Episode 00 - The Let's Player

[ach_sss_no]

 

Episode 00 - The Let's Player, or: Why LOTR: Gollum Is Unironically My Game Of The Year (Because I Spent My Entire Yearly Video Game Budget On It)

Hello! My name is Cassie. I'm a 30-year-old woman from the United States and I love LOTR: Gollum, the critical darling and unproblematic beloved new game of 2023.

 

I have decided to embark on a Let's Play to explain why I love this game so much, and to sort of converse/commiserate with other weirdos who liked it.

 

This LP is not an attempt to convince anyone the game is better than they think it is. Please do not link people here in defense of the game. This absurd rambling blog is not going to convince anybody, and we are just going to all end up annoyed with each other.

 

I will not talk a whole lot about the actual gameplay beyond the basics, because I do not play very many platformers or stealth games and I just don't have a lot to say about those mechanics. (I did play Shadow of Mordor. I did not play the sequel, but I probably should, I heard they turned Shelob into a hot chick and that sounds wild.)

 

And I will also not talk about the visuals a whole lot because I'm not a 3d artist. I like the environments a great deal, I think most of the character models have neat designs but sadly look dreadful in-game, and most of the character animations are stiff and wooden. (Which makes me sad because I think the designs could have looked wonderful with some better polish.) 

There are a few cool little things they managed to put together that I will point out when I see them, mostly in Gollum's animations- again, I don't know much about 3d animation, but- his motion capture actor is probably the person to thank for that. And/or maybe they did the player character animations and then ran out of money. Who knows! 

 

Aaand I also don't have too much to say about the voice acting. At least, nothing constructive. I think it's fantastic, but I'm not an actress or anyone who can say anything useful about acting. The voice acting is part of why I'm not doing a video LP, though- I think it would be a crime to talk over it. 

I highly recommend watching a commentary-less playthrough of this game if you want to see it in action for yourself & don't want to or can't buy it. Commentary is great, but hear the audio for yourself first, I beg of thee! I also recommend headphones, because Gollum hissing ASMR the music and environmental sound in the game are nice and atmospheric but also... kind of quiet. At least, with my little Creative Pebble speakers.

 

I'm not a Tolkien scholar and I'm not going to be able to evaluate this game for deep lore consistency. I read the Silmarillion once and I've seen some fun facts on the wiki. That's about it. The lore of the game all looked like it worked to me but I'm sure there's stuff I overlooked that would cause a different fan to cringe, so, I'm just not going to talk about it in-depth, I would get things wrong.

What are you here to talk about then?

 

The story!!!!! 

 

I thought this game had a really interesting script and they pulled off some things with the story that impressed me- things I expected them to either not attempt at all or to fail at abysmally. And it's nearly all dialog. I love dialog! 

 

Now- I am a little bit biased towards liking this game. I am fascinated by what I guess you would call 'transformative fiction-' I'm trying to lump in official spinoffs and fanfiction both together because they come from different sources & motivations but often run into the same problems and when they succeed they succeed in the same ways. 

 

I enjoy seeing where different writers take new spins on stories I know. I like spinoffs. I've watched or listened to every official LOTR adaptation I could find and found something to like in all of them, even the Bakshi version (Aragorn's voice actor was the good part if you were wondering), and played nearly every game new enough to work on my system (with the aforementioned exception of Shadow of Mordor's sequel, and LOTRO, which I am planning to play but I know once I get started I'll probably sink A Lot of time into it and might never stop playing so I'm kinda holding off until I've caught up a little with my games backlog...) 

 

I also really enjoy fanfiction. I know not everyone feels the same way and that's very understandable, but if you think fanfiction is downright awful or disgraceful my style of Let's Play may not be for you. It... won't have fanfiction in it, but you and I might approach story analysis from very different modes. I feel that enjoying and responding to stories is a good, natural, innately human thing, and that sometimes, that response to a story comes in the form of making another story about that story, and that's just how some people are wired, and sometimes you even get good content out of it.

 

The script of this game is very fanfiction-y in a neutral-to-positive way- in the sense that it relies wholly on an established work, expects you to come in knowing the established work, and is oozing with care and attention to the established work that, to me, felt very genuine. I can totally see why this reliance on prior familiarity was probably a detriment to a lot of people, especially if they only watched the movies. But as someone who is familiar with the source I appreciated being able to launch right into the story.

 

I also love weird video games with bad reputations. Here's my (permanently unfinished) Let's Play of a game where you do nothing but walk around your house, mutter and change lightbulbs. OK, to be fair, you also unlock doors and hide behind your decaying furniture. And cry.

 

Also in my personal Steam library: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Harvester. 

 

Oh and I enjoy villain protagonists. In my 'favorite movies' folder: Wreck-it-Ralph, Despicable Me, Megamind. On my Spotify: songs from Wicked: the Musical and Twisted: the parody. In my Steam library: Legend of Keepers. Dungeons 2.

 

I love characters with weird psychology and I think this game has, first off, a lot of wonderful side characters, and also a really neat, twisty turny, morally gray (dark gray), sympathetic-yet-horrifying take on Gollum, whom I've always found to be a fascinating character.

 

Did you know I have a degree in mathematics?

 

I... I didn't know tha-

 

I took a geometry class. We did lots of proofs, it was really boring.

 

OKAY?!?!

 

Did you know that to prove something objectively true you have to go to great and meticulous lengths and maybe get a B- if you're lucky, but to prove something objectively, factually wrong you only need one single counterexample and it can even be a pretty stupid counterexample as long as it's true?

 

Um-

 

Everyone reviewing this game saying 'no one wanted a game about this character' is objectively wrong. I desperately wanted Smeeg Content. Wouldn't mind having even more of it, to be honest. 

 

I know I'm not the only one, either, but even if I was- you only need one counterexample to prove an absolute statement invalid, you see?

 

And are you qualified to talk about the writing in any way?

 

I have not been formally trained in writing or critical analysis but I've done a lot of self-study. I've read books, watched Brandon Sanderson's online lectures, and purchased access to online courses and not actually taken them yet.

 

More to the point, every human is qualified to talk about their own emotional response to a piece of art. 

 

...Well, almost everyone... everyone I've met, anyway.

 

I also have another degree (second bachelor's, not a graduate degree) in psychology (with a research focus). A bachelor's in psychology doesn't qualify me to talk about anything, that's just another thing for me to cite as to where my passions lie. 

 

Are you done?

 

Oh just one more thing.

 

I know what the reaction to this game was. Everyone hating it was funny at first, but I have gotten bored of the backlash. There are major problems with the game. That's fair. I'm all in favor of having fun mocking a game for its silly aspects, and there are things in this game that are funny and I will also tease it. 

But the people saying the whole thing is worthless are taking it too far, and most of those people appear to have tastes and motives that I do not share, and are often focused on elements that I don't care about, and I would like to focus on the things I enjoyed. 

The people who didn't enjoy the gameplay, can't get past the visuals, or saw too many performance issues? Those are entirely valid complaints (and I hope there are optimization patches coming), and they get in the way of enjoying the game. They're also not pertinent to the specific discussion I want to have about this game, which is the story. 

The people who are upset because it's not like the movies or like Shadow or Mordor or because it's-get this- about Gollum, probably should have looked at the marketing material (or the title), seen the game was not to their tastes, and not played the game.

I don't want to include the general backlash in my LP by discussing it further. I will not be talking about reviews or comments aside from my own. The oliphaunt in the room is seated politely on the floor with a lampshade on his head where he will remain for the entire duraction of the game, unacknowledged, and after the conclusion of the LP he will trot off back to Harad. I promised I wouldn't tell Legolas where he is, man. 

 

LP starts here!

Comments

[greatwhitespider]

Do you know the Hobitit? A low budget Finnish TV series adaptation of LOTR that one, I find completely hilarious and two I'm really fond of. The same actor plays Aragorn and Gollum. It relies heavily on greenscreen. It's a musical. It's great!

Whenever there's a big budget, much beloved interpretation of a work, particularly one that wasn't visual to start with, I feel like there's a bottlenecking effect. Most things that come later are strongly influenced by that adaptation. Beautiful as the PJ films are, I really love to see different versions not beholden to all the same creative choices.

[ach_sss_no]

Ooh, I have seen references to that on the Tolkien Gateway wiki but not seen it. It's a musical too?? I'll have to track it down!

Yes, agreed! The PJ films are gorgeous and had a lot of fantastic craftsmanship put into them, but it makes me sad when I feel like they've 'replaced' the original books in a lot of people's minds. Because the books are phenomenal too and often quite different!

[greatwhitespider]

It used to be on youtube with terrible subtitles, but that was a while back.

Have you seen the Dan Olson video about the Bakshi adaptation? I liked the degree of context and how he goes into aspects he liked.

Yeah, I really don't get why people are mad that this one little adaptation has a different creative vision, but then I'm usually not too mad about any adaptation being particularly different from the original work, either. I like when things are richer and more varied.