You’ll have to pay if you want to hear The Lord of the Rings: Gollum dialogue in Elvish, but developer Daedalic Entertainment says there is good reason for that. Earlier this month, the developer revealed that fans who wanted the feature would have to pick up the game’s Precious Edition. This version of Gollum costs $10 extra and comes with bonus emotes, a lore compendium, an original soundtrack, art, and voiceover in the Elvish tongue of Sindarin. Although the DLC is promised to release separately for an undisclosed amount, it’s a fascinating feature locked behind a paywall, so naturally, some fans got a bit upset.
Daedalic stepped in with a statement sent to Eurogamer to explain the decision to bar Elvish behind DLC and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Precious Edition. It explained that there will be some Elvish spoken regardless of if players purchase the DLC, but beyond that, the Elvish dubs also took more work than the average recording session, as Daedalic had to train its voice actors in the language. You can read the full statement below:
The Elves in the base game will speak in their tongue (Sindarin) from time to time. On top of that the Sindarin VO expansion adds additional Sindarin lines to some of the characters in the background. While traversing through Mirkwood and other parts of [Middle-earth] Gollum will be able to listen to various dialogues between Elves. These dialogues add to the atmosphere and worldbuilding. With the Sindarin VO these dialogues will be held in Sindarin.
Daedalic went the extra mile here and hired professional voice actors, who were trained in Sindarin by our lore experts. It is a DLC for the real Tolkien Devotees who want to immerse themselves even more into the world of [Middle-earth].
Following some delays, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum crawls its way to PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X | S on May 25, 2023. A Nintendo Switch version will arrive “later this year.”
