions. These consequences are supposed to promote stealth and deceit instead of combat, as these are the strengths of Gollum anyways.
We've got a new look at #Gollum in Daedalic's 'The Lord of the Rings: Gollum' game teaser
Lead game designer Martin Wilkes says gameplay is 'similar to Prince of Persia'
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The part-narrative based gameplay adds more life to the game. The players will be given prompts from both, Smeagol (good side) and Gollum (evil side). The story will progress according to your choices, giving it the essence of a branching narrative. These choices will affect the gameplay and the NPCs of the world, however, the ultimate end result will be the same. This is because the developers do not want to stray away from the story of the books.
The World Design
The game is set in middle earth. The world is inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien‘s own artwork and of course his books. The world is divided into different parts. When Gollum arrives at a part, there will be a limit to where he can go. He can expand this by further unlocking the areas by finding secret passages or learning new information.
Some parts of the world that will be completely open. Allowing users to explore according to their will. In contrast, there will be areas or levels that will be more streamlined or linear, limiting the users’ ability to explore.
Also read: Resident Evil Village gameplay leaked. running smoothly on the PS4 pro
Gollum or Smeagols story
The developers said that they will be strictly following J.R.R. Tolkiens books and whatever knowlge is available to them. This would normally mean that the story of the game would already be known however, in the novels, there isn’t much mention of Gollums past. The result is a new story while respecting the available lore of Gollum.
The game starts parallel to the first book when Frodo is still in the Shire and knows nothing. Gollum at that time is at Mordor and is on a desperate quest to find Bilbo Baggins and the Ring. However, Saurons guard catches him in the act and that is where the story of the game starts.
The game is currently planned to come out in 2021 on all the latest next-generation platforms including PC, Xbox, and PS5.