Eurogamer had the chance to see a 10-month old build of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum during a recent preview event. There’s a heavy emphasis on stealth, with Gollum able to use his heightened senses to “feel sounds in the darkness”. The story revolves around Gollum’s attempt to escape Barad Dur, where he has been since he was captured by Sauron. In the footage we saw, Gollum had just made his way through an area infested by spiders, and entered an area higher up from the mines and slave pits under the Barad Dur tower. Gollum has almost superhuman strength and incredible climbing skills (he’s essentially had freeclimbing training for 500 years, the developers said), so he does a lot of climbing to stay out of sight. He can even do walljump combos and slide down steep cliffs when under pressure. The gameplay we saw made it look like Gollum is able to clamber up most surfaces, and the levels have been built with verticality in mind. Gollum is useless in a straight fight, but he can perform takedowns if he approaches enemies from behind. The problem here is Gollum struggles to kill his foe in this situation and ends up making a lot of noise, so perhaps you’re better off avoiding combat altogether. If Gollum is spotted, he has no choice but to run away and hide until he breaks line of sight with those nasty orcses. Perhaps the most interesting mechanic lets players decide whether they want to act like Smeagol or Gollum in a certain situation. We saw an old version of this mechanic, when it was a reaction game, but we were told that’s not how it’ll work when the game comes out. Expect to see the final version of this choice mechanic when development is further along. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is due out on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch during the third quarter of 2022, Daedalic said.
