Lord of the Rings games have let us adventure as the Fellowship, as some half-wraith ranger whose orc-slaying exploits conveniently never came up elsewhere, and even as our own custom MMORPG characters. Next up is Smeagol, who will star in a new game titled The Lord of the Rings: Gollum coming from Daedelic Entertainment and Middle-earth Enterprises.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Daedelic's project will follow Gollum after he finds the One Ring but before he meets Bilbo in The Hobbit. We already know how Gollum's story goes (and ends) after that, but relatively little has been said about that transitional period of his life where the One Ring's power twists him from a hobbit into a… well, a Gollum. Unless it's in The Silmarillion or something, but no one will ever know for sure because it's impossible to read the entire thing.
The game is slated to arrive in 2021 for PC and "all relevant console platforms at that time". As a developer, Daedelic Entertainment is known for the Deponia and Dark Eye series of adventure games. It sounds like its Lord of the Rings game will share their narrative focus with some emphasis on player choice as well.
"You already have that big conflict in the character, two voices talking to you continuously, which means there is a good reason there are decisions to make in the game: the Smeagol decisions or the Gollum decision," Daedelic CEO Carsten Fichtelmann told The Hollywood Reporter.
The last big thing to note about the Lord of the Rings: Gollum announcement is that it's missing any mention of Warner Bros., the steward of the Lord of the Rings movies and everything based on them (like Middle-earth: Shadow of War). Daedelic is working with Middle-earth Enterprises instead, which means the game will draw exclusively from the books and therefore look different from the usual cinematic source material - or at least it had better if a bunch of WB lawyers aren't gonna come calling. Andy Serkis' Gollum is right out.
For more Middle-earth affairs, check out everything we know about the Lord of the Rings TV show. Or check out some games to look forward to this year in the video below.
