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The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum - stealth action game by Daedalic

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
When I think of Lord of the Rings, and at the same time I also think of action, the first thing that comes to mind is... Gollum.

Gollum would make for a good first person stealth game.

cTmPKeb.gif
man the styx games were great. alto searching for coins is really hard but my autism didnt allow me to not to
 

paperjack

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What is it even going to be about? Didn't Gollum spend most of his life hidden away in the caves, eating raw fish?
I just checked: he found the ring and then literally spent 400 years inside the Misty Mountains's holes. Sounds like we're going to have a fishing simulator.
 

thesecret1

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Didn't Gollum spend most of his life hidden away in the caves, eating raw fish?
Excellent idea for a survival simulator with crafting. Stealth mechanics (kinda easy with invisibility ring), big moral choices (do I eat that goblin?), exploration (where the actual fuck am I, all these caves look the same and go on for miles), and combat (equip the ring and win, lol). 100% realistic weather and day/night simulation (too bad you're in a cave, so you won't get to see it), and of course many, many minigames. End game will be finding enough sources of protein to get swole and sucker punch Bilbo all the way back to Hobbiton when he tries to make off with your ring (cinematic masterpiece bossfight with many QTE events).
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Gollum left the Misty Mountains after he lost the One Ring. The article mentions that the game ends right where Fellowship of the Rings begins so no problem.
 
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Self-Ejected

RNGsus

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It should be about Gollum evading Aragorn and Gandalf, the 16 years between Bilbo leaving the Shire and the Ringwraiths finding the Shire.
 

Beastro

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What is it even going to be about? Didn't Gollum spend most of his life hidden away in the caves, eating raw fish?
I just checked: he found the ring and then literally spent 400 years inside the Misty Mountains's holes. Sounds like we're going to have a fishing simulator.

IIRC he left the mountain, wandered around, found Shelob and buddied with her making his agreement to bring food, left her, wandered towards the Shire looking for Hobbits until Aragorn found him by the Old Forest and pursued not knowing what he was but was strange enough to evoke his guarding duty as a Ranger, fled through the Gap of Rohan and escaped Aragorn, wandered back by Mordor, got caught and imprisoned over like 10 years, released, wandered out of Mordor through Cirith Ungol and visited Shelob again, wandered north until he got caught by Aragorn around Dead Marshes/Emyn Muil, brought to Mirkwood Elves for holding, allowed time outside, Orcs engineered his escaped, wandered back to the Misty Mountains and entered Moria trying to get back to the Shire, reached the West entrance finding it closed, then realized the Fellowship entered soon afterwards and began following them suspecting they had the Ring.

It's implied he visited Shelob several times to inform her of things/worship her and I vaguely recall that he went into Moria once before. Regardless, all of this takes place over 50+ years since he left his underground pool so there's plenty of time to place him where a game would want.
 

CreamyBlood

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Wow. It sounds like Gollum was really hard done by and had a rough time. Some SJW outlet like the CBC or BBC should do an interview with him so we can all weep a tear and listen to how badly he was victimized over the span of his long life.
 

thesecret1

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Gollum sounds like a goddamn tourist. Trekking over mountains and shit to check up on stuff, seeing the sights, stopping for tea with Shelob every once in a while... Only bad moments are when Aragorn, a wandering hoodlum, pursues and kidnaps him, but that ends up okay too since the friends he made along the way saved him.
 

LESS T_T

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I've skimmed over the feature article. This game will be "a stealth-action adventure with an intriguing dual-personality mechanic, gigantic levels and a densely wrought aesthetic inspired by Tolkien's own drawings".

Some notable things. (There are many things about lore and visual design but I didn't note them here.)
  • Daedalic CEO says that adventure games are not commercially viable because people are watching their games on YouTube instead of buying them. So while this game obviously has storytelling, it's mainly an action game.
  • Director pitched a LotR game that was not a Gollum game in 2014 to the estate. It was not accepted but the estate was impressed that there's a game developer who is interested in making a LotR game not about slaying orcs and two parties maintained relationship, and that led to the deal.
  • Dev team will number between 30 and 40 by January. Creative Lead on Blackguard is doing game design.
  • Third person stealth action, with strong emphasis on climbing and platforming, no special skills or gadgets because Gollum (but there's a radial indicator letting you know if you're in someone's eyes).
  • You're going to deal with the conflict between Smeagol and Gollum. ("hallucinatory quick-time struggle for dominance") Decisions have consequences, shape the story. Decision even affects Gollum's animations. Probably three or four conflicts per chapter.
 
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Beastro

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It was not accepted but the estate was impressed that there's a game developer who is interested in making a LotR game not about slaying orcs and two parties maintained relationship, and that led to the deal.

Makes me wonder if anyone's tried offering one from the perspective of the Enemy. One like, being a Black Numenorean in the End of Second/Third Age or a Balrog in the First Age directing Orcs and whittling down your foes to conserve yourself for when it matters, Sauron doing stuff like capturing and operating out of Tol-in-Gaurhoth or a reverse sort of Shadow of Mordor playing as a dragon, or Glaurung during and after Dagor Bragollach where you fight hordes of Elves and sweep them away with ease, but have to be careful not to get overconfident and swamped.
 

Valky

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Daedalic CEO says that adventure games are not commercially viable because people are watching their games on YouTube instead of buying them. So while this game obviously has storytelling, it's mainly an action game.
Yes yes YES! This has been exactly my prediction of storyfaggotry for years. It has gotten to the point that games play themselves and are just cutscene simulators. As such, the primary value delivered by the "game" is watching the story. Playthrough videos are fair use to upload online, unlike uploading a movie, and as such, people are for all intents and purposes able to legally - more than that, normalfag and tech illiterate friendly - "pirate" full games when they have been consumed by storyfaggotry, without ever having to spend a cent. It is a self devouring disease as it progresses to this point and companies start to realize that through their declining slope of actions, they have brought about their own undoing. Storyfaggotry is not a sustainable long term model in the video game medium, developers would be protected from this financial self cannibalism if they simply spoke the truth and began releasing their "games" branded as movies.
 
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baud

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So either these guys had a dream to make a gollum game and begged EA to let them make it and EA actually thought it was a good idea, or EA went around to studios to see who wanted to make a new LotR game and this was the best pitch.

I don't know what's worse.

EA has not been in control of LoTR movies video game adaptations for quite a few years, it's Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, with, for example, the Shadow of Mordor games. And if they don't use contents from the movies, devs can just ask the Tolkien Estate, who's in control of that part of the licence and I think it's what was done here.
 
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Unwanted

a Goat

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If it's about Gollum being hunted by Gandalf and Aragorn it can be made into something interesting.
 

Mary Sue Leigh

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Well people do like Gollum for.. reasons that I myself will never understand. Unless these reasons are "memes" ..
 

Beastro

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Prequel ✔
Uninteresting character ✔

Gonna be a hit for sure.

Wut

Gollum's the most interesting character Tolkien created and the one with the most depth and complexity.

Makes you wonder what he witnessed, or experienced himself, for him to have that much psychological insight to create such a nuanced cretin that is both sympathetic and loathsome.
 

Thal

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Prequel ✔
Uninteresting character ✔

Gonna be a hit for sure.

Wut

Gollum's the most interesting character Tolkien created and the one with the most depth and complexity.

Makes you wonder what he witnessed, or experienced himself, for him to have that much psychological insight to create such a nuanced cretin that is both sympathetic and loathsome.

Gollum is a cautionary tale about dangers of immorality. The loathsome part is easier to explain then. He's Frodo's evil twin, someone who could not resist even the slightest temptation, because he had no desire to do so in the first place. It's pettiness, and that's where you get both sympathy and loathsomeness. Throughout the book Tolkien states, in accordance with his Christian convictions, that it could happen to anyone. And that's the reason Gollum inspires disgust rather than hate. He is not a threatening enemy, who would cause fight or flight reaction, he's more like a leper you don't want to touch because you instinctively feel that it might be contagious and you might become one too. You can vaguely relate to Gollum, because his concerns and desires are so mundane. He is evil out of weakness not strength. And here I also recall Nietzsche's concept of pity as disgust. You can only pity someone you feel is beneath you. So the two are actually linked.

In Tolkien's case, it's also easier to feel sympathy for Gollum because it in fact did happen to everyone. No one was immune, including Frodo. Also, it's interesting that Sam seemed to be the most resistant to the power of the Ring, seemingly because he is a simple man. I believe he wanted to use the Ring for gardening. You can either interpret this as paternalistic admiration of the one underclass man who knew his place, or admission that power corrupts, even if it's just intellectual power like in Frodo's case. There's probably a bit of both in it, although I lean for the latter because even Sam's designs for gardening were grandiose.

Also, in terms of relatability, it's interesting to compare him to Sauron, who is completely depersonalized. And the same goes for other characters too. The more powerful they are, the more distant they are. On the other hand, when Saruman loses his power, he becomes little more than a thug. So the only thing that changed was his ability to do evil, not his personality. Which goes to show that in some fundamental ways, even someone like Sauron is like the rest of us, and the same goes for Aragorn for that matter. So Tolkien also ends up making an argument against blind hero worship, even though his critics often argue completely otherwise.

Finally, I'm also pretty sure that Tolkien witnessed terrible things and thoroughly immoral men in the trenches. And moreover, they were probably decent men until war made them evil.
 
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