[GameSpot] - LOTR: Gollum Dev Hopeful To Make Another LOTR Game That Would Explore "Something Else"

[343iBot]

Daedalic, the developer of the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, has reiterated its desire to make another Lord of the Rings game someday. Head of publishing Jonas Husges said in a new interview that the hope is for LOTR: Gollum to show the world what it's capable of in Middle-earth before coming back for another story. That will seemingly depend, however, on the how the game performs, which suggests there is not already a firm deal in place.

"If we get this right, hopefully this will be seen as the way Gollum's story is perceived and happens, and then we will move on to a different part of the universe," Husges told GI.biz. "And hopefully make another Lord of the Rings game, but exploring something else."

Daedalic's CEO, Carsetn Fichtelmann, first mentioned the studio's plans for multiple Lord of the Rings games back in 2019.

Husges also touched upon the resurgence of The Lord of the Rings video games lately, noting that the games are more varied than they used to be. Indeed, Daedalic's game is about Gollum, Free Range Games and North Beach Games are making a survival crafting title, and Weta Workshop itself is making its own LOTR game that hasn't been fully announced yet.

"In the past, you had the [Peter Jackson] movies, you had games based on the movies that were very closely tied to the main storyline of the trilogy. And now, the Amazon series takes place in the Second Age, so it's a completely different era of the Lord of the Rings," Husges said. "And then the Moria game that comes out on the Epic Games Store, that one is exploring a very specific location and telling a very specific story."

Husges said LOTR: Gollum is probably the closest to a "mainline" LOTR game set during the timeline of the Peter Jackson films, but Daedalic's game is approaching Middle-earth from a "completely different angle," he said.

"Right now, we are probably the closest to the main storyline of the [Peter Jackson] trilogy, but we're exploring it from this completely different angle. And while there are hints at Gollum's journey in the Fellowship, it's never been really fully explored, right? We know a lot about his back story and this, again, if you read the novels very carefully, there's instances where Gandalf tells some parts of his journey but we've never been able to really experience that."

Husges doesn't believe the LOTR IP is "over-explored" at the moment because each game stands apart. This could change in the future, Husges said, but right now he believes it's a "very exciting" time to be a Lord of the Rings fan with a whole "new wave" of games coming out.

LOTR: Gollum was originally set to launch on September 1 (just a day before Amazon's TV series), but the game was later delayed by "a few months." As such, the game is expected to arrive sometime in late 2022 or early 2023. Whenever it's ready, the game will launch on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

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