The Hobbit (2003) Video Game - Cut Boss Fight!

Chrix already uploaded a video with this scrapped boss fight, but I thought it was time for a new one. This video displays the entire section in widescreen, and also includes the full context of the fight, rather than just the fight. I have also played through the entire game up to this point 100%, in order to simulate what this boss fight would be like if kept in the game when someone gets to this point in a 100% playthrough.

Bilbo has wandered into the old dwarf mines. As Thorin says, "All manner of vile creatures roam those halls." With the boss reinstated, we now see the troll walking around where the imps are during the cutscene. Later. Bilbo tells Gandalf, "There were giants, and wolves, and an enor..." before being interrupted. In the game's audio files, the rest of the line is "enormous troll." The PS2 port of the game (not shown here) contains the line in full, due to the port being slower, not giving time for Bilbo to be interrupted. Afterwards, Kili tells Bilbo, "Sometimes trolls make their homes in these mountains. Sure hope you didn't run into any out there." With this boss fight restored, we finally actually did!

The troll is fought by charging his rage meter by whacking him in his sore tooth. After fully charging his rage meter, the troll will run towards you, and you must trick him into smashing his head on a pillar, repeating this three times. After defeating him, the key warps to the place where the troll died, showing that this was the way you would have originally obtained the key.

As you'll see in the video, the troll's initial walking animation before encountering him is extremely broken. Also, Bilbo stays in the air for a few seconds after jumping away from him to trick him into crashing. There's also sometimes a bug which causes the troll to get stuck in the ground, which, if the troll had been kept in the game without this bug being fixed, would have softlocked the game.

According to one of the creators of The Hobbit game (who Chrix contacted): "[W]e cut the troll fight because it was too unpolished. I remember the last several months of that game being the most difficult work experience I've ever endured. We put in some ridiculous hours but the team morale was low. We worked hard on The Hobbit, but we simply did not have the resources to do everything we wanted to do. Sadly, that meant cutting some content that we thought would make a better game."