Lord of the Rings: Gollum Demo Report: Little Gollum Adventure

A reinterpretation of the side of the classic Lord of the Rings story

To be honest, my knowledge of The Lord of the Rings was really limited to the Lord of the Rings trilogy film directed by Peter Jackson twenty years ago. Although the grand war scenes and revealing worldview structure in the film satisfy all my fantasies about "Western magic" to the greatest extent, in most discussions of "The Lord of the Rings" or "Middle-earth", I still prefer to put myself in the perspective of "passers-by" to express respect for the original work and its readers.

But you can never deny that the popularity of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy has indeed influenced the trend of contemporary pop culture to a large extent, laying the foundation for the wonderful scene of "Middle-earth" in the public's heart, and creating a flesh-and-blood character image for the audience. And of course, this also includes "Gollum", which later became a milestone in the application of motion capture technology.

I know that "having players play as Gollum" sounds a bit awkward when it comes to video games, but that's what happened, a group of indie game makers from Germany took over the task of making the game, and we got an early taste of some of it in early access, and hopefully you can get some general understanding of Lord of the Rings: Gollum through this report - about its core selling points and the right player base.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

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Perhaps the character of Gollum does not need more introduction. He is one of the important (and arguably "most important") characters throughout the second half of the Third Age, and it can be said that it is because of his existence that the movie "The Hobbit" and the story of "The Lord of the Rings" came about.

The main story of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum begins after Bilbo takes the Lord of the Rings away and Gollum leaves the Misty Mountains in pursuit of the Lord of the Rings. Although his journey was mentioned as early as "The Lord of the Rings: The Messenger of the Rings", neither Tolkien's original work nor the later "Lord of the Rings" series of movies gave a more detailed description of this part of the content, which also gave the creative team of this work a certain amount of free play.

"The Lord of the Rings: Gollum" is an original work that does not destroy the overall structure of the original work, it combines the "narrative dominant" and "small to medium" game genre that Deadalic is good at, trying to provide players with a "Lord of the Rings" story that also focuses on the "Lord of the Rings" story between "The Adventures of The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Ring Messenger", but different from the original work or movie perspective - in other words, whether you are satisfied with the level of this original story or not, it will not touch the foundation of the original work. There is probably no safer approach to licensing a game adaptation.

In this demo, we briefly experienced three parts of the game, namely Gollum's departure from the Misty Mountains, enslavement by Sauron's army, and escape from the dark forest. Through Deadalic's description of these three paragraphs, I also basically have a general understanding of the gameplay and strengths of this work.

As depicted in all works, Gollum has never been a "Lord of the Rings" character with considerable combat power, and he is not destined to be able to confront enemies with blades head-on, which also determines that "The Lord of the Rings: Gollum" will not be known for "fighting" from beginning to end. At the end of the first chapter, Gollum will face the dilemma of being besieged by Sauron's "Ringlings", and if Gollum can survive through his cunning in the face of ordinary orc soldiers, the only thing he can really do when encountering such a powerful enemy as the Ringling is to run around or use his rhetoric to deceive others.

In fact, "Lord of the Rings: Gollum" does focus on the traditional "climbing and jumping" and "stealth assassination" outside of the narrative, hoping to emphasize the flexibility and cunning of Gollum. For most of what we experienced, Gollum faced a difficult situation, witnessing both how he fell into Sauron's hands and how he escaped the dark forest after being interrogated by Gandalf and others.

It's almost impossible to deny that if you exclude the narrative that Deadalic is good at and the super heavyweight IP of "The Lord of the Rings", "The Lord of the Rings: Gollum" is the kind of action-adventure game you often saw in previous years - the protagonist can run and jump and climb walls along the way, and when it really doesn't, it can bring a little assassination element.

However, if you want to ask me how fun this part is, I really don't know how to answer you, because compared to the large number of similar games on the market, "Lord of the Rings: Gollum" really can't find anything particularly outstanding, it really looks like a set of ordinary gameplay forced on the head of "The Lord of the Rings".

The gameplay that is no longer new, coupled with Deadalic's no previous experience in making similar games, makes most of the levels in the demo experience extremely mediocre, and the game leaves the player with the challenge of simply crossing obstacles to the target location, occasionally inserting the common routine of "throwing stones to attract enemies" in the process, and even rougher than some game series that you have already talked about.

Personally, I prefer to attribute this roughness to the current immature version of the game. After all, games in the development stage will always have such and such problems, and under the extremely mediocre gameplay of this game, you can still see Deadalic's efforts to make the game more fun, such as designing multiple routes in stealth levels to emphasize the importance of player decisions; Or add a simple "stamina bar management" mechanic to some climbing content to try to emphasize the player's sense of urgency when they are at the end of the wall.

Unfortunately, game design has always been a specialty, and Deadalic's specialty is obviously not stealth or platforming, which ultimately creates a dilemma where the level of the Lord of the Rings: Gollum is not up to par, and the feedback on stealth and kills is hardly comfortable. At least in this experience, I didn't see much that was worth paying for by passers-by – for those who are already familiar with "climbing" and "stealth" gameplay, Lord of the Rings: Gollum didn't show that value.

But contrary to the lack of experience in action games, Deadalic can be called familiar with "video game narrative", which is also an excellent fit with the "original adventure story" that this game aims for from the beginning.

Unfortunately, I don't have much to tell you about this part – but I do know that Lord of the Rings: Gollum doesn't directly state the story we already know in a straight narrative. At the beginning of the story, Deadalic specially arranges the dialogue between Gandalf and Gollum in the dark forest as a narrative clue, which also provides a good way for players to understand (and substitute) the logic of Gollum's behavior.

What's more worth mentioning is that although the outcome of this journey has already been decided, in order to emphasize the importance of the player throughout the narrative process, "Lord of the Rings: Gollum" has specifically added the design of "moral choice" to the story, and when faced with the same thing, the two personalities in Gollum's body - "Gollum" and "Smeag" often make different choices, the former choice is often inclined to be fierce and cunning, while the latter is biased towards kindness and caution. These moral choices can bring small variables to your game to a certain extent, especially for those Lord of the Rings fans who are familiar with the original setting, this part of the content may bring some unexpected surprises.

Of course, I'm more interested in the parts that aren't mentioned in the original than the three parts shown in this demo, such as the interaction between Gollum and the Great Spider Corpse, and the clip where Gollum uses his tricks to tease the orcs. And in the future official release, they will also be the key to determining the actual quality of the game.

Although the gameplay part of "Lord of the Rings: Gollum" does not satisfy my fantasy of the "Lord of the Rings" IP, I am still willing to believe in Deadalic's narrative superiority.

Fortunately, there is still some time before the official release of the game, and they can completely put aside their pursuit of popular gameplay and fully play their strengths - at least at the narrative level, so as not to disappoint "Lord of the Rings" fans, which is actually enough.