Gollum in The Lord of the Rings will be released on May 25.

I have very mixed feelings about this game. Gollum/Smeagol is one of my favorite characters from the LotR series, so I’m really looking forward to this game in that respect. But now I see how”bad” this game looks (especially when you take into account that it has been postponed several times, original release date was 1 sep ’22), I’m a bit disappointed.

I get that this is beta footage, but here are a few things that stood out to me, with timestamps for the video:

There isn’t much life in Gollum; facial expressions don’t show much emotion and, except for the eyebrows, are fairly static, and the transitions are very jerky I think. 7:35

Other animations, such as jumping (6:10 to 6:40) I find it very “unnatural”, for lack of a better word. He jumps, but that’s all. As in, the jump looks somewhat monotonous, the rest of the jump is just Gollum falling, you don’t see him preparing to land. If that makes sense.

Op 6:10 see weird flickering in the reflections, reminds me of those flickering in Cyberpunk2077 with dlss and bloom on. Of course I don’t know if that’s the same thing. You also see the raindrops falling apart when the camera looks up through the hole. The splash animation is just in mid air.

14:35 (here also stutters) I find Movement by Gollum very monotonous and “ugly”. Crawling/walking feels slow and heavy from what I see now, while Gollum is a small and agile creature. especially when he rotates around his axis while walking, his body then seems to move differently than it should in relation to his position on the ground. Also, when you stop walking, the animation seems to cancel midway through and his limbs seem to shoot back to the idle position, with no transition.

Op 19:55 Gollum throws a stone at a guard, who reacts very lax and the stone literally floats in the air after the guard turns and walks away.

Furthermore, I thought I saw stuttering and flickering light sources at several times throughout the footage, mainly in cinematics, anyway.

Apart from all this, I think the textures, lighting, reflections and shadows/ambient occlusion look good. Although I missed the AO on the ground with some objects.

Hopefully this doesn’t come across as too much of a nitpick, but I still wanted to give my opinion, because I’m still really looking forward to this game and think/hope they can further polish the game before release.

[Reactie gewijzigd door Pimmetjuuh op 24 maart 2023 11:11]