Daedalic Entertainment To Charge For Elvish Spoken Language In ‘The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum,’ Claims Voice Actors Had To Be Trained By “Lore Experts”
Daedalic Entertainment states Elvish voice acting for The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is DLC, claiming they had to train voice actors to speak it.
Developer and co-publisher Daedalic Entertainment previously detailed the content of the game’s “Precious Edition.” Along with the game, it includes the Art Exhibition app (featuring over 100 original sketches and “development secrets”), a Lore Compendium, and 17-track orchestral soundtrack.
The special edition also includes “Sindarin Voice Acting,” namely the language of the Elves. “Pre-order and get the Emotes Pack DLC, which includes 6 of Gollum’s iconic gestures and sayings.”
For the standard edition, it was confined some elements could each be purchasable as separate DLC.
While special editions having exclusive DLC is nothing new, alternate voice lines may be a bit confusing to some. Social media users were quick to weigh in on the news, with some expressing delight and others wondering why Sindarin wasn’t included by default.
“Greedy game, sell as a DLC the elfic languaje is just the worst of the industry,” @ALionZam dismissed.
@WitcherMike_ denounced,”Elvish language locked behind a paywall. Scummy s—t @daedalic #GollumGame.”
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“Regardless of the actual motive here, people are only going to see a feature cut from the game pre-release to sell to them separately,” @itsgrapeape proposed. “This is not a smart move and feels like something the devs must have been pressured to do from top down.”
Daedalic Entertainment would later issue a statement to EuroGamer, justifying the voice over being DLC. “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 middleearth 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,” they added.
The statement elaborates, “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.”
Vtuber Olivia Monroe — guest hosting for Vtubers Eleanor Briarwood and Booster’s “Necro News” series — had previously joked, “I don’t wanna judge any business decisions before I have totally heard them out, but y’know maybe there’s one person who speaks Elvish on this earth, and maybe he charges $500,000 per hour, and maybe they had to get him to do all of the voice lines.”
Monroe placed the blame more at Warner Bros. feet, saying they made an “interesting decision.”
Even after Daedalic Entertainment issued their statement, explaining the reason behind their decision to charge extra for Elvish spoken language, some continued to doubt.
“Locking the elf language to DLC and special editions because they’re worried about not making up for the cost of training the VAs….yeah sure,” ridiculed @Avisch_.
“Art books and emotes OK, but voice lienes fr? What ist going trew your mind,” inquired @Carlos28020621, adding, “Who ever got this Idea should be fired. I really wanted to buy me this Game but this s—t gave me the Rest.”
@kakmonster weighed in, writing, “So you need to pay extra for Sindarin? This game get more pathetic for every news you release about it.”
“In understand it’s expensive getting voice actors to learn sindarin,” noted @shinnonx. “But I think putting that as DLC to cover the cost is a hugely damaging move.”
“I don’t remember Peter Jackson charging us extra at the theater for having to train actors how to speak Elvish,” mocked @DeathxReconX.
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