The Lord of the Rings: Gollum developer Daedalic is defending the decision to put the Elvish language behind paid DLC, saying that it's aimed at "real Tolkien devotees." It has, however, added that even without the DLC, players will hear Sindarin spoken "from time to time", but won't have the option to make all Elven characters speak the language.
This comes as there was initially some confusion, with some believing that the Sindarin DLC would be exclusive to Gollum: Precious Edition, which costs £10 more than the standard version of the game. Daedalic has now explicitly said that Sindarin, as well as everything else in the Precious Edition, will be sold separately, although added that the pricier version of the game will give players the best value.
"The Elves in the base game will speak in their [native] tongue from time to time," says Daedalic, in a statement to Eurogamer. "On top of that the Sindarin VO expansion adds additional Sindarin lines to some of the characters in the background."
Daedalic then downplays concerns that general players who don't have the Sindarin expansion will have a lesser experience, justifying the decision to put it behind a paywall.
"It is a DLC for the real Tolkien Devotees who want to immerse themselves even more into the world of Middle-Earth," says the developer. "Daedalic went the extra mile here and hired professional voice actors, who were trained in Sindarin by our lore experts."
The statement also says that the DLC dialogue will be heard as Gollum travels throughout Middle-earth. In the base game, this dialogue will presumably be heard in whatever language the player has selected.
If you go down the route of picking it up in the Precious Edition, you'll also get an in-game art show, additional lore, and the game's soundtrack. Anyone who pre-orders the game in whatever form will get additional emotes, including "six of Gollum’s iconic gestures and sayings," according to the Precious Edition reveal.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, is set to launch on May 25. This date comes after the game faced numerous delays, having initially been scheduled for sometime in 2021. This came and went, so the devs aimed for 2022, and then early 2023. But now, with the reveal of the different editions and DLC, it seems like the team is finally ready to release the game, and will stick to this latest date.