I’m not sure whether any of my readers have been anxiously waiting for me to start reviewing trailers for upcoming video games, but the lack of gaming content on my channel has bothered me for a while – even though it really shouldn’t, since I’m not a professional gamer by any stretch of the imagination. But the thing is: video games are increasingly growing more and more cinematic as time goes by, and the industry of adapting them to the big screen has become very profitable over in Hollywood. In fact, one could even say they’re becoming very prestige, with the recent news that Cate Blanchett will star in Lionsgate’s Borderlands adaptation.
It’s highly unlikely that a game like The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum will ever get that same treatment, but the reason I’ve selected this as my first video game trailer to review is simple: firstly, I’m familiar with this franchise, and I can think of things to say about it. Secondly, I’ve been considering reviewing certain video game trailers for a while, and this one just happened to land at an advantageous moment. So here we go!
The teaser trailer for Daedelic Entertainment’s Gollum is extremely brief, and features no glimpse of actual gameplay. In theory, the game is supposed to be stealth-based, with the player doing their best to control the frail, diminutive protagonist (I use that term loosely) as he switches back and forth between his two wildly different personas: the cunning, manipulative Gollum, and the kinder, gentler Sméagol. The player technically controls which persona they can play as, although game designer Martin Wilkes described it in an interview with IGN as being akin to “maneuvering a truck with two flat tires and trying not to drive it off a cliff”, which sounds…challenging, to say the least. As for exciting, well, that’s a different question entirely. Since Gollum isn’t particularly strong and rarely uses any weapons more advanced than a rock, the game is not going to feature a heavy focus on combat, but will instead force the player to use their survival-instincts to endure the horrors of Mordor and other inhospitable regions of Middle-earth.
In the teaser trailer, we see only two areas: Gollum’s cave in the Misty Mountains, littered with bones and what looks to be a recently deceased viperfish, and the rocky wastelands of Mordor, where Gollum finds himself after being taken captive by Orcs. The game will follow the events of the books and their detailed appendices more closely than Peter Jackson’s movies, although certain stylistic decisions have been made which appear to have no basis in either – most strikingly, the design of Sauron’s tower, Barad-dûr, which appears in the trailer as a thin, metallic spire with strong sci-fi influences. Since this game is set between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, Gollum’s journey in the game likely has to end with him being captured by Aragorn and imprisoned by the Wood Elves of Mirkwood, but hopefully there’s room to explore, and/or mess about with the actual chronology of events just a little bit.
It was revealed that several characters from the books will have small but crucial appearances in the game, and off the top of my head I can think of a few who might show up: the Nine Ringwraiths, with whom Gollum appears to have had unpleasant interactions; the Orc commander Grishnákh, who instantly recognizes Pippin’s impression of Gollum’s voice in The Two Towers and knows or guesses about the One Ring; Shelob, the great hulking spider-demon dwelling in the mountains above Mordor who aligns herself with the miserable creature in exchange for new victims delivered to her doorstep; Aragorn, who captures Gollum and delivers him into Elven custody; and Legolas, who may very well have been one of the hunters tasked with trying to find Gollum, and was one of his eventual captors at any rate. Whether these characters will have wholly original designs (if they appear at all, though Shelob at least seems a given) remains to be seen.
As for Gollum himself, our main character bears a passing resemblance to the CGI version of the slinking rogue seen in both The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings trilogies, although he has more hair in the video game (an attempt to make him more relatable, apparently). Andy Serkis is not believed to be reprising his role voicing the character, which is a big loss for the game studio if true: Serkis’ iconic performance as Gollum is commonly cited as one of the films’ strongest, and he still routinely slips back into character.
Will you be playing Gollum when the game arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X and PC next year? Is Serkis’ voice a deal-breaker for you? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!
Trailer Rating: 5/10