Daedalic, NACON, The Lord of the Rings and everyone’s favorite little gremlin boy, Gollum, combine on September 1, as the ‘cinematic stealth action game’ The Lord of the Rings: Gollum comes out. The ring-loving gray goblin will hit PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC then, with a Switch version planned for later on.
The story follows Gollum during the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, as he tracks Bilbo Baggins’ path through Middle-Earth to try to get his Precious back. That’s, uh, just about all we know about the game, beyond you’ll be making important decisions about which of Gollum’s personalities is in control, and presumably how and how many people die. Not a sign of extended gameplay has yet shown its face, though with this large a license it’s possible an announcement is on the way during the upcoming Summer Game Fest.
Which begs the question of why this release date has been announced in an unassuming press release rather than the next time a trailer is ready. We haven’t seen so much as an in-game screenshot so far, with all trailers and images being cinematic renders rather than anything that’s ready to play. There was this combination of clear target-render stuff and extremely early gameplay footage last year, but neither looked very impressive.
Daedalic and NACON are both companies with spotty track records – not horrendous, but hardly folks you’d put all your money on every game being a mega-hit. It’s a tad worrying for fans of Lord of the Rings, but you never know, they might be pulling a late-reveal marketing master stroke.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.