Beowulf: The Game structure but is defeated and thrown into the water; there, Grendel's mother appears and says he is her new hero, and grants him power. Beowulf defeats the sea serpent with his newfound power and returns to the beach where he was racing with the Thane. Afterward, having heard the problem the Danes are facing, he goes to help King Hrothgar to stop Grendel, gaining Heroic powers on the journey. Afterwards, the player plays through the thirty years of Beowulf's life as king of the Danes, which was not seen in the movie. Beowulf gets to journey from Herot to Iceland,
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics it down "to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions". Tolkien quotes at length what the scholar W. P. Ker thought of "Beowulf", namely that "there is nothing much in the story", and that "the great beauty, the real value, of "Beowulf" is in its dignity of style". Tolkien notes that Ker's opinion had been a powerful influence in favour of a paradoxical contrast between the poem's supposed defect in speaking of monsters, and (in Tolkien's words) its agreed "dignity, loftiness in converse, and well-wrought finish". Tolkien cites other critics, such as Raymond Wilson Chambers and Ritchie Girvan, who objected to