Gollum dev says it's charging for the precious Elvish-language DLC because it had to train voice actors in how to speak it
Developer Daedalic Entertainment has belatedly explained why its upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, releasing on 29 May, has paid-for DLC that adds more Elvish to the game. As part of the game's pre-order campaign it's been offering the perfectly named 'Precious' special edition(opens in new tab), which comes with four extras that players of the standard edition will be able to buy as DLC. One of these is a voice-over expansion for the Elvish language Sindarin, which basically makes the elves speak more in their mother tongue while you wander this version of Middle-earth.
Well, it turns out that all players will hear some Sindarin, but that this adds more of it, and the studio says the price reflects the effort involved in adding it as a spoken language.
«The Elves in the base game will speak in their tongue (Sindarin) from time to time,» Daedalic said in a statement to Eurogamer(opens in new tab). «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.»
No doubt some fans will be unhappy they don't get all the Tolkien as standard, but the studio pleads for some understanding of the process involved in adding a fictional language both in spoken and written form. «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.»
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