A bad omen: German developer Daedalic Entertainment recently started accepting pre-orders for The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, the highly anticipated action-adventure game based on the popular J. R. R. Tolkien franchise. Steep minimum and recommended system requirements outlined on Steam, however, have some prospective gamers worried that we might be looking at a poorly optimized PC port.
Gollum's minimum requirements call for at least an Intel Core i7-4770 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPU, 16GB of RAM, an Nvidia RTX 3060 / AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8GB) GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 45GB of available storage just to play at 1080p resolution with medium presets and ray tracing disabled.
PC gamers targeting at least 1440p resolution with high graphics settings and ray tracing enabled will need at least an Intel Core i3-6100 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600 processor, an Nvidia RTX 4070 (with DLSS enabled) / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16GB) graphics card, 32GB of RAM, and 45GB of free space.
All versions require Windows 10 or Windows 11 and at least DirectX 11.
Daedalic announced The Lord of the Rings: Gollum way back in early 2019 with a target launch window of 2021. Early screenshots from the game were shared in 2020 but in January 2021, it was quietly revealed that Gollum's release had slipped to 2022.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is now due out on May 25 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series. A version for the Nintendo Switch is also in the cards although it is not expected until sometime later this year. That is unfortunate as a simultaneous launch on PC and the Switch would have provided a solid apples to oranges comparison given the latter's dated hardware.
Interested parties can pre-purchase the standard edition on Steam for $49.99 or splurge on the Precious Edition which includes six emotes for $10 more. If nothing else, we know interest in the game is high as the title has already gone gold.