The Lord of the Rings: Gollum preview \u2013 Sm\u00e9agol shares equal billing in stealth adventure NaconLord of the Rings: Gollum is still on track for a 2022 launch, and from Dexerto\u2019s recent preview of the game, it could be an impressively faithful adaptation of the original source material. Movie tie-ins are common enough in video games, but book tie-ins are a little rarer. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is one such adventure, with developer Daedalic going out of its way to distance the title from Peter Jackson\u2019s cinematic adaptations. If you\u2019ve ever dreamed of swinging a sword in Middle-earth, lopping off Orc heads at Helm\u2019s Deep, then trust us when we say that Gollum won\u2019t scratch that particular itch on your hairy feet. This is a stealth game, and as part of Nacon\u2019s Bigben Week event in Paris, we came away mightily impressed by what we saw. Starting in the Middle (Earth) The Lord of the Rings: Gollum takes our familiar protagonist and follows the events that occur between The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The key thing to note is that this is very much Tolkien\u2019s world, with developer Daedalic Entertainment hiring experts on the author to help add details that distinguish it from Jackson\u2019s blockbuster movies. That means, quite jarringly at first, that Gollum looks a little different from how you may expect \u2014 his eyes are bigger, and his brow is more protruding. As it happens, that actually makes his facial animations easier to read, especially since there\u2019s no Andy Serkis here to offer motion capture. In the game\u2019s initial tutorial, we see Gollum scuttering through huge caves hunting for the One Ring, and it\u2019s here we get our initial glimpse of his almost insect-like animation. The former Hobbit doesn\u2019t run, he scuttles, jittering between darkened areas of the map and throwing rocks to draw attention away from where he\u2019s headed. The frail Sm\u00e9agol isn\u2019t one for fighting, but he\u2019s comfortable getting blood on his hands when the opportunity presents itself \u2014 strangling one, isolated Orc in a flurry of grasping and clinging, knowing the Orc would kill him in one fell swoop. It\u2019s effective at showcasing Gollum\u2019s tension and desperation, with a stamina bar meaning he can\u2019t just choke the life out of any enemy. Two for one Of course, Gollum\u2019s story isn\u2019t just about Gollum, and Sm\u00e9agol gets his share of the limelight, too. In an early section, the duo deliberates whether to let a small beetle live, or whether to crush it. We opted for the former, and while we didn\u2019t see how that choice played out in our hands-off demo, we\u2019re assured that decisions will have larger ramifications. That\u2019s exciting because Gollum and Sm\u00e9agol\u2019s inner turmoil allows for interesting gameplay choices. Do you slay an Orc, or sneak by? With multiple routes to choose, plus the aforementioned gameplay choices, there\u2019s the potential for multiple playthroughs that play out very differently. Read more: Evil Dead: The Game review \u2013 Groovy asymmetrical horror is a love letter to the franchise – While sneaking itself is fairly rudimentary in terms of finding shadows to lurk in and breaking line of sight with enemies, circumnavigating areas also allows Gollum to stretch his legs with some impressive traversal, including climbing and wall-running. After all, he\u2019s been in the mountains for hundreds of years, and seeing him crawl up a wall makes him look less like his former, Hobbit self than ever before. Speaking of crawling, we did get a glimpse of some other enemies in the game, notably an infamously large spider that fans will recognize as being much more faithful an adaptation than in Shadow of War, and the Nazg\u00fbl, complete with terrifying dragon mounts. Make no mistake, Gollum is shaping up to be a dark fantasy tale just as Tolkien intended, and while we know how the character\u2019s story ends, we can\u2019t wait to see it unfold all over again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum preview \u2013 Sm\u00e9agol shares equal billing in stealth adventure NaconLord of the Rings: Gollum is still on track for a 2022 launch, and from Dexerto\u2019s recent preview of the game, it could be an impressively faithful adaptation of the original source material. Movie tie-ins are common enough in video […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}