Master likes gameplay, yes he does!
Ready for another Gollum trailer? Well, it’s not going to clue us in when it comes to gameplay, but we do get a decent look at the thematic elements at play. The video is actually focused on the “split personality” of Gollum/Sméagol, which he swaps between quickly in the clip.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and I definitely need to see the full version to make an educated assessment. One thing that really stood out to me as a positive is his gleaming eyes in the darkness (described in the source) near the beginning.
I’m actually re-reading the Lord of the Rings now (following another Silmarillion bash), and I just made it to the point where the boys meet Gollum/Sméagol. While Serkis did a fantastic job with Peter Jackson’s version of the character, there’s certainly room for other interpretations, and a lot left to wring from the books.
Lord of the Rings media is a fascinating sandbox. I’d love nothing more than to see the esteemed Tom Shippey do a symposium on this game one day. For now, we wait until the nebulous “2022” date. And given that the Amazon show is set to debut in September of 2022, it would behoove them to springboard off that hype, even if Gollum isn’t directly related to the Second Age framework and was born well into the Third Age (he lived to be nearly 600).
