Lord of the Rings: Gollum has recently become the subject of controversy among players due to a recent announcement by developer Daedalic. Essentially, the studio locked an option to replace the default English voice acting with the in-universe Elvish language of Sindarin behind the Precious Edition of Gollum, which costs $59.99 USD as opposed to the standard edition’s $49.99. To clarify, Daedalic will allow players to buy this extra language option individually if they have a physical copy of the standard edition. But either way, players will still have to pay for a feature that could have easily made its way to the base game. This has understandably upset many players, so Daedalic has chosen to defend the inclusion of this language DLC in Gollum’s Precious Edition.
Eurogamer published Daedalic’s statement on the matter, which says that the developer “went the extra mile” by training professional voice actors to speak the Sindarin language. Additionally, Daedalic stated that it catered the DLC to “the real Tolkien Devotees who want to immerse themselves even more into the world of Middle-Earth.”
Paying for extra immersion
According to Daedalic, the base game will feature occasional moments in which the Elves speak in Sindarin. But by purchasing the DLC, players will have a chance to hear more Sindarin lines spoken by some of the game’s background characters. As players walk around, they will sometimes come across groups of Elves engaging in casual conversation with each other. With the Sindarin voice option, Daedalic aims for these incidental conversations to become even more immersive for players and diehard Tolkien fans.
Ultimately, Daedalic’s statement likely won’t do much to convince those critical of the decision to hide a simple language option behind a DLC paywall in Gollum. The game has already received a fair amount of skepticism from players, so this DLC probably isn’t going to change that.
Image via Daedalic
