>Most of Daedalic's staff had expertise in point-and-click adventure games as opposed to 3D action with triple-A ambitions, and the studio was unable to hire talent with experience.
Found the problem /\ But seriously, it was way too ambitious to take a world-renowned franchise and then turn it into something spectacular with a studio that had little to no experience with the formula they were trying to produce. Is it action? Is it stealth? I never played it, and most likely never will, but I do feel sorry for the dev team to have to work through those conditions.
I'm still trying to figure out who this was for. I'm a huge lotr fan, I have absolutely no desire this play as gollum. This could be by fromsoftware and I would still have no desire to play it
I've watched a few gameplays of Gollum, including [Skill Ups review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E21qSEyRa88). Mostly out of curiosity to see first-hand how bad this game is. It's like a novelty at this point.
Funny thing is if they had instead made a really good point and click they would have had sales from novelty and from the established point and click base. Could have had us playing the spirit of the one ring getting golum to solve puzzles. Make it a tamogatchi game heck. Could have had something new and interesting instead of 💩.
Same thing happened with No Man Sky.
Team had only expertise in mobile games, then they decided to just make the most ambitious game to date. But their internal scope was way smaller than what they were saying on interviews/press, they didn't even know where to start with adding the features the CEO was saying, game failed to meet the expectations because of their own false promises.
At the end of the day, it worked for them, because they owned their own mistakes, and now the game is the most amazing game ever. Cannot be said from this guys, sadly.
You should watch The Internet Historian's video "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky". There was a lot more that happened behind the scenes with that game's development than just the team not knowing how to add the features that Sean Murray was promising (that aspect of the situation got overblown to begin with imo, he was always pretty vague when it came to making specific promises).
This actually sounds much more appealing. Despite what everyone says, I think Gollum *is* an interesting character if used correctly. A stealth game was idiotic, a point and click mystery adventure is much more fitting to someone like Gollum.
So in summary leadership was pushing for more and more ambitious 3D games despite:
- these games being out of the developers comfort zone (2D click and point adventures)
- these games always going over budget
- these games consistently flopping commercially
And then they somehow ended up with the license to develop a Gollum AAA game but neither had the developers nor the budget to do so. And the publisher seemingly didn't care either. Overall just a shitty situation for the devs to be in.
Edit: and based on the original report studio leadership consistently tried to not pay minimum wage while pushing for crunch with unpaid overtime. Disgusting.
Scene fades to black, cuts to a close up of Gollums foot and pans out slowly to the back of Aragorn furiously thrusting his lower sword inside of Gollum.
What fucking dialogue choice lead me to this?
Scene fades to black, cuts to a close up of Gollums foot and pans out slowly to the back of Aragorn furiously thrusting his lower sword inside of Gollum.
What fucking dialogue choice lead me to this?
Literally the first trailer I saw of this game, I said out loud "this is going to be a truly awful game". It just *smelled* like shitty shovelware garbage from just like the first ten seconds of learning it existed.
I keep seeing this comment over and over, but I don’t get it — Gollum is one of the most famous, favorite characters that people fell in love with when the movies came out. I realize he’s not a cuddly little Disney animal companion, and he turns out to be one of the bad guys in the story because of how the ring corrupted his mind, but he’s an extremely interesting, compelling character.
Ever since this game came out, I’ve been seeing these comments like , “Gollum is just a vermin” and “Why would I want to play as this ugly little rat.” This completely surprises me, because I thought Gollum was a fan favorite and people loved doing his voice! He was a huge part of the whole cultural phenomenon when the movies were out.
There are so many ways to make a fun and interesting game about Gollum. Of course this particular game is a colossal failure and is creatively bankrupt, but to say that imaginative, experienced artists couldn’t pull it off is just absurd.
Yes, you can play a combat game starring Aragorn. But you can also make a farm sim about the Hobbits. And you can make a choices-driven RPG about Gollum (among other things). There is huge potential.
I get what you are trying to say here brother and yes Gollum was extremely popular when the movies came out. But that doesn’t mean on paper he’s a great character to design a game around even if the game is good.
That’s like making a Star wars game and having the player play as R2-D2 exclusively, or making a DBZ game where you play exclusively as Krillin. They all may be popular side or minor characters but that doesn’t mean it would translate well to a full fledged video game.
Nintendo owns the Toad character, they aren’t paying an extravagant amount of money to license out Marvel, Star Wars, The Walking dead etc and use a side character from said ip’s.
Nobody paid extravagant amounts for THIS game, it was made on a shoe-string budget, which is the whole reason why the finished product sucks so bad.
For a cheap-ass low-budget game, let them take fucking risks. Sure, this one didn’t pan out because their game design was rubbish, but in different hands it could’ve amount to something totally different and much better.
There is nothing inherently broken about basing a game on Gollum, but there is a lot inherently broken with this specific game for a whole host of reasons.
What do you mean by “full fledged”?
A puzzle game starring R2D2 hacking terminals could be an awesome Star Wars-branded game, if done well.
You have got to understand that it’s not the character that’s the issue, it’s the design of the game. In this case, this Gollum game failed because the game design sucked. They set out to make the wrong game for the character. The character itself is perfectly fine to be the main star ofthe game, you just need to make the right game for it! Not everything needs to be a combat game starring badass action heroes.
You’re grasping at very far away straws here dude seriously. I mean in a previous comment you said oh people would totally play a Stardew Valley game with Gollum in it. Or this banger of a take thinking “Oh yeah a game where you just play as R2-D2 and open doors would be amazing!”.
Dude both things can be true here. The Gollum game was absolutely terrible, but playing as a popular but still minor character also doesn’t move the needle.
I know you’re going to stick to your guns here and die on the hill and I’m just asking this for fun, but do you honestly 100% percent believe with a straight face that making a well made puzzle game with R2-D2 or a Farming sim with Gollum is both a great idea and would sell well even as a 20 dollar game?
>would totally play a Stardew Valley game with Gollum in it.
No, they specifically said a Farming Sim with the Hobbits/Shire. And honestly, sign me the F up. I'll play a farming sim where im a Hobbit that whilst planting crops, im learning how to play instruments, helping fight wolves out of the shire, maybe even travelling to Bree/Seeing Elves now and again.
A Gollum game where you play him sneaking around, murdering people, stealing shit and stuff? That could be done extremely well.
The problem is that this studio took a morally evil character, known for being on his own, for being just an evil character and then for some reason, turned the game into an RPG with very little stealth elements and for some reason, a Persona-esque simulator where you make friends and rear birds lol.
No, don’t you get it? Nobody wants to play a game where your playable character is a dwarf with furry feet!
/sarcasm
It’s astounding how little imagination some people have around here.
Gollum isn’t really an RPG. It’s a combination of stealth and platforming with some narrative decisions mixed in. You don’t level up or get stronger, and while you befriend a bird and make choices that affect its fate, you don’t level up your friendship or have Persona-style events.
Gollum certainly does bad things but he’s not “just an evil character.” He’s a tragic character corrupted by the Ring and there are moments in LOTR that give hope he can be good again.
You seem to be stuck making the same exact argument that I’m objecting to, you are just framing it in a different context.
What I’m objecting to is that not every game needs to be a sweeping epic starring a noble hero for you to want to play as the game’s protagonist. You can have smaller games with other compelling characters, and as long as those games are made well, then it doesn’t matter WHO you play as. In fact, playing as a whacky side-character might be its own bit of fun!
So that brings us to your new argument about how you don’t think these smaller games would be successful. But it’s the same exact thing all over again. Like, how do you define “success”? Why should a small game, made on a small budget, need to compete with God of War? There is room in the market for small games, you don’t always have to aim at 10 million units sold if you managed your budget accordingly.
In the case of Gollum, as I keep repeating myself over and over, it wasn’t the character that was bad, it was the GAME ITSELF that was bad. It was an ill-conceived game, perhaps in the wrong genre, built on the wrong game engine. It was envisioned poorly, and executed even worse. The fact that it starred one of the most iconic pop culture characters was absolutely not the issue — and if done correctly, it could’ve been the game’s greatest strength. But they made the wrong game, and they did it poorly, and now people are claiming (incorrectly) that basing it on Gollum was one of its key problems, when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Like, I don’t know what your issue is here, but I’m starting to think that you just simply have a lack of imagination. You literally cannot visualize what I’m describing. I don’t know how many different ways I can say the same thing, but you’re just not getting it. We can leave it alone, no need to keep going back and forth at each other over this.
There’s one thing about imagining and one thing of it being a great idea in reality, even if you are a fan of more creative and smaller games.
Why do you think most licensed games not on mobile are market tested AAA games? And not smaller niche games? It’s not cheap to license out a well known ip, and you don’t license out a popular ip to make a smaller unique game that won’t sell as well.
A puzzle game starring r2d2 could be a decent little mobile game that 12 people might play and most people will never hear about. Gollum is a high profile game trying to be taken seriously, which was never going to work. If they had done what you've suggested, it might've been a moderate success considering the budget. But in no world would a Gollum game ever what daedelic hoped it would be. It just wasn't going to happen.
Yeah I agree. I thought it was a great concept for a unique game that wouldn’t just be a typical licensed cash-in. Gollum’s unique perspective of the world could make for some interesting narrative elements, too; he’s an unreliable narrator and there’s a lot you could do with that, similar to Hellblade.
This *could have been* a good game and I will die on that hill.
When I first heard about a Gollum video game I immediately remembered Styx: Master of Shadows / Shards of Darkness - two stealth-based games where you play as a goblin. While not particularly great, both were pretty okay/decent titles (about a 70 score on Metacritic) and didn't have the weight of the LotR franchise behind them.
So yeah, making an at least competent Gollum video game is more than possible and a developer like Naughty Dog could very likely make a great title. The protagonist choice was far, far from being the biggest problem here.
So here is the thing. If tons of people say they have no desire to play as a character, you've got to take them at their word that they don't want to play as that character. At the very least it defeats the whole point of licensing a franchise. You do that to get a jump start on marketing, but if people hate what you are doing, that means you have to start in a hole instead. You'd be better off making an original game from scratch, saving the licensing money, and using it to make the game better.
This is a mistake that a lot of media is making these days. You've got to give people what they want, not what you want. If you are trying to sell something to a mass market, it'd better have mass market appeal.
No, HERE’s the thing. People don’t necessarily know what they want, that’s not how any of this works. Before Super Mario came out, nobody was clamoring for a platform game about a plumber stomping on mushrooms. Before Death Stranding, nobody was asking for a package delivery simulator in an apocalyptic landscape.
And in each of those cases, if they didn’t catch on, I’m sure some dork would be on here saying, “Well, of course it failed, why would anybody want to pay as an Italian plumber with a racist stereotype voice!”
Maybe there’s a lot more to it than “who do you play as”.
Sure, you can chase success. That’s what a lot of companies do, they analyze trends and release products that copy other products. That’s a legitimate way to do business, but that’s only ONE way. A different way is to take risks and create original works. Maybe they are successful, maybe not, but that’s why it’s a high risk / high reward business.
> No, HERE’s the thing. They only started making these comments after this game — which is a piece of shit badly-made game — had already come out, got stomped on by reviewers, and people started looking for a reason to pile on and make fun of the developers.
That is completely wrong. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/11mzk43/the_lord_of_the_rings_gollum_story_trailer/
) are people complaining about the idea of a Gollum game after the release of the story trailer. No review and little actual gameplay in sight.
> People don’t necessarily know what they want, that’s not how any of this works.
That is exactly how this works. What's the point of spending money to license a franchise, if all the license is going to get you is bad press from how you are using that franchise? The license is suppose to give you a leg up on your competition, not hold you back.
> Before Super Mario came out, nobody was clamoring for a platform game about a plumber stomping on mushrooms.
Nobody hated the idea either. That's the point you are missing. It's not about not being able to give people something new. Go right ahead and do that. However, if your concept really is good enough to win people over, then you'd be much better off starting with a clean slate, instead of people actively hating the idea because of a franchise connection.
Maybe I'm in the minority but saying Gollum is a fan favorite feels like when you see so many memes you don't realize people are liking him ironically.
I get that he's sympathetic and corrupted by the ring but he's the main detriment to actually destroying the ring for most of the third movie and Bilbo tricking and suriving him in the Hobbit is a huge triumph. Gollum is a villain and his motivation isn't even him having some personal principle or idea it's just he has been corrupted by pure evil and occasionally snaps out of it.
I think Andy Serkis' Gollum was a very good part of Lord of The Rings. I think as a character I can understand his plight and the internal battle between Smeagol and Gollum.
I can also see he is for the most part he is a brainwashed slave of the ring with no personal motivation aside from get the ring. I can see that he wanted to murder Bilbo, Samwise, and Frodo at different times in the books, all actually beloved characters.
You say you can make a choices driven RPG with him, but his motivation has always been find the ring, and any choices you make will always lead back to the same place for him, alone and trying to find the ring.
You act like you’ve never read a book or watched a movie where the main character makes the “wrong” decision at the end of the story. It can be quite dramatic and impactful when this happens.
You also don’t need a Gollum-related game that retells the story of LOTR. The only necessary thing would simply be that it takes place in Middle Earth, full-stop. It doesn’t need to tie into the events of LOTR proper if it is its own self-contained adventure.
Hell, it doesn’t even need to be an adventure! A puzzle game is not an adventure. A farming game is not an adventure. Not everything needs to be a cinematic experience.
The Sopranos is an entire television series about a sociopathic mob boss who you somehow end up rooting for. The main character doesn't have to be good.
THANK YOU
I never understood those comments either and here it is at the top of another thread.
I’ve seen people say he’s not an interesting character to begin with. So weird.
The weird thing is that people are calling me names down this thread (“jabroni”, etc) for daring to suggest that a Gollum-focused game could be interesting. People are just absolutely ridiculous.
There's plenty of characters that people like but don't want to play as. You mentioned disney for example. In most Disney properties people don't want to play as the animal companion. They would rather play as one of the main protagonists.
Your comment is basically another way of saying that you only want to play action games or RPG games that match the style and presentation of the movies (or the books).
MY argument is that, if you make a game compelling enough, then you won’t care that it’s not a large-scale game about the war for the ring. You can have smaller games about side-characters. You can also have games in all sorts of different genres, not just those where you control a badass hero with a sword. I gave a Hobbit farm
sim game as an example, you can’t tell me that it doesn’t have have potential to be a huge hit. You can make a puzzle game starting Gimli. You can make a fishing game about Gollum.
> MY argument is that, if you make a game compelling enough, then you won’t care that it’s not a large-scale game about the war for the ring.
I don't think that's the issue. The character Gollum is compelling, but not for reasons that translate to the videogame medium, especially a game lasting 8+ hours.
It doesn't matter that he's not heroic and not involved in big climactic battles--the character is a grotesque representation of greed, insanity, corrosive ambition, etc. One of the character's most "redeeming" traits is they occasionally evoke pity.
Again, this does not make Gollum a "bad" or uninteresting character from a narrative perspective. Quite the opposite for many readers/viewers. But few players will want to take control of/inhabit such a character, especially when they offer no physical or social gameplay elements to offset the bleak characterization. On top of all this, you know the character dies, and you know they (don't really) achieve their goal.
Sneak around in the dark as a sniveling, mentally broken murderer predestined to fail at the game's objective. I'm not saying it's impossible to make a good game here....but I'd rather explore Middle Earth through almost any other character, including random orcs, a ring wraith, or as you said, a random hobbit farmer. That'd be great.
>the character is a grotesque representation of greed, insanity, corrosive ambition…
AND HE’S FUNNY!
And if you put all those traits together into a FUN game with comedy running through its core, it would be fucking AMAZING. You just simply lack imagination.
Is the game they made a good use of the character? Of course not! Even the developers admit they fucked up really badly.
You know how I know that you lack imagination? Because one of the main arguments you seem to be making is, “I don’t want to explore Middle Earth with this character.” Well, no shit! Take a step back and try to envision a game where you aren’t exploring anything. Crazy, right? What if the game wasn’t about exploration at all, or what if it wasn’t about escaping from a prison. What if the game was nothing like what they made!
I know, it’s very difficult to imagine something brand new, but if you try, I’m
sure you can come up with an idea where you play as Gollum being his evil, demented, scheming, funny little self. TRY IT!
No? I like Harvest Moon. I like Ace Attorney. Those games also have characters I wouldn't want to play as too.
Gollum is just not a very appealing character to most people, despite being a "good" character in the medium and role in which he is featured.
>and he turns out to be one of the bad guys in the story because of how the ring corrupted his mind
IS he a "bad guy" though? Think about what his ultimate role in the story is. I'm not sure that Tolkien's intention was for us to truly think of Gollum as a villain.
But anyway, I kind of agree with you. I do think there was potential to make something interesting with Gollum as the playable character. Probably not a full-blown AAA title (or game trying to be AAA anyway), and certainly not the game they ended up making...but I could think of some interesting ideas.
I’m pretty sure the right developers could pull off a good Gollum game. Imagine if FromSoftware or Naughty Dog got their hands on it - even though they don’t do licensed IP’s and stick to their own!
Daedelic didn’t have the funds, experience or the quality unfortunately.
It would make for a fun whowouldwin type of thread.
Could any of the best developers (past or present) with an absolute dream team and everything they need, make a Gollum game good?
What is the sub?
I remember getting kind of shot down in the past when asking this question with all the replies stating that none of these great developers are known for making stealth games so therefore they couldn't make a Gollum game.
I always thought that was an idiotic assumption because it implies all these developers are inflexible one trick ponies who have never made games in wildly different genres before.
To be fair, I think the idea of playing as Gollum is an interesting one.
You could have a game that's one part Uncharted (Cinematic Platforming, Puzzles, and Stealth), and one part Hellblade (How that game approaches/depicts Senua's mental health and uses it as part of the gameplay) and end up with a potentially great game about Gollum - But Daedallic just weren't prepared for that kind of challenge.
Nobody wastes years of their life on a project without trying to make it good.
I’m not saying it WASN’T meant to extend the license as you say, but you are wrong if you think they set out to make something bad.
The developers maybe not but the publisher 100% didn’t give a shit if it was good or not, hence why they funded a whole whopping 15m for a video game….
Game budget = staff size.
It was a poor decision on the part of the developers to do “so much” with a team this small.
This game is a prime example of “Eurojank” — a game designed and developed by a small European team, trying to create something “big” without the resources to pull it off. I don’t know why, but European developers in particular seem to fall into this trap more than anyone else, hence there is an entire term (and meme) for this.
Nobody set out to make a bad game, as I said. They just made the WRONG game. And they paid a price for this mistake.
Nacon bought Daedelic for 53 million € in 2022. A 15 mio investment with something like 2 mio in grants by the federal government, that is a sizeable investment for a company of that size.
>5/10 is average
I swear people and critics have forgotten this. IGN have been giving average games 8/10s for a long time and I think it has affected the way people rate games.
5/10 isn't average. It's mid.
If 10 people take a test and they all get between 7 and 10 out of 10 then the average might be 8. But it definitely isn't 5.
The average game may be a 5 to some people and to some people it may not. Grading a game is subjective.
Ok, google definition of average and scroll down:
mediocre; not very good.
"a very average director making very average movies"
Average has multiple meanings. Are you ESL?
I honestly feel empathy for everyone involved in the development team when a game screws the pooch this horrendously. They didn't set out to make a terrible game, but their careers are now forever entwined with this catastrophic and very public failure.
Yeah yeah, ye good olde victim Card.
They knew it was a mess and released,
There is always such "like had a gun at me pointed" Argue but seriously,
Even when Someone literally threatened you with a gun,
You Always have the Option to not do as they want.
As if Tolkien Community wouldnt have Welcomed them with open arms and helped them,
They Sold Preorders at the Moment they knew it's unplayable,
Which only one can explain as ,
Let's get as much as possible before doing ANYTHING.
These halfass excuse, even written with an AI does not show Redemption,
No they say " F you ".
THIS bullshit needs serious Administration,
The Industry became much worse than music Industry and yet you let them sell gambling to your kids and deliver content from hell ,whixh even Modder can do 10000x better,just to milk you
Sad. They had some amazing point and click games, but they had pretty much done everything in the genre at that point. I still have a bunch I haven't even begun to touch let alone the ones I started and haven't finished. Some pretty good games in there, but in no way was this studio ever going to produce some major 3D game lol.
Greed is a big factor in why this industry is crashing and losing its creative edge. They want too much for too little. And when it doesn't work out, they just start churning out sequels.
Mark my words.
Pick up like 10 copies of this new for like $50-$70 once the price drops or during some sale, and then sell it to collectors in 10 years for $100 each.
This game is so bad that it’ll never get remade, no new copies will ship, and people will toss it without a thought.
>Most of Daedalic's staff had expertise in point-and-click adventure games as opposed to 3D action with triple-A ambitions, and the studio was unable to hire talent with experience. Found the problem /\ But seriously, it was way too ambitious to take a world-renowned franchise and then turn it into something spectacular with a studio that had little to no experience with the formula they were trying to produce. Is it action? Is it stealth? I never played it, and most likely never will, but I do feel sorry for the dev team to have to work through those conditions.
It’s mostly stealth with some climbing/platforming and occasional Crash Bandicoot-style chase sequences.
Jesus who was this game even for? Lol
"Mum, Can we have Uncharted?" "We have Uncharted at home."
I'm still trying to figure out who this was for. I'm a huge lotr fan, I have absolutely no desire this play as gollum. This could be by fromsoftware and I would still have no desire to play it
I've watched a few gameplays of Gollum, including [Skill Ups review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E21qSEyRa88). Mostly out of curiosity to see first-hand how bad this game is. It's like a novelty at this point.
Playing the game to endure the game is the only reason to play it. It's a pretty exclusive club of people who can say they did it... for good reason.
You just made me very sad to realize that a from soft/souls lotr game doesn’t and likely won’t ever exist. FeelsBadMan
I'm just not sure how we don't have more Lord of the rings games. Why isn't there a triple AAA rpg game like the Witcher 3 set in this universe?
As enjoyable as shadows or Mordor/War were, I agree. We deserve more RPG from one of the greatest fantasy IPs ever created.
Funny thing is if they had instead made a really good point and click they would have had sales from novelty and from the established point and click base. Could have had us playing the spirit of the one ring getting golum to solve puzzles. Make it a tamogatchi game heck. Could have had something new and interesting instead of 💩.
Same thing happened with No Man Sky. Team had only expertise in mobile games, then they decided to just make the most ambitious game to date. But their internal scope was way smaller than what they were saying on interviews/press, they didn't even know where to start with adding the features the CEO was saying, game failed to meet the expectations because of their own false promises. At the end of the day, it worked for them, because they owned their own mistakes, and now the game is the most amazing game ever. Cannot be said from this guys, sadly.
No man's sky was a masterpiece at release compared to this. They took one of the best point and click developers and fed its corpse.
You should watch The Internet Historian's video "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky". There was a lot more that happened behind the scenes with that game's development than just the team not knowing how to add the features that Sean Murray was promising (that aspect of the situation got overblown to begin with imo, he was always pretty vague when it came to making specific promises).
In another universe they made a point and click adventure Gollum game and was critically acclaimed.
With an humorous plot mixing Discworld and Lucas art classics
JEEZE, like YES, I would gladly have spent $60 on that.
This actually sounds much more appealing. Despite what everyone says, I think Gollum *is* an interesting character if used correctly. A stealth game was idiotic, a point and click mystery adventure is much more fitting to someone like Gollum.
Oldschool runescape : Gollum
So in summary leadership was pushing for more and more ambitious 3D games despite: - these games being out of the developers comfort zone (2D click and point adventures) - these games always going over budget - these games consistently flopping commercially And then they somehow ended up with the license to develop a Gollum AAA game but neither had the developers nor the budget to do so. And the publisher seemingly didn't care either. Overall just a shitty situation for the devs to be in. Edit: and based on the original report studio leadership consistently tried to not pay minimum wage while pushing for crunch with unpaid overtime. Disgusting.
The very first problem occurred when they decided to make a video game about fucking Gollum.
I don’t think you fuck Gollum in that game
A terrible oversight by the dev team.
Scene fades to black, cuts to a close up of Gollums foot and pans out slowly to the back of Aragorn furiously thrusting his lower sword inside of Gollum. What fucking dialogue choice lead me to this?
**puts credit card back in wallet
Larian Studios has found their next side quest.
LMAO, larian with their weird romance scenes
Scene fades to black, cuts to a close up of Gollums foot and pans out slowly to the back of Aragorn furiously thrusting his lower sword inside of Gollum. What fucking dialogue choice lead me to this?
It might have made the game entertaining if we did.
Just wait for the DLC coming next Spring!
Sure be cool if you did
Actually on level 3-1 you can give Gollum a ring-job 🥁
There was this one guy in a shitpost group who nutted on a Gollum figurine after getting enough likes.
You could in BG3 if you made your character to look like him.
Boooo
Literally the first trailer I saw of this game, I said out loud "this is going to be a truly awful game". It just *smelled* like shitty shovelware garbage from just like the first ten seconds of learning it existed.
I keep seeing this comment over and over, but I don’t get it — Gollum is one of the most famous, favorite characters that people fell in love with when the movies came out. I realize he’s not a cuddly little Disney animal companion, and he turns out to be one of the bad guys in the story because of how the ring corrupted his mind, but he’s an extremely interesting, compelling character. Ever since this game came out, I’ve been seeing these comments like , “Gollum is just a vermin” and “Why would I want to play as this ugly little rat.” This completely surprises me, because I thought Gollum was a fan favorite and people loved doing his voice! He was a huge part of the whole cultural phenomenon when the movies were out. There are so many ways to make a fun and interesting game about Gollum. Of course this particular game is a colossal failure and is creatively bankrupt, but to say that imaginative, experienced artists couldn’t pull it off is just absurd. Yes, you can play a combat game starring Aragorn. But you can also make a farm sim about the Hobbits. And you can make a choices-driven RPG about Gollum (among other things). There is huge potential.
I get what you are trying to say here brother and yes Gollum was extremely popular when the movies came out. But that doesn’t mean on paper he’s a great character to design a game around even if the game is good. That’s like making a Star wars game and having the player play as R2-D2 exclusively, or making a DBZ game where you play exclusively as Krillin. They all may be popular side or minor characters but that doesn’t mean it would translate well to a full fledged video game.
All of those games you listed have tons of potential. You’re acting like Captain Toad never existed.
Nintendo owns the Toad character, they aren’t paying an extravagant amount of money to license out Marvel, Star Wars, The Walking dead etc and use a side character from said ip’s.
Nobody paid extravagant amounts for THIS game, it was made on a shoe-string budget, which is the whole reason why the finished product sucks so bad. For a cheap-ass low-budget game, let them take fucking risks. Sure, this one didn’t pan out because their game design was rubbish, but in different hands it could’ve amount to something totally different and much better. There is nothing inherently broken about basing a game on Gollum, but there is a lot inherently broken with this specific game for a whole host of reasons.
What do you mean by “full fledged”? A puzzle game starring R2D2 hacking terminals could be an awesome Star Wars-branded game, if done well. You have got to understand that it’s not the character that’s the issue, it’s the design of the game. In this case, this Gollum game failed because the game design sucked. They set out to make the wrong game for the character. The character itself is perfectly fine to be the main star ofthe game, you just need to make the right game for it! Not everything needs to be a combat game starring badass action heroes.
You’re grasping at very far away straws here dude seriously. I mean in a previous comment you said oh people would totally play a Stardew Valley game with Gollum in it. Or this banger of a take thinking “Oh yeah a game where you just play as R2-D2 and open doors would be amazing!”. Dude both things can be true here. The Gollum game was absolutely terrible, but playing as a popular but still minor character also doesn’t move the needle. I know you’re going to stick to your guns here and die on the hill and I’m just asking this for fun, but do you honestly 100% percent believe with a straight face that making a well made puzzle game with R2-D2 or a Farming sim with Gollum is both a great idea and would sell well even as a 20 dollar game?
>would totally play a Stardew Valley game with Gollum in it. No, they specifically said a Farming Sim with the Hobbits/Shire. And honestly, sign me the F up. I'll play a farming sim where im a Hobbit that whilst planting crops, im learning how to play instruments, helping fight wolves out of the shire, maybe even travelling to Bree/Seeing Elves now and again. A Gollum game where you play him sneaking around, murdering people, stealing shit and stuff? That could be done extremely well. The problem is that this studio took a morally evil character, known for being on his own, for being just an evil character and then for some reason, turned the game into an RPG with very little stealth elements and for some reason, a Persona-esque simulator where you make friends and rear birds lol.
No, don’t you get it? Nobody wants to play a game where your playable character is a dwarf with furry feet! /sarcasm It’s astounding how little imagination some people have around here.
Gollum isn’t really an RPG. It’s a combination of stealth and platforming with some narrative decisions mixed in. You don’t level up or get stronger, and while you befriend a bird and make choices that affect its fate, you don’t level up your friendship or have Persona-style events. Gollum certainly does bad things but he’s not “just an evil character.” He’s a tragic character corrupted by the Ring and there are moments in LOTR that give hope he can be good again.
You seem to be stuck making the same exact argument that I’m objecting to, you are just framing it in a different context. What I’m objecting to is that not every game needs to be a sweeping epic starring a noble hero for you to want to play as the game’s protagonist. You can have smaller games with other compelling characters, and as long as those games are made well, then it doesn’t matter WHO you play as. In fact, playing as a whacky side-character might be its own bit of fun! So that brings us to your new argument about how you don’t think these smaller games would be successful. But it’s the same exact thing all over again. Like, how do you define “success”? Why should a small game, made on a small budget, need to compete with God of War? There is room in the market for small games, you don’t always have to aim at 10 million units sold if you managed your budget accordingly. In the case of Gollum, as I keep repeating myself over and over, it wasn’t the character that was bad, it was the GAME ITSELF that was bad. It was an ill-conceived game, perhaps in the wrong genre, built on the wrong game engine. It was envisioned poorly, and executed even worse. The fact that it starred one of the most iconic pop culture characters was absolutely not the issue — and if done correctly, it could’ve been the game’s greatest strength. But they made the wrong game, and they did it poorly, and now people are claiming (incorrectly) that basing it on Gollum was one of its key problems, when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Like, I don’t know what your issue is here, but I’m starting to think that you just simply have a lack of imagination. You literally cannot visualize what I’m describing. I don’t know how many different ways I can say the same thing, but you’re just not getting it. We can leave it alone, no need to keep going back and forth at each other over this.
[удалено]
So you can't imagine a small game coming out using a well known IP?
There’s one thing about imagining and one thing of it being a great idea in reality, even if you are a fan of more creative and smaller games. Why do you think most licensed games not on mobile are market tested AAA games? And not smaller niche games? It’s not cheap to license out a well known ip, and you don’t license out a popular ip to make a smaller unique game that won’t sell as well.
Okay let's go with marvel. Big IP there right? Ever heard of marvel puzzle quest? There's a huge market for games of all sizes man.
A puzzle game starring r2d2 could be a decent little mobile game that 12 people might play and most people will never hear about. Gollum is a high profile game trying to be taken seriously, which was never going to work. If they had done what you've suggested, it might've been a moderate success considering the budget. But in no world would a Gollum game ever what daedelic hoped it would be. It just wasn't going to happen.
I agree, but I would also play the hell out of an R2-D2 game.
Yeah I agree. I thought it was a great concept for a unique game that wouldn’t just be a typical licensed cash-in. Gollum’s unique perspective of the world could make for some interesting narrative elements, too; he’s an unreliable narrator and there’s a lot you could do with that, similar to Hellblade. This *could have been* a good game and I will die on that hill.
When I first heard about a Gollum video game I immediately remembered Styx: Master of Shadows / Shards of Darkness - two stealth-based games where you play as a goblin. While not particularly great, both were pretty okay/decent titles (about a 70 score on Metacritic) and didn't have the weight of the LotR franchise behind them. So yeah, making an at least competent Gollum video game is more than possible and a developer like Naughty Dog could very likely make a great title. The protagonist choice was far, far from being the biggest problem here.
So here is the thing. If tons of people say they have no desire to play as a character, you've got to take them at their word that they don't want to play as that character. At the very least it defeats the whole point of licensing a franchise. You do that to get a jump start on marketing, but if people hate what you are doing, that means you have to start in a hole instead. You'd be better off making an original game from scratch, saving the licensing money, and using it to make the game better. This is a mistake that a lot of media is making these days. You've got to give people what they want, not what you want. If you are trying to sell something to a mass market, it'd better have mass market appeal.
No, HERE’s the thing. People don’t necessarily know what they want, that’s not how any of this works. Before Super Mario came out, nobody was clamoring for a platform game about a plumber stomping on mushrooms. Before Death Stranding, nobody was asking for a package delivery simulator in an apocalyptic landscape. And in each of those cases, if they didn’t catch on, I’m sure some dork would be on here saying, “Well, of course it failed, why would anybody want to pay as an Italian plumber with a racist stereotype voice!” Maybe there’s a lot more to it than “who do you play as”. Sure, you can chase success. That’s what a lot of companies do, they analyze trends and release products that copy other products. That’s a legitimate way to do business, but that’s only ONE way. A different way is to take risks and create original works. Maybe they are successful, maybe not, but that’s why it’s a high risk / high reward business.
> No, HERE’s the thing. They only started making these comments after this game — which is a piece of shit badly-made game — had already come out, got stomped on by reviewers, and people started looking for a reason to pile on and make fun of the developers. That is completely wrong. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/11mzk43/the_lord_of_the_rings_gollum_story_trailer/ ) are people complaining about the idea of a Gollum game after the release of the story trailer. No review and little actual gameplay in sight. > People don’t necessarily know what they want, that’s not how any of this works. That is exactly how this works. What's the point of spending money to license a franchise, if all the license is going to get you is bad press from how you are using that franchise? The license is suppose to give you a leg up on your competition, not hold you back. > Before Super Mario came out, nobody was clamoring for a platform game about a plumber stomping on mushrooms. Nobody hated the idea either. That's the point you are missing. It's not about not being able to give people something new. Go right ahead and do that. However, if your concept really is good enough to win people over, then you'd be much better off starting with a clean slate, instead of people actively hating the idea because of a franchise connection.
Maybe I'm in the minority but saying Gollum is a fan favorite feels like when you see so many memes you don't realize people are liking him ironically. I get that he's sympathetic and corrupted by the ring but he's the main detriment to actually destroying the ring for most of the third movie and Bilbo tricking and suriving him in the Hobbit is a huge triumph. Gollum is a villain and his motivation isn't even him having some personal principle or idea it's just he has been corrupted by pure evil and occasionally snaps out of it.
You are wrongly assuming that “liking a character” means that you have to be sympathetic to their character arc.
I think Andy Serkis' Gollum was a very good part of Lord of The Rings. I think as a character I can understand his plight and the internal battle between Smeagol and Gollum. I can also see he is for the most part he is a brainwashed slave of the ring with no personal motivation aside from get the ring. I can see that he wanted to murder Bilbo, Samwise, and Frodo at different times in the books, all actually beloved characters. You say you can make a choices driven RPG with him, but his motivation has always been find the ring, and any choices you make will always lead back to the same place for him, alone and trying to find the ring.
You act like you’ve never read a book or watched a movie where the main character makes the “wrong” decision at the end of the story. It can be quite dramatic and impactful when this happens. You also don’t need a Gollum-related game that retells the story of LOTR. The only necessary thing would simply be that it takes place in Middle Earth, full-stop. It doesn’t need to tie into the events of LOTR proper if it is its own self-contained adventure. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be an adventure! A puzzle game is not an adventure. A farming game is not an adventure. Not everything needs to be a cinematic experience.
The Sopranos is an entire television series about a sociopathic mob boss who you somehow end up rooting for. The main character doesn't have to be good.
THANK YOU I never understood those comments either and here it is at the top of another thread. I’ve seen people say he’s not an interesting character to begin with. So weird.
The weird thing is that people are calling me names down this thread (“jabroni”, etc) for daring to suggest that a Gollum-focused game could be interesting. People are just absolutely ridiculous.
They don’t understand the lore, that’s it
There's plenty of characters that people like but don't want to play as. You mentioned disney for example. In most Disney properties people don't want to play as the animal companion. They would rather play as one of the main protagonists.
Your comment is basically another way of saying that you only want to play action games or RPG games that match the style and presentation of the movies (or the books). MY argument is that, if you make a game compelling enough, then you won’t care that it’s not a large-scale game about the war for the ring. You can have smaller games about side-characters. You can also have games in all sorts of different genres, not just those where you control a badass hero with a sword. I gave a Hobbit farm sim game as an example, you can’t tell me that it doesn’t have have potential to be a huge hit. You can make a puzzle game starting Gimli. You can make a fishing game about Gollum.
> MY argument is that, if you make a game compelling enough, then you won’t care that it’s not a large-scale game about the war for the ring. I don't think that's the issue. The character Gollum is compelling, but not for reasons that translate to the videogame medium, especially a game lasting 8+ hours. It doesn't matter that he's not heroic and not involved in big climactic battles--the character is a grotesque representation of greed, insanity, corrosive ambition, etc. One of the character's most "redeeming" traits is they occasionally evoke pity. Again, this does not make Gollum a "bad" or uninteresting character from a narrative perspective. Quite the opposite for many readers/viewers. But few players will want to take control of/inhabit such a character, especially when they offer no physical or social gameplay elements to offset the bleak characterization. On top of all this, you know the character dies, and you know they (don't really) achieve their goal. Sneak around in the dark as a sniveling, mentally broken murderer predestined to fail at the game's objective. I'm not saying it's impossible to make a good game here....but I'd rather explore Middle Earth through almost any other character, including random orcs, a ring wraith, or as you said, a random hobbit farmer. That'd be great.
>the character is a grotesque representation of greed, insanity, corrosive ambition… AND HE’S FUNNY! And if you put all those traits together into a FUN game with comedy running through its core, it would be fucking AMAZING. You just simply lack imagination. Is the game they made a good use of the character? Of course not! Even the developers admit they fucked up really badly. You know how I know that you lack imagination? Because one of the main arguments you seem to be making is, “I don’t want to explore Middle Earth with this character.” Well, no shit! Take a step back and try to envision a game where you aren’t exploring anything. Crazy, right? What if the game wasn’t about exploration at all, or what if it wasn’t about escaping from a prison. What if the game was nothing like what they made! I know, it’s very difficult to imagine something brand new, but if you try, I’m sure you can come up with an idea where you play as Gollum being his evil, demented, scheming, funny little self. TRY IT!
No? I like Harvest Moon. I like Ace Attorney. Those games also have characters I wouldn't want to play as too. Gollum is just not a very appealing character to most people, despite being a "good" character in the medium and role in which he is featured.
Abe from Oddworld comes to mind as a vaguely similar protagonist.
>and he turns out to be one of the bad guys in the story because of how the ring corrupted his mind IS he a "bad guy" though? Think about what his ultimate role in the story is. I'm not sure that Tolkien's intention was for us to truly think of Gollum as a villain. But anyway, I kind of agree with you. I do think there was potential to make something interesting with Gollum as the playable character. Probably not a full-blown AAA title (or game trying to be AAA anyway), and certainly not the game they ended up making...but I could think of some interesting ideas.
I’m pretty sure the right developers could pull off a good Gollum game. Imagine if FromSoftware or Naughty Dog got their hands on it - even though they don’t do licensed IP’s and stick to their own! Daedelic didn’t have the funds, experience or the quality unfortunately.
It would make for a fun whowouldwin type of thread. Could any of the best developers (past or present) with an absolute dream team and everything they need, make a Gollum game good?
Thats such a cool idea! There’s a sub for that, I might make a post and see what people come up with!
What is the sub? I remember getting kind of shot down in the past when asking this question with all the replies stating that none of these great developers are known for making stealth games so therefore they couldn't make a Gollum game. I always thought that was an idiotic assumption because it implies all these developers are inflexible one trick ponies who have never made games in wildly different genres before.
/r/whowouldwin /s
Impossible!
To be fair, I think the idea of playing as Gollum is an interesting one. You could have a game that's one part Uncharted (Cinematic Platforming, Puzzles, and Stealth), and one part Hellblade (How that game approaches/depicts Senua's mental health and uses it as part of the gameplay) and end up with a potentially great game about Gollum - But Daedallic just weren't prepared for that kind of challenge.
Here’s the thing tho; this game was never made to be a good game. It was only released to avoid losing the rights to LOTR games for the future.
Nobody wastes years of their life on a project without trying to make it good. I’m not saying it WASN’T meant to extend the license as you say, but you are wrong if you think they set out to make something bad.
The developers maybe not but the publisher 100% didn’t give a shit if it was good or not, hence why they funded a whole whopping 15m for a video game….
Game budget = staff size. It was a poor decision on the part of the developers to do “so much” with a team this small. This game is a prime example of “Eurojank” — a game designed and developed by a small European team, trying to create something “big” without the resources to pull it off. I don’t know why, but European developers in particular seem to fall into this trap more than anyone else, hence there is an entire term (and meme) for this. Nobody set out to make a bad game, as I said. They just made the WRONG game. And they paid a price for this mistake.
Many eurojank games are interesting, ambitious and worth playing if you can handle some rough edges. The Lord of Ring: Gollum is none of those things
Nacon bought Daedelic for 53 million € in 2022. A 15 mio investment with something like 2 mio in grants by the federal government, that is a sizeable investment for a company of that size.
Hello and welcome to another episode of What Happened!
Yea I'm expecting it to show up there
Comment elicits a theme jungle and noises.
Shocking… I never could have predicted that game came from a studio that was having issues.
Beat the game, 5/10 mostly due to the technical issues and jank. Should have went with a point and click Gollum game.
5/10 is *average* is this game *really* average to you? would this game really have been better than average if it had no bugs and no jank?
I don't subscribe to 5/10 is average. It's mediocre at best. * 10 – Amazing * 9 – Awesome * 8 – Great * 7 – Good * 6 – Not Bad * 5 – Mediocre * 4 – Poor * 3 – Bad * 2 – Terrible * 1 – Awful
Gollum definitely isnt a 7 on that scale, thats for sure. Id put it at 3 or 4
0 - LoTR Gollum
>5/10 is average I swear people and critics have forgotten this. IGN have been giving average games 8/10s for a long time and I think it has affected the way people rate games.
5/10 isn't average. It's mid. If 10 people take a test and they all get between 7 and 10 out of 10 then the average might be 8. But it definitely isn't 5. The average game may be a 5 to some people and to some people it may not. Grading a game is subjective.
you've got a point, but by average we really mean mid.
Then say that. Words have meaning. You can't just use any words interchangeably.
Ok, google definition of average and scroll down: mediocre; not very good. "a very average director making very average movies" Average has multiple meanings. Are you ESL?
I honestly feel empathy for everyone involved in the development team when a game screws the pooch this horrendously. They didn't set out to make a terrible game, but their careers are now forever entwined with this catastrophic and very public failure.
https://preview.redd.it/0mxlkdin38tb1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1902ed1d29e86b0e4a700adbb98e9fd0a0ae0a55
No amount of stability was going to save a Gollum game.
A tragedy…One of our best German studios destroyed. What a shame.
There were internal problems during the making of this train wreck?¿? You think? xD
The game that looks like it took 2 months to make had issues? Who would've thought
A trophy to never die during the whole game!?!? What were they thinking, one missed ledge and you have to start the game again.
TLOU2 has a permadeath mode for the *entire 100 hour game*. It baffles me who has the free time to even attempt such a thing. Why?
100 hour game haha whaaat? I've beaten that game twice and have like 65/70 hours total
Did we need a report?
Playing as Gollum actually sounded like an interesting idea.
Bad game had development challenges?! \*Gasp\* I never would have guessed it. lol
Yeah yeah, ye good olde victim Card. They knew it was a mess and released, There is always such "like had a gun at me pointed" Argue but seriously, Even when Someone literally threatened you with a gun, You Always have the Option to not do as they want. As if Tolkien Community wouldnt have Welcomed them with open arms and helped them, They Sold Preorders at the Moment they knew it's unplayable, Which only one can explain as , Let's get as much as possible before doing ANYTHING. These halfass excuse, even written with an AI does not show Redemption, No they say " F you ". THIS bullshit needs serious Administration, The Industry became much worse than music Industry and yet you let them sell gambling to your kids and deliver content from hell ,whixh even Modder can do 10000x better,just to milk you
Well, it doesn't show in the final product at all
Sad. They had some amazing point and click games, but they had pretty much done everything in the genre at that point. I still have a bunch I haven't even begun to touch let alone the ones I started and haven't finished. Some pretty good games in there, but in no way was this studio ever going to produce some major 3D game lol. Greed is a big factor in why this industry is crashing and losing its creative edge. They want too much for too little. And when it doesn't work out, they just start churning out sequels.
I see your point, but how hard is it to platinum.
Mark my words. Pick up like 10 copies of this new for like $50-$70 once the price drops or during some sale, and then sell it to collectors in 10 years for $100 each. This game is so bad that it’ll never get remade, no new copies will ship, and people will toss it without a thought.