When Daedalic Entertainment showcased its first CGI trailer for The Lord of the Rings: Gollum at the 2021 Games Award, gamers were hyped and looked forward to the actual release of the game—and hoped it would be as good as the CGI trailer. Daedalic did not produce the CGI trailer. Rather, it was created by PlaySense.
An almost 40-minute video shared by the German gaming media, Game Two, took a deep dive into the production of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. The media interviewed some of the staff at Daedalic to find out what really happened. The reveals were massive, and we will walk you through some of them.
Firstly, Daedalic Entertainment is not proud of the game. Most of the employees at the studio who spoke to Game Two did so under the condition of anonymity. The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum is one of the worst-ranked games in 2023.
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On the score aggregation website Metacritic, the rating of the game was mostly negative. The highest average score amassed by the game was 43 on Xbox. It dropped to 38 on PC and plunged further to 35 on PS5. Daedalic has since apologized for the disaster. However, the content of that apology is now under scrutiny.
Two sources that spoke to Game Two claimed the apology released by Daedalic was written using ChatGPT. It was also claimed that the studio was unaware of the content of the apology prior to its publication—which was handled by the game’s publisher, Nacon.
The fundamental problem with The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
According to Game Two, not everything about The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was bad. The media praised the brilliant ideas (of making Gollum the protagonist), coherent backdrops, and well-functioning sections. However, these great elements were choked off by unfinished game parts that were not fully thought through.
During Game Two’s conversations with employees at Daedalic, the sentiments that came up more often were the blunders and poor decisions the studio made in the game’s production. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum focused heavily on storytelling, making controls and the world seem like an afterthought. The main source of the problem could be traced back to poor conceptualization.
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“The first draft of the level was almost twice as extensive as those that ultimately made it into the game which lasted around 12 to 13 hours,” said a Game Two report. “It was only when a new producer joined the team at the beginning of 2022 that the levels were significantly shortened again.”
The team tried to cram many gameplay elements into the game and some of them ended up unfinished or not perfected. According to the Game Two report, “an emergency solution was created and implemented shortly before publication”.
It is important to mention that The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was not short of expertise. “There were people working on the game that have been developers for 10, 15, 20 years, and they’re good, but they can’t do magic because they weren’t given the funds,” said Paul Schulze, former Daedalic senior developer and technical director.
Budget and unrealistic release window contributed to the game’s disaster
According to Game Two’s report, the developers working on The Lord of the Rings: Gollum did not receive enough funds, even though they submitted three applications. The owner at the time, Bastei Lubbe “publicly doubted the company”.
Eventually, the team did not get a larger budget which restricted the game’s development to a small team. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum ended up with a development budget of around 15 million euros (approx. $15.9 million). This budget is about a tenth of what it costs to make AAA games today.
Time factor also played a role in The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’s disastrous release. The studio had to rush through the development because of the limited licensing period. It was first postponed from 2021 to September 2022. However, that was still not enough.
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The studio had to delay the game again until May 2023. According to reports and interviews, the studio believed “the game would have been a total loss” if it was released as scheduled in 2022. Still, the 2023 release was a damage control as most parts of the game remained unfinished.
For example, some of the NPCs looked like copy-paste. There was a scene where Gollum was supposed to eavesdrop on a conversation between two characters. The characters were not animated. So, the studio simply let an audio recording play as Gollum peered at a window.
Game Two’s revelations on The Lord of the Rings: Gollum provides interesting lessons for studios that may have the ambitious dream of making AAA games in the future. Have a look at the full documentary in the video below. Heads up, the video is in German. However, you can use the closed caption to translate it into English.
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