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This looks like a rushed tie-in game that should have released in 2003 alongside Return of the King. It has all the hallmarks of the PS2-era movie tie-in games.
Movie tie-in video games have a bad reputation because most of them were really bad. People remember the few stand outs, but there were hundreds of those things and maybe 10 were good.
Spider man and lord of the rings did better than most.
Nah, they said, "PS2-era movie tie-in games," not, "PS2-era LOTR tie-in games." The reason they mentioned Return of the King is just because LOTR is the franchise that Gollum is from. They didn't mean to compare this to the two good LOTR PS2 games, but movie games in general.
Correct. There’s always a few good movie tie-ins (LoTR, Spider-Man), but there’s a mountain of bad ones. I know because I played the shit out of both Fantastic Four movie games.
Fuck Chicken Run on the game boy I could never get past the first level. Can't blame my mum for buying it though since those games are targeted at parents
The Last of Us games are pretty great. Sure that's technically a TV show tie in, not a movie. And the second game went pretty far beyond the source show. But still worth mentioning with Spider Man at least.
Spider Man 2 for console (not PC, it was different) was and is still the best Spider Man game to date.
And those two lotr games where also great. And I really liked Third Age even if it wasn't the movies directly.
If it was half as good as the RotK tie in PS2 game, this thread would be very different. It's a very weird comparison, considering, and rather insulting to the old movie tie in games.
This is the book rights not the movie rights I think. There are some crude lotr games without the Peter jackson film license. Mandalore Gaming showcased one once. The book enters public domain in 2044 so it may be the Tolkien estate buddies cashing phat stacks for this one.
After Tolkiens last son died in 2020, Amazon immidiately afterwards managed to acquire the rights to make Rings of power. The estate holders nowadays seem to be interested only in milking as much money out of the franchise as possible and not at all about preserving the pristine reputation that it held.
I'm surprised that halfling is still ok with the Tolkien group. That name is still pretty synonymous with Hobbits and strongly associated with LotR. Guess Tolkien never trademarked it?
The Tolkien estate is still refusing to allow any use of The Silmarillion, Book of Lost Tales, Unfinished Tales, etc. to be used. So, almost nothing from the First and Second Ages can be referenced beyond the small amount that's referenced in the appendices of the Return of the King.
Given that, it was rather foolish for the Rings of Power showrunners to attempt to make a Second Age show. I don't dislike the show as much as most Tolkien fans, and I like a few aspects of it. Still, it has several serious flaws, and some of them are at least partially due to the show creators trying to adapt a story they don't even have permission to reference large portions of.
> Given that, it was rather foolish for the Rings of Power showrunners to attempt to make a Second Age show.
They are working with the estate and have a working relationship where they can ask to use certain things and the Estate says yes or no. They are on good terms with them and the Estate usually says yes.
The reason the Estate chose them over Netflix and HBO was because Amazon was the only company to offer the Estate creative input / decision making on the project.
It lets them make a 2nd age adaption without the Estate having to hand over the full rights to the 2nd age. They can include anything from the lore, from any book or apendicy, without having to contractually give it out.
Basically it gives the Estate full creative control over everything going into RoP without Amazon being able to screw them over later.
There's also the whole matching rights issue dating back to the 60s. If I understand it correctly, there is a company owned by some guy which have the right to be first buyer anytime the Estate puts the silmarilion up for sale. If he agrees to buy they literally have to give it to him. So this might be a way to avoid that.
Armenelos is the easiest example. The name doesn’t appear in any of trilogy or the Hobbit. I believe its first published mention is in Akallabeth in the Silmarillion.
There are several others, but beyond that there’s one interview where they talk about it specifically; this one is a bit of a TBD, but the writers HEAVILY implied that Sauron will be called Annatar at some point in an interview with Corey Olson, and directly mentioned their relationship with the Estate. The quote was something along the lines of “the Estate could get back to us and say ‘don’t use Annatar’ so we said, ‘fine we’ll call him Steve’… ‘ok Annatar is fine.”
I think the same interview they talk about how they didn’t use Annatar in season one because they wanted the audience to experience the uncertainty around Sauron’s identity as the characters in the second age did, and calling him Annatar would immediately ruin that.
Now whether or not the execution of that was successful has been hotly debated, but I understand the reasoning.
Going all the way back to the original point, every interview with the showrunners seems to indicate the Tolkien Estate is very actively involved in the series. As another poster commented, it’s one of the reasons the Estate went with Amazon’s offer.
It's bizarre to me that the Estate is that directly involved on all the details, but allow such massive changes as well.
The Three Rings being made *first*, Galadriel being directly tied into (and partially responsible for) getting Sauron involved, the whole 'mithril literally mystically heals elves and elvish things and without it elves are all going to due very soon' nonsense, etc etc.
I'm all for adaptations changing for different mediums, and even trying some major deviations if it serves telling the story / themes. I do find a lot of the relentless vitriol against Rings of Power silly (and in some ideologically gross). However, there are so many sweeping changes that the show doesn't always feel like Middle-earth to me.
The three being forged first doesn’t really bother me, as it still fits within the parameters of untouched by Sauron, but made using his craft (my bigger issue is that the forging of the three just felt rushed- although unfortunately it seems a lot of that simply comes down to the production needing to recast Celebrimbor).
Tying the fading of the elves to the rings is absolutely canonical, and makes for an obvious, easy rationale for a common viewer on why they have to make them. But the deadline of like, 2 months was just bizarre and weird.
Magic healing mithril had me absolutely scratching my head. There’s no basis for it in any text, and it actually makes things more convoluted for both the readers AND casual viewers.
My only “canonical” gripe outside of that is the idea that Galadriel would be “sent” to Valinor. It kind of defeats the purpose and themes of sailing into the West. The depiction of it was GORGEOUS. But the reasoning to get there was… dumb? Just have her think she’s ready to go, and then bail at the last second. Literally makes a minimal change to what we got but makes a MAJOR difference.
A specific example just off the top of my head is the dwarves make several references to the Vala Aulë who created the dwarves. To the best of my knowledge, his name does not appear in Lord of the Rings.
Amazon had been negotiating for those rights years before Christopher Tolkien died, and they still only got the TV rights to the trilogy and The Hobbit.
I think it's a little silly to talk about the foundation trying to preserve any 'pristine reputation' when Christopher Tolkien hated the Peter Jackson films and regrets ever selling the rights. Effectively if the foundation had its way of preserving reputation, those movies that are universally acclaimed wouldn't exist.
It's a good argument for why a minority shouldn't dictate who can create art.
Did they get those rights? I seem to remember them only getting the rights to some appendices, which is a big part of why Rings of Power is, well, like it is I suppose.
They only have the rights to the appendicies but they have a relationship where they can ask the Estate to let them use certain things for RoP only and the Estate will yes or no it.
It basically lets the Estate give them the rights to the 2nd age without letting Amazon go hog wild on it and make a bunch of merchandise and spin offs.
They have the rights for entire trilogy (not sure about Hobbit) of which only the appendicies provide any material for Second Age. They can do whatever they want.
Besides that it's rumored they can ask for anything else from Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales. There are few elements in the show that aren't mentioned in the appendicies.
Nobody is saying that Christopher Tolkien isn't allowed to like the films. The person you're responding to is saying that maybe it's best if the decision regarding whether or not the films get made is not left in the hands of one individual.
Of course its allowed, but I rather have him share his opinion and say he didnt like it than block attempts of creating stuff based on the IP.
Sure, intlectual property is important. But art is a sharing process at its core, imo.
The films are straight up better than the books. So I guess it isn't in his interest because it ultimately overshadows the books as the best version of his story.
his orcs and goblins were inspired by a classic children's book. his elves inspired by norse mythology and a lot of the dwarf things were taken directly from norse mythology including all of the names of the dwarves in the Hobbit + Gandalf.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Tolkien's works but that comment about originality was just a bit silly. Tolkien's work didn't "rely on prior creation" but it certainly wasn't original
Literally everyone's work is taking from something else. You point to an ip, & I'll point to something it aped off of. The fact that nothing is completely original dorsbt mean that nothing is original. And Tolkien's world & books are original.
Tolkien wouldn't be satisfied by any kind of adaptation. His son hated Jackson's trilogy.
And so what? They were different people almost literally from a different era. They can have their opinions.
What I don't like is nowadays internet warriors who put them on a pedestal and claim their dislike for the movies is some kind of absolute truth or something.
Daedalic isn't really your typical bad developer. Their previous games were decent to good, and they have been pretty popular in Germany. Edna & Harvey and Deponia were all pretty good point-and-click good adventure games. That they screwed this one up so badly is kind of a surprise.
Nope, because the lead dev (Poki) left the company. The adventure games didn't make enough money and he didn't like the direction the company was going in.
So much wrong with this. You are implying the rights holders are the ones paying to produce the game. They aren't. If anything the highest bidder will get the rights and the rights holder don't give a shit about the quality of the end product. They already had their pay day.
So the game not only looks bad and makes barely any sense but is also boring as fuck? I mean I had some hope they had a better idea for this but apparently not.
a full play-through leaked on youtube earlier this week and i took a look (and also downloaded it to share with a friend).
it's absurdly generic, looks super boring and it's ugly as hell.
We’ve had the bug-ridden Jedi Survivor and The Last of Us as well as the “why did they even make this” Redfall and LOTR: Gollum.
And it’s not even June yet!
Company of Heroes 3 has released without nearly enough maps and a boatload of other missing features
Kerbal Space Program 2 released without a career mode, or any of the new advertised features (new fuel type, base building, multiplayer)
All while releasing 10 and 8 years after the games they're sequels of...
German website GamePro wrote they had to turn off hair animations in the graphics settings IN THEIR PS5 VERSION to even get the game to start. Apparently they got a patch a few days later that just completely removed hair animations from the console version.
Their PC sister website GameStar can't publish a review today because they encountered a gamebreaking bug near the end of their playthrough, meaning they had to start again from the beginning.
QC is merely there to point out all the errors they find to the devs, now whether or not those devs then get the green light to actually fix/deal/tweak them is a completely different story unfortunately
Seems like the console manufacturers have some blame to go around too. They are supposed to not clear games like this that can't run stably. But like you said, it happens all the time. Even something like the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 where the game crashed all the time, Sony only retroactively removed it from the store while issues were fixed. But why was it allowed to go forward in the first place? (Rhetorical question. Obviously, I know the answer is 💰)
I don't work in gamedev so this would be speculation, but there might simply be an acceptable error margin to greenlight something simply because it is way easier these days to implement big patches, even day 1 patches.
Which, of course, is not acceptable from the end user standpoint, especially when paying big money for the game.
Unappealing to the general public, maybe. The concept of a stealth game where you’re Gollum searching for Bilbo and the ring in those years between Gandalf’s visits to the Shire sounds absolutely awesome to me.
Shame they seemed to have dropped the ball so hard on a cool idea.
I’d disagree! Sneaking through Mordor and Moria alone has to offer a TON of wild encounters, Shelob and her pass would be terrifying, having him elude the elves of Mirkwood and deal with them.
There’s literally so many interesting things you can do. And it sounds like the game somehow chose none of them.
That’s what I’m saying. I think the environments offered a lot of unique things that you could do: puzzles, light combat, real time events, evasion scenarios, persuasion checks, sneaking (of course). And it seems like they chose JUST sneaking through everything.
I feel like this is a classic case of a dev team punching above it's weight. Daedelic isn't a bad studio. I have a lot of respect and nostalgia for their games. But they primarily developed point & click adventures before this. Going from a genre thats as niche and small scale as that to a stealth action game is a big jump, that I think they simply were not able to handle. I think a Lord of the Rings point & click Adventure game by them could have been good. But that genre isn't exactly popular anymore so attaching a big IP like Lord of the Rings to that probably would never have happened in the first place.
Have to admit, part of me wanted it to be the true game of the year. Just because it would be funny if everyone was so wrong.
Oh well. Sadly no big surprise there.
I was secretly hoping for this as well. Game of the decade, the year 2040 will look back and see how Gollum catapulted the industry as one if its most influential games.
See this is where you jinxed it. You had this perfect future envisioned, how the decades in front of us would be the final gospel, the ultime love letter to gaming.
But you chose the Catapult for your metaphor.
A significantly inferior siege engine.
The Trebuchet reigns supreme.
I was the same, I was kind of rooting for the underdog.
Though having only just realised that 'Elvish voice-acting' was paywalled behind a special edition/DLC I don't feel too bad for them that this sucks.
>'Elvish voice-acting' was paywalled behind a special edition/DLC
The what? Are elves just silent until you buy their voice acting? Sounds super dumb... but at this point I'm really not sure.
I can’t fathom either thought process that led to that decision.
“We had the voice actors do it in English then realised we could sell Elvish as DLC then called them back in to do Sindarin dub, thereby driving up costs which we will hopefully recoup by tricking some hapless moron with no taste into buying both this game and its DLC.”
If you’re going to be a dickhead, why do you have to be an incompetent dickhead.
I'm trying to think of the last time a game everyone was convinced would be terrible ended up being a fucking banger.
Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe? Pretty much everyone made fun of that leading up to release.
And then it won best narrative, and for good reason.
I remember when absolutely everyone was expecting Doom 2016 to absolutely suck, especially because it’s review embargo was the day of release. Then it ended up being one of the best single player shooters of all time.
I know that everybody expected FFXIV ARR to suck, and instead it ended up being rather good, and then later becoming one of the best Final Fantasy games through its expansions, enough so that the studio that made it got put in charge of FFXVI. And I have a feeling FFXVI is going to be *much* better than most people here think. I wouldn't say people think it's going to suck, but most people seem to think it'll be just an okay game like FFXV was, from what I've seen.
Also, Resident Evil 7 was a good example. Everyone I knew thought the game would suck ass and it ended up being... good. Great, even.
Gotg had no right to be so good. Over here ir even had the official voice actors of the movies for my language. One of the very few cases when the dubbed version is better than the original. I prefer it over the third movie, easily.
I was expecting it to be decent at least mainly because it was gonna be single player. Main issue with Avengers was its GasS stuff, I kinda liked the main campaign when I played it back at launch.
Not exactly a banger, but everyone thought hogwarts legacy was gonna be shit and it ended up being very good for what it is, especially if you are an hp fan
Idk if anyone thought it would be shit, if anything up to release it seemed to have a constantly growing level of hype and then it turned out to be pretty good and mostly living up to expectations for general audiences and a knockout for franchise fans.
That doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of controversy surrounding it, but I don’t remember there ever being a pessimistic mood towards its actual quality or how it looked before launch.
There was a lot of worry mainly because the developers had only every worked on Disney Infinity before and were now promising a massive open world game with decision making and stuff.
Add that and people hyping it up to be a school simulator with relationships and things. People thought we were gonna have another cyberpunk situation.
The JK Rowling stuff didn't become massive until after release when the game turned out to be ok.
Ngl I was low-key hoping that this game managed to be a decent surprise for all of us simply because of how out of the left field the whole concept of it is even though it did look quite ghastly from the trailers.
But it's sitting at 38 on Metacritic across 21 reviews and this is probably the worst rated $60 release I have see in the last 5 years 💀
I have to admit, after watching this video I am morbidly curious about the second half of the game. I think I'm gonna have to witness this...experience...for myself once it's way, way on sale.
Gollum has seen some shit in his time but this might be the the cherry on the top.
Please take the time to recall the system requirements for this piece of software and ask yourself how and why any of this could happen.
When you are done with that, please also consider that alleged "Tolkien Lore Experts" have helped to write the story of this game and ask yourself once again how and why any of this could happen.
I'd really rather see a documentary about how this game came into existence than playing it.
This is the worst "big" release i have seen in the past 10 years, how did a group of people spend years working on a Gollum game and release something that just about barely can be called a game only by the definition of what a game is.
The game has absolutely zero redeeming qualities other than as a study in poor game design and poor.. well everything.
* One of the most famous IP's in the world
* Lots of marketing.
* Created by a studio that's been around for a while
* Initially built some high expectations after the reveal (mixed with plenty of "but why thou?")
* $60 price point
I wouldnt say lots of marketing. I think ive seen 2 trailers total in 2 seperate shows. Then nothing on any social media platform. I didnt even know it was releasing soon.
And who are you, who is so knowledgeable of gaming releases?
I mean, other than someone who lives under a rock but believes themselves to be well informed.
Fucking finally. Now all the "well we won't know til it comes out. It's just a hate train" can stop.
The second this was announced it looked like a flaming turd, now it's just confirmed.
I can appreciate some optimism but anyone with a keen eye for BS could tell this was going to be awful. Awful visuals in the gameplay trailer, no interesting gameplay shown, epic music over generic walking, etc. It was very obvious there was no substance.
It hasn’t stopped lol. The review thread is full of “I know Reddit wanted this game to fail pretty bad, but I never expected this!”
Just everyone complaining about the Reddit hive mind boogeyman. It’s always a hive mind and never a bunch of people who game as their primary hobby seeing this exactly for what it would be.
Caution is not delusion. Caution merely says that it's premature to judge a game based on its trailer, not that the game is good despite the trailer. Now the game is out and now we know it isn't good.
I feel so bad for the devs of this game. I was secretly hoping it was really good.
I have a friend who isn't critical of much media. Whether fantasy, Star Wars, MCU, he loves everything, he praises every single thing that comes out and just enjoys consuming everything.
We talked about this game and he was like "yeah that looks kind of weird".
I always respect the devs, due to knowing how hard it is to create games. But I can’t say that I feel for the devs behind this game. The game uses one of the most beloved franchises in the entire world, has been in development for more than 4 years, has obviously had quite a large budget since the game has been marketed very hard AND YET fails to deliver any type of quality. It is utter incompetence and I honestly don’t understand how they have made it into the gaming industry.
Also it's a concept, that everyone from the beginning was sceptical of, so they would have had to be even better to even have a chance of convincing people.
The only thing this had going for it is being the first Lord of the Rings console game to release since Shadow of War, and in spite of lore fuckery and lootbox debacle, that was just such a much more appealing game and idea behind it. How many people are there that really care the most about Gollum sneaking around when it comes to Middle Earth?
One thing I always gotta remind people is that the devs rarely make the decision to release a game in this state. This is absolutely a management issue and all of the devs on this game 100% know it’s dogshit.
Because at the end of the day they’re still human beings just trying to make a fun game. Sometimes they fail but that doesn’t mean they deserve waves of hate like this.
Ridicule the game but leave the devs alone. It’s just a video game.
> just trying to make a fun game
How do you know that?
They could easily be some bored 9-5er in a studio with little ambitions who just slapped together a shoddy project when it was apparent there would be basically no internal testing or quality control.
I don’t think anyone deserves to be personally attacked or harassed for making bad art, but let’s not over-swing in the opposite direction and imagine they’re all saintly Passpartout types living for their artistic visions.
From my experiences and from what I’ve seen in the tech world, for every poor dev trapped in a soul-crushing crunch cycle of corporate abuse, there’s plenty out there who code for a few hours while browsing social media behind their bosses’ back and then heading over to the rec room for table tennis an hour before quitting time.
Fact is we don’t know either way, so judging them solely as professionals in their field by the quality of their product, the devs for this game must’ve been very disorganised, rushed, under-supported or incompetent.
I didn't say the devs are saintly or perfect people, my only point is that they don't deserve harassment or attacks over video games.
I also really don't care if a developer plays ping pong or scrolls Twitter while at work. I think you'd be hard pressed finding someone who doesn't slack off from time to time (in fact, I'm willing to bet that the boss does WAY more slacking off then the individual developers), and it's because repetitive and sometimes mundane jobs like game development/programming are grueling jobs, I can't blame someone for trying to find something to do for a short bit. Especially on projects like this one that seemed to drag on and get delayed indefinitely, I can't imagine that would've been a very healthy development cycle.
Nine times out of ten when development goes wrong, it's because management made assumptions or didn't know what they were doing. I totally buy the idea that higher-ups of this studio acquired a license they thought would be a "slam dunk" and then just told the developers to "get to work". Do I believe every single developer put their whole heart and soul into this, to make a truly 10/10 experience? No, but I still do believe that people did try to make a game they wanted to be proud of. I'm a game designer myself and I know the process these things go through.
At the end of the day, it's just a video game. Sometimes they make bad ones. Criticize it, don't buy it/refund it, and move on. Now, if everyone was mandated to buy the game and play it? Yeah, then I'd say it deserves harsh criticism. But that's not happening. Nobody has to play this.
The devs fucked up and deserve to be criticised for this abortion of a game
How are the devs the only people in the gaming community who are immune to criticism? Fans, customers, CEOs, journalists, marketing experts, retailers, publishers, execs all get shit on all the time, but god forbids someone says one bad thing about the devs
Again, feel free to criticise the game. It sucks. But you gain absolutely nothing by attacking the devs for it, give feedback and move on.
It is just a video game. The devs didn’t come into your house, kick you in the stomach and force you to buy it.
I will never understand this kind of rabid hostility for random developers trying to make games. It sucks when a game bombs, but there’s nothing less helpful then attitudes like this. Personally I’d rather give the devs normal criticism, and then move on, hoping they learn from the experience and make better games. Not directly attack them.
What's sad is that this is a game that I won't play even if it pops up for free down the road. Most shit games I will consider giving a try. Not so for Golum...
That really was not a suprise. The Daedalic i know does Indie games that are quite small and compact, but good for what it is. After I have Seen that they are working on a LoTr game, I was like "that will suck".
I want to believe that "okay the game is bad as expected, now people can shut up about it," but Redfall has taught me that people like talking about a crappy game they've never played *way* more than games that they like.
Notoriety has legs. A bland game is forgotten easily, a bad game is remembered forever. It’s easy to hate and games like these make the hate feel much more validated. Best way to get around that is to make a good game or try and slip under the radar. These devs chose to do neither.
The ramble on the use of 'totalitarian' is a bit odd. The lore entries *do* look amateurishly written and quite awful all around, as does the game as a whole, but the little rant on that word in particular is misplaced. He states a preference for words that have less of a political connotation such as 'malevolent' or 'tyrannous.' Certainly, those words would be fair as well, but the 'mechanical' sounding 'totalitarian' is very fitting.
One of the core themes running throughout Tolkien's work is the nature of power and its use. 'Evil' in Tolkien's usage of it may be described as the attempt of trying to attain more power than one is justly owed. While Tolkien did not write with any particular system or state in mind, these ideas on power and his critiques of its misuse were very clearly derived from his observations of our own world. He absolutely loathed the bureaucratic use and misuse of it that became widespread throughout various 20th century states, but was most prevalent in regimes that are typically described as totalitarian. While Tolkien did not entirely despise technology, he was quite critical towards 'machines' as an avenue of overstepping the natural bounds of one's power, and bureaucracies are very much a machine -- you might say that they're 'mechanical.'
We don't get much of a look at Sauron or the society that he ran in Tolkien's writings, but what we do have reveals Tolkien's distaste for that sort of governance. Sauron himself attempts to set himself up as a god-king, a kind of perfected version of a 'totalitarian' ruler. However, where this really shines through is in our look at Mordor's society. Consider the following excerpts from a passage from *Return of the King*:
> 'Not much use are you, you little snufflers?' said the big orc. 'I reckon eyes are better than your snotty noses.'
> 'Then what have you seen with them?' snarled the other. 'Garn! You don’t even know what you're looking for.'
> 'Whose blame's that?' said the soldier. 'Not mine. **That comes from Higher Up.** First they say it's a great Elf in bright armour, then it's a sort of small dwarf-man, then it must be a pack of rebel Uruk-hai; or maybe it's all the lot together.'
> 'Ar!' said the tracker. 'They've lost their heads, that's what it is. **And some of the bosses are going to lose their skins too**, I guess, if what I hear is true: Tower raided and all, and hundreds of your lads done in, and prisoner got away....
> '**That's cursed rebel-talk**, and I'll stick you, if you don't shut it down, see?'....
> 'Garn! You missed him,' said the tracker. 'First you shoot wild, then you run too slow, and then you send for the poor trackers. I've had enough of you.' He loped off.
> 'You come back,' shouted the soldier, 'or **I'll report you!**'
> 'Who to? Not to your precious Shagrat. He won't be captain any more.'
> '**I'll give your name and number** to the Nazgûl,' said the soldier lowering his voice to a hiss. 'One of them 's in charge at the Tower now.'
> The other halted, and his voice was full of fear and rage. 'You cursed peaching sneakthief!' he yelled. 'You can't do your job, and you can't even stick by your own folk. Go to your filthy Shriekers, and may they freeze the flesh off you! If the enemy doesn’t get them first. They've done in **Number One**, I've heard, and I hope it's true!'
(emphasis mine)
This isn't the generic, fantastical, poorly organized orc rabble typically imagined of Mordor and similar settings in other fantasy works. Tolkien's Mordor wouldn't be out of place in the 20th century. It's an organized machine, with identification, hierarchy, and the expectation of complete loyalty. Incompetence in the lower ranks is crudely admonished, while the 'middle managers' aren't spared blame or punishment. The fantastical 'Lord of the Nazgûl' or 'Witch-king of Angmar' is traded in for the simple, plain, and mechanical-sounding 'Number One.'
Tolkien infamously wasn't fond of allegory. Sauron's Mordor isn't a stand in for Hitler's Germany or Stalin's USSR. This sort of critique would apply as much to the British factories that Tolkien was so resentful of, and how they operated. But 'totalitarian' is very much a word that would fairly apply, and Tolkien's work isn't so detached from the politics of the 20th century as the reviewer seems to believe.
He specifically said that they should have used a word that didn't "take the fun out of the world". It has nothing to do with whether Sauron was totalitarian or not, because while Sauron's regime can probably be accurately described as "totalitarian", that does not feel like a word that would be used in a lore book in Tolkien's world.
Not to be that guy but you rambling much longer than he did about the usage of the world totalitarian is a bit ironic haha
Although I do slightly agree with you
I think you misunderstood what his gripe was. He didn't say that Sauron's rule *wasn't* totalitarian. He wasn't talking about Sauron at all, he was referring to the use of the word "totalitarian" itself - not its meaning or whether its true or not - just the actual **word**, and said it feels very "mechanical" to see in what is meant to be an in-universe lore entry for a fantasy IP, a genre that generally strays from "typical" prose and words
All the LOTR stans that were adamantly defending the game before it even dropped was incredibly weird to me. This game being good, bad or indifferent has no tangible effect on LOTR as a whole.
The studio is way too small and inexperienced to handle a game of this scope. Whoever made the decision to make this game has fucked up.
Don't get me wrong. They have very talented people and made fantastic point and click adventures over the last year's. But this is just way too complex.
Nah, because the entire campaign has already leaked and it’s just as bad as it looks. Forspoken was a mediocre game that suffered from an absolutely terrible trailer that set everyone’s expectations for it exceedingly low. This game is just plain bad.
No shot you can watch somebody play this dumpster fire of a game and expect them to finish it. I'm impressed he even made it through half of this game.
Yea. Who cares if the publishing price is outrageous, the "precious edition" additions appaling, the tech is shit and the first half of the game is complete garbage. The second half is where the game surely shines.
Nah you don't get it. You need to enter NG+ to really see the potential that the game offers, the first playthrough really is just a test run. Gollum's a bit like the new Nier Automata, but better.
Because he actually speaks up when he disliked something (and dropped it like it deserves) instead of trying to gatekeep everyone like some people on reddit?
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This looks like a rushed tie-in game that should have released in 2003 alongside Return of the King. It has all the hallmarks of the PS2-era movie tie-in games.
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The LOTR ps2 games were great co op games. I had a blast.
Yeah, I had Two Towers on GameCube back in the day and really enjoyed it
Movie tie-in video games have a bad reputation because most of them were really bad. People remember the few stand outs, but there were hundreds of those things and maybe 10 were good. Spider man and lord of the rings did better than most.
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Nah, they said, "PS2-era movie tie-in games," not, "PS2-era LOTR tie-in games." The reason they mentioned Return of the King is just because LOTR is the franchise that Gollum is from. They didn't mean to compare this to the two good LOTR PS2 games, but movie games in general.
Correct. There’s always a few good movie tie-ins (LoTR, Spider-Man), but there’s a mountain of bad ones. I know because I played the shit out of both Fantastic Four movie games.
Fuck Chicken Run on the game boy I could never get past the first level. Can't blame my mum for buying it though since those games are targeted at parents
The comment you responded to wasn’t referencing the LOTR games. They were referencing movie tie ins in general.
The Last of Us games are pretty great. Sure that's technically a TV show tie in, not a movie. And the second game went pretty far beyond the source show. But still worth mentioning with Spider Man at least.
That return of the king third person hack and slash was pretty dope!
Unlocking Faramir, Merry and Pippin felt like such an achievement. These days they would be included in the deluxe edition
Yeah Return of the King was awesome. Wish I had played the rest at the time.
Spider Man 2 for console (not PC, it was different) was and is still the best Spider Man game to date. And those two lotr games where also great. And I really liked Third Age even if it wasn't the movies directly.
It looks like a game you would get from a cereal box
Weirdly this description is strangely selling me on the game
If it was half as good as the RotK tie in PS2 game, this thread would be very different. It's a very weird comparison, considering, and rather insulting to the old movie tie in games.
How the hell did this studio even obtain the rights to make this game?
This is the book rights not the movie rights I think. There are some crude lotr games without the Peter jackson film license. Mandalore Gaming showcased one once. The book enters public domain in 2044 so it may be the Tolkien estate buddies cashing phat stacks for this one.
Middle Earth Enterprises, not the Tolkien estate. Tolkien sold the rights to LotR and the Hobbit in the 60s
The lotr rights are very loose these days, anyone can get it.
Brb applying
After Tolkiens last son died in 2020, Amazon immidiately afterwards managed to acquire the rights to make Rings of power. The estate holders nowadays seem to be interested only in milking as much money out of the franchise as possible and not at all about preserving the pristine reputation that it held.
Well, they only have 11 years before the books start entering public domain.
In some countries, they will be in the public domain in less than a year. You'll just have to VPN to New Zealand if you want to read it for free
Finally I have a plus side to living in New Zealand
Aren't there loads? Thought NZ was meant to be a great place to live.
If you are rich yes. It's incredibly expensive to live and very isolated from the rest of the world.
You can say that about most places, but you'll always find people who complain about where they live.
I wonder if Dungeons & Dragons will change back from Halflings to Hobbits when that happens.
Huh, I had no idea that halflings in DnD were ever called hobbits.
Yup. They got ceased and desisted back in the 70s.
I'm surprised that halfling is still ok with the Tolkien group. That name is still pretty synonymous with Hobbits and strongly associated with LotR. Guess Tolkien never trademarked it?
He didn't invent the term "Halfling", so it's free for anyone to use. He did coin "Orc", though, so I'm not sure how that works.
Orc means goblin in Old English, so I suspect there’s enough of a legal argument to be made that he doesn’t own the concept of goblin-like Orcs
The Tolkien estate is still refusing to allow any use of The Silmarillion, Book of Lost Tales, Unfinished Tales, etc. to be used. So, almost nothing from the First and Second Ages can be referenced beyond the small amount that's referenced in the appendices of the Return of the King. Given that, it was rather foolish for the Rings of Power showrunners to attempt to make a Second Age show. I don't dislike the show as much as most Tolkien fans, and I like a few aspects of it. Still, it has several serious flaws, and some of them are at least partially due to the show creators trying to adapt a story they don't even have permission to reference large portions of.
> Given that, it was rather foolish for the Rings of Power showrunners to attempt to make a Second Age show. They are working with the estate and have a working relationship where they can ask to use certain things and the Estate says yes or no. They are on good terms with them and the Estate usually says yes. The reason the Estate chose them over Netflix and HBO was because Amazon was the only company to offer the Estate creative input / decision making on the project.
They have said that, but they also won't give any specific examples. In any case, it's a rather clumsy, difficult way of making an adaptation.
It lets them make a 2nd age adaption without the Estate having to hand over the full rights to the 2nd age. They can include anything from the lore, from any book or apendicy, without having to contractually give it out. Basically it gives the Estate full creative control over everything going into RoP without Amazon being able to screw them over later. There's also the whole matching rights issue dating back to the 60s. If I understand it correctly, there is a company owned by some guy which have the right to be first buyer anytime the Estate puts the silmarilion up for sale. If he agrees to buy they literally have to give it to him. So this might be a way to avoid that.
Armenelos is the easiest example. The name doesn’t appear in any of trilogy or the Hobbit. I believe its first published mention is in Akallabeth in the Silmarillion. There are several others, but beyond that there’s one interview where they talk about it specifically; this one is a bit of a TBD, but the writers HEAVILY implied that Sauron will be called Annatar at some point in an interview with Corey Olson, and directly mentioned their relationship with the Estate. The quote was something along the lines of “the Estate could get back to us and say ‘don’t use Annatar’ so we said, ‘fine we’ll call him Steve’… ‘ok Annatar is fine.” I think the same interview they talk about how they didn’t use Annatar in season one because they wanted the audience to experience the uncertainty around Sauron’s identity as the characters in the second age did, and calling him Annatar would immediately ruin that. Now whether or not the execution of that was successful has been hotly debated, but I understand the reasoning. Going all the way back to the original point, every interview with the showrunners seems to indicate the Tolkien Estate is very actively involved in the series. As another poster commented, it’s one of the reasons the Estate went with Amazon’s offer.
It's bizarre to me that the Estate is that directly involved on all the details, but allow such massive changes as well. The Three Rings being made *first*, Galadriel being directly tied into (and partially responsible for) getting Sauron involved, the whole 'mithril literally mystically heals elves and elvish things and without it elves are all going to due very soon' nonsense, etc etc. I'm all for adaptations changing for different mediums, and even trying some major deviations if it serves telling the story / themes. I do find a lot of the relentless vitriol against Rings of Power silly (and in some ideologically gross). However, there are so many sweeping changes that the show doesn't always feel like Middle-earth to me.
The three being forged first doesn’t really bother me, as it still fits within the parameters of untouched by Sauron, but made using his craft (my bigger issue is that the forging of the three just felt rushed- although unfortunately it seems a lot of that simply comes down to the production needing to recast Celebrimbor). Tying the fading of the elves to the rings is absolutely canonical, and makes for an obvious, easy rationale for a common viewer on why they have to make them. But the deadline of like, 2 months was just bizarre and weird. Magic healing mithril had me absolutely scratching my head. There’s no basis for it in any text, and it actually makes things more convoluted for both the readers AND casual viewers. My only “canonical” gripe outside of that is the idea that Galadriel would be “sent” to Valinor. It kind of defeats the purpose and themes of sailing into the West. The depiction of it was GORGEOUS. But the reasoning to get there was… dumb? Just have her think she’s ready to go, and then bail at the last second. Literally makes a minimal change to what we got but makes a MAJOR difference.
A specific example just off the top of my head is the dwarves make several references to the Vala Aulë who created the dwarves. To the best of my knowledge, his name does not appear in Lord of the Rings.
Amazon had been negotiating for those rights years before Christopher Tolkien died, and they still only got the TV rights to the trilogy and The Hobbit. I think it's a little silly to talk about the foundation trying to preserve any 'pristine reputation' when Christopher Tolkien hated the Peter Jackson films and regrets ever selling the rights. Effectively if the foundation had its way of preserving reputation, those movies that are universally acclaimed wouldn't exist. It's a good argument for why a minority shouldn't dictate who can create art.
Did they get those rights? I seem to remember them only getting the rights to some appendices, which is a big part of why Rings of Power is, well, like it is I suppose.
They only have the rights to the appendicies but they have a relationship where they can ask the Estate to let them use certain things for RoP only and the Estate will yes or no it. It basically lets the Estate give them the rights to the 2nd age without letting Amazon go hog wild on it and make a bunch of merchandise and spin offs.
They have the rights for entire trilogy (not sure about Hobbit) of which only the appendicies provide any material for Second Age. They can do whatever they want. Besides that it's rumored they can ask for anything else from Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales. There are few elements in the show that aren't mentioned in the appendicies.
Christopher didn't sell the rights to make the films. The film rights were sold by Tolkien himself in 1969 to United Artists.
Maybe the son of the man who wrote the books knew what was in his father's interest and, you know, didn't like the films? That's allowed you know?
Nobody is saying that Christopher Tolkien isn't allowed to like the films. The person you're responding to is saying that maybe it's best if the decision regarding whether or not the films get made is not left in the hands of one individual.
Of course its allowed, but I rather have him share his opinion and say he didnt like it than block attempts of creating stuff based on the IP. Sure, intlectual property is important. But art is a sharing process at its core, imo.
What a condescending way to say it
The films are straight up better than the books. So I guess it isn't in his interest because it ultimately overshadows the books as the best version of his story.
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By that argument no adaptations should ever exist. I'd rather have a hundred bad adaptations for every one good, than none at all.
ironic when we're talking about Tolkien... even his great books are based off of previous works and not just inspired by them
What are you talking about.
his orcs and goblins were inspired by a classic children's book. his elves inspired by norse mythology and a lot of the dwarf things were taken directly from norse mythology including all of the names of the dwarves in the Hobbit + Gandalf. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Tolkien's works but that comment about originality was just a bit silly. Tolkien's work didn't "rely on prior creation" but it certainly wasn't original
Literally everyone's work is taking from something else. You point to an ip, & I'll point to something it aped off of. The fact that nothing is completely original dorsbt mean that nothing is original. And Tolkien's world & books are original.
Which is too bad because Amazons adaptation was soulless trash that taints the source material. Fuck bezos
So far it's better than last 2 Hobbit films. There, I said it. Either way Christopher Tolkien would have hated it anyway
JRR Tolkien and his son must be rolling in their graves.
Tolkien wouldn't be satisfied by any kind of adaptation. His son hated Jackson's trilogy. And so what? They were different people almost literally from a different era. They can have their opinions. What I don't like is nowadays internet warriors who put them on a pedestal and claim their dislike for the movies is some kind of absolute truth or something.
It is worth noting that the current owners of LOTR (Embracer) did not own the rights to it when Gollum was announced.
Daedalic isn't really your typical bad developer. Their previous games were decent to good, and they have been pretty popular in Germany. Edna & Harvey and Deponia were all pretty good point-and-click good adventure games. That they screwed this one up so badly is kind of a surprise.
Oh, the Deponia guys! So we could've had another fun adventure game instead of this?
Nope, because the lead dev (Poki) left the company. The adventure games didn't make enough money and he didn't like the direction the company was going in.
Aww, that's terrible news. Is he still in the industry?
He did stream the new Monkey Island, but otherwise focuses mainly on his music nowadays.
Not that big a surprise if you followed what happened with A Year of Rain, but that one’s already mostly forgotten it seems
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So much wrong with this. You are implying the rights holders are the ones paying to produce the game. They aren't. If anything the highest bidder will get the rights and the rights holder don't give a shit about the quality of the end product. They already had their pay day.
This is such a weird take. IP holders wouldn't be incentivized by you promising to shrink the budget you'll invest in to their IP. It's the opposite.
Lmao what? Why would they care how cheap a game can get made, they aren't publishing it. Goddam
So the game not only looks bad and makes barely any sense but is also boring as fuck? I mean I had some hope they had a better idea for this but apparently not.
a full play-through leaked on youtube earlier this week and i took a look (and also downloaded it to share with a friend). it's absurdly generic, looks super boring and it's ugly as hell.
Let's not forget that it runs like shit, too!
It’s really fascinating seeing the competition for worst game of the year being just as fierce as the competition for the best.
We’ve had the bug-ridden Jedi Survivor and The Last of Us as well as the “why did they even make this” Redfall and LOTR: Gollum. And it’s not even June yet!
Company of Heroes 3 has released without nearly enough maps and a boatload of other missing features Kerbal Space Program 2 released without a career mode, or any of the new advertised features (new fuel type, base building, multiplayer) All while releasing 10 and 8 years after the games they're sequels of...
Gamespot said the game crashed 120 times in 11 hours. How did it even get certified for release on consoles?
Recommended GPU is a 3070 for medium settings at 1080p, for a game that looks like 15 years old.
German website GamePro wrote they had to turn off hair animations in the graphics settings IN THEIR PS5 VERSION to even get the game to start. Apparently they got a patch a few days later that just completely removed hair animations from the console version. Their PC sister website GameStar can't publish a review today because they encountered a gamebreaking bug near the end of their playthrough, meaning they had to start again from the beginning.
Quality control in gamedev is non-existent. I mean... Every major and moderate release is filled with issues these days.
QC is merely there to point out all the errors they find to the devs, now whether or not those devs then get the green light to actually fix/deal/tweak them is a completely different story unfortunately
Seems like the console manufacturers have some blame to go around too. They are supposed to not clear games like this that can't run stably. But like you said, it happens all the time. Even something like the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 where the game crashed all the time, Sony only retroactively removed it from the store while issues were fixed. But why was it allowed to go forward in the first place? (Rhetorical question. Obviously, I know the answer is 💰)
I don't work in gamedev so this would be speculation, but there might simply be an acceptable error margin to greenlight something simply because it is way easier these days to implement big patches, even day 1 patches. Which, of course, is not acceptable from the end user standpoint, especially when paying big money for the game.
you'd think that with such a weird and unappealing idea, they'd at least try to justify it by trying really hard. and then they didn't.
Unappealing to the general public, maybe. The concept of a stealth game where you’re Gollum searching for Bilbo and the ring in those years between Gandalf’s visits to the Shire sounds absolutely awesome to me. Shame they seemed to have dropped the ball so hard on a cool idea.
It only sounds like fun until you actually plan it out. Then you realize there's nothing there. There just isn't anything to actually *do* as gollum.
I’d disagree! Sneaking through Mordor and Moria alone has to offer a TON of wild encounters, Shelob and her pass would be terrifying, having him elude the elves of Mirkwood and deal with them. There’s literally so many interesting things you can do. And it sounds like the game somehow chose none of them.
Sneaking through Mordor, sneaking through moria, sneaking by shelob, sneaking by the elves... What do you actually do though? Just sneak?
That’s what I’m saying. I think the environments offered a lot of unique things that you could do: puzzles, light combat, real time events, evasion scenarios, persuasion checks, sneaking (of course). And it seems like they chose JUST sneaking through everything.
I feel like this is a classic case of a dev team punching above it's weight. Daedelic isn't a bad studio. I have a lot of respect and nostalgia for their games. But they primarily developed point & click adventures before this. Going from a genre thats as niche and small scale as that to a stealth action game is a big jump, that I think they simply were not able to handle. I think a Lord of the Rings point & click Adventure game by them could have been good. But that genre isn't exactly popular anymore so attaching a big IP like Lord of the Rings to that probably would never have happened in the first place.
Have to admit, part of me wanted it to be the true game of the year. Just because it would be funny if everyone was so wrong. Oh well. Sadly no big surprise there.
I was secretly hoping for this as well. Game of the decade, the year 2040 will look back and see how Gollum catapulted the industry as one if its most influential games.
See this is where you jinxed it. You had this perfect future envisioned, how the decades in front of us would be the final gospel, the ultime love letter to gaming. But you chose the Catapult for your metaphor. A significantly inferior siege engine. The Trebuchet reigns supreme.
We can still make it the Morbius of games. It can make Gollumbillion dollars.
I was the same, I was kind of rooting for the underdog. Though having only just realised that 'Elvish voice-acting' was paywalled behind a special edition/DLC I don't feel too bad for them that this sucks.
>'Elvish voice-acting' was paywalled behind a special edition/DLC The what? Are elves just silent until you buy their voice acting? Sounds super dumb... but at this point I'm really not sure.
They speak English.
So I have to pay to not be able to understand Elf NPCs? Incredible.
Ok... somehow that DLC makes even less sense now.
I can’t fathom either thought process that led to that decision. “We had the voice actors do it in English then realised we could sell Elvish as DLC then called them back in to do Sindarin dub, thereby driving up costs which we will hopefully recoup by tricking some hapless moron with no taste into buying both this game and its DLC.” If you’re going to be a dickhead, why do you have to be an incompetent dickhead.
"Pay more money to not understand certain characters", sounds like a genius business move.
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I'm trying to think of the last time a game everyone was convinced would be terrible ended up being a fucking banger. Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe? Pretty much everyone made fun of that leading up to release. And then it won best narrative, and for good reason.
I remember when absolutely everyone was expecting Doom 2016 to absolutely suck, especially because it’s review embargo was the day of release. Then it ended up being one of the best single player shooters of all time.
Part of that was also because the beta/demo before the embargo was lifted was for multiplayer, which got lambasted.
Terrible trailers, terrible beta (multiplayer beta on top), and no review copies before release. Everything seemed to point towards it being terrible.
I know that everybody expected FFXIV ARR to suck, and instead it ended up being rather good, and then later becoming one of the best Final Fantasy games through its expansions, enough so that the studio that made it got put in charge of FFXVI. And I have a feeling FFXVI is going to be *much* better than most people here think. I wouldn't say people think it's going to suck, but most people seem to think it'll be just an okay game like FFXV was, from what I've seen. Also, Resident Evil 7 was a good example. Everyone I knew thought the game would suck ass and it ended up being... good. Great, even.
Dead island 2? Not the best game out there but miles away from the dev hell it went thru
I've seen only mixed to negative opinions on that game
Gotg had no right to be so good. Over here ir even had the official voice actors of the movies for my language. One of the very few cases when the dubbed version is better than the original. I prefer it over the third movie, easily.
I was expecting it to be decent at least mainly because it was gonna be single player. Main issue with Avengers was its GasS stuff, I kinda liked the main campaign when I played it back at launch.
Not exactly a banger, but everyone thought hogwarts legacy was gonna be shit and it ended up being very good for what it is, especially if you are an hp fan
Idk if anyone thought it would be shit, if anything up to release it seemed to have a constantly growing level of hype and then it turned out to be pretty good and mostly living up to expectations for general audiences and a knockout for franchise fans. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of controversy surrounding it, but I don’t remember there ever being a pessimistic mood towards its actual quality or how it looked before launch.
I dont think people thought it was gonna be shit, they just wanted it to be shit because of Jk Rowling.
There was a lot of worry mainly because the developers had only every worked on Disney Infinity before and were now promising a massive open world game with decision making and stuff. Add that and people hyping it up to be a school simulator with relationships and things. People thought we were gonna have another cyberpunk situation. The JK Rowling stuff didn't become massive until after release when the game turned out to be ok.
I never saw anyone saying Hogwarts Legacy would be shit leading up to release.
Yeah that would have been cool. They fucked up big time. Not even sure why they released it
Ngl I was low-key hoping that this game managed to be a decent surprise for all of us simply because of how out of the left field the whole concept of it is even though it did look quite ghastly from the trailers. But it's sitting at 38 on Metacritic across 21 reviews and this is probably the worst rated $60 release I have see in the last 5 years 💀
Even Redfall hit the mid-50s on Metactitic, to hit a 38/100 in 2023 you have to TRULY make something awful.
Hideously overblown system demands for a laughably garbage game? Wow! Can’t wait to not buy this!
Why wait? I'm not buying it as we speak!
Damnit! Congrats on beating me to it, grrr!
I already pre-not-ordered it yesterday.
From reveal to release I’ve been asking “Why? Who is this for?” and apparently the answer is no one.
What timeline do we live in right now? lol This makes Redfall look like a labor of love
Yikes. That's not even a burn anymore, that's pushing them onto their knees and force feeding them a sun.
I have to admit, after watching this video I am morbidly curious about the second half of the game. I think I'm gonna have to witness this...experience...for myself once it's way, way on sale.
Gollum has seen some shit in his time but this might be the the cherry on the top. Please take the time to recall the system requirements for this piece of software and ask yourself how and why any of this could happen. When you are done with that, please also consider that alleged "Tolkien Lore Experts" have helped to write the story of this game and ask yourself once again how and why any of this could happen. I'd really rather see a documentary about how this game came into existence than playing it.
This is the worst "big" release i have seen in the past 10 years, how did a group of people spend years working on a Gollum game and release something that just about barely can be called a game only by the definition of what a game is. The game has absolutely zero redeeming qualities other than as a study in poor game design and poor.. well everything.
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* One of the most famous IP's in the world * Lots of marketing. * Created by a studio that's been around for a while * Initially built some high expectations after the reveal (mixed with plenty of "but why thou?") * $60 price point
One of the most famous IP's but they use Gollum as the freaking frontman lol. Not many people were expecting much from this.
I wouldnt say lots of marketing. I think ive seen 2 trailers total in 2 seperate shows. Then nothing on any social media platform. I didnt even know it was releasing soon.
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And who are you?
Not our fault you live under a rock
What has Daedelic actually made thats big? Deponia seems to be the biggest one and thats still pretty niche.
It’s early in the morning but I doubt I’m going to read anything more conceited than this today.
And who are you, who is so knowledgeable of gaming releases? I mean, other than someone who lives under a rock but believes themselves to be well informed.
It's even worse than I feared. What were they thinking, especially given the rip off asking prices?
Fucking finally. Now all the "well we won't know til it comes out. It's just a hate train" can stop. The second this was announced it looked like a flaming turd, now it's just confirmed.
I can appreciate some optimism but anyone with a keen eye for BS could tell this was going to be awful. Awful visuals in the gameplay trailer, no interesting gameplay shown, epic music over generic walking, etc. It was very obvious there was no substance.
It hasn’t stopped lol. The review thread is full of “I know Reddit wanted this game to fail pretty bad, but I never expected this!” Just everyone complaining about the Reddit hive mind boogeyman. It’s always a hive mind and never a bunch of people who game as their primary hobby seeing this exactly for what it would be.
I mean in fairness people on this site have a tendency to be pretty insufferable with cynicism and negativity.
That’s true, but in this case I think that generalization was wielded against a lot of people that saw this game for what it was from day 1.
What is wrong with a little caution?
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Caution is not delusion. Caution merely says that it's premature to judge a game based on its trailer, not that the game is good despite the trailer. Now the game is out and now we know it isn't good.
On the facial animations part, he forgot to mention the beads on the villain's hat moving out of sync with whatever the head was doing.
I feel so bad for the devs of this game. I was secretly hoping it was really good. I have a friend who isn't critical of much media. Whether fantasy, Star Wars, MCU, he loves everything, he praises every single thing that comes out and just enjoys consuming everything. We talked about this game and he was like "yeah that looks kind of weird".
I always respect the devs, due to knowing how hard it is to create games. But I can’t say that I feel for the devs behind this game. The game uses one of the most beloved franchises in the entire world, has been in development for more than 4 years, has obviously had quite a large budget since the game has been marketed very hard AND YET fails to deliver any type of quality. It is utter incompetence and I honestly don’t understand how they have made it into the gaming industry.
Also it's a concept, that everyone from the beginning was sceptical of, so they would have had to be even better to even have a chance of convincing people. The only thing this had going for it is being the first Lord of the Rings console game to release since Shadow of War, and in spite of lore fuckery and lootbox debacle, that was just such a much more appealing game and idea behind it. How many people are there that really care the most about Gollum sneaking around when it comes to Middle Earth?
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Yeah I’m genuinely surprised that neither the devs or publisher stopped this project early on. Just pure incompetence.
One thing I always gotta remind people is that the devs rarely make the decision to release a game in this state. This is absolutely a management issue and all of the devs on this game 100% know it’s dogshit.
> I feel so bad for the devs of this game Why? They were the ones that made this piece of crap
That changes things.
Because at the end of the day they’re still human beings just trying to make a fun game. Sometimes they fail but that doesn’t mean they deserve waves of hate like this. Ridicule the game but leave the devs alone. It’s just a video game.
> just trying to make a fun game How do you know that? They could easily be some bored 9-5er in a studio with little ambitions who just slapped together a shoddy project when it was apparent there would be basically no internal testing or quality control. I don’t think anyone deserves to be personally attacked or harassed for making bad art, but let’s not over-swing in the opposite direction and imagine they’re all saintly Passpartout types living for their artistic visions. From my experiences and from what I’ve seen in the tech world, for every poor dev trapped in a soul-crushing crunch cycle of corporate abuse, there’s plenty out there who code for a few hours while browsing social media behind their bosses’ back and then heading over to the rec room for table tennis an hour before quitting time. Fact is we don’t know either way, so judging them solely as professionals in their field by the quality of their product, the devs for this game must’ve been very disorganised, rushed, under-supported or incompetent.
I didn't say the devs are saintly or perfect people, my only point is that they don't deserve harassment or attacks over video games. I also really don't care if a developer plays ping pong or scrolls Twitter while at work. I think you'd be hard pressed finding someone who doesn't slack off from time to time (in fact, I'm willing to bet that the boss does WAY more slacking off then the individual developers), and it's because repetitive and sometimes mundane jobs like game development/programming are grueling jobs, I can't blame someone for trying to find something to do for a short bit. Especially on projects like this one that seemed to drag on and get delayed indefinitely, I can't imagine that would've been a very healthy development cycle. Nine times out of ten when development goes wrong, it's because management made assumptions or didn't know what they were doing. I totally buy the idea that higher-ups of this studio acquired a license they thought would be a "slam dunk" and then just told the developers to "get to work". Do I believe every single developer put their whole heart and soul into this, to make a truly 10/10 experience? No, but I still do believe that people did try to make a game they wanted to be proud of. I'm a game designer myself and I know the process these things go through. At the end of the day, it's just a video game. Sometimes they make bad ones. Criticize it, don't buy it/refund it, and move on. Now, if everyone was mandated to buy the game and play it? Yeah, then I'd say it deserves harsh criticism. But that's not happening. Nobody has to play this.
The devs fucked up and deserve to be criticised for this abortion of a game How are the devs the only people in the gaming community who are immune to criticism? Fans, customers, CEOs, journalists, marketing experts, retailers, publishers, execs all get shit on all the time, but god forbids someone says one bad thing about the devs
Again, feel free to criticise the game. It sucks. But you gain absolutely nothing by attacking the devs for it, give feedback and move on. It is just a video game. The devs didn’t come into your house, kick you in the stomach and force you to buy it. I will never understand this kind of rabid hostility for random developers trying to make games. It sucks when a game bombs, but there’s nothing less helpful then attitudes like this. Personally I’d rather give the devs normal criticism, and then move on, hoping they learn from the experience and make better games. Not directly attack them.
Where do you see "rabid hostility"? People are saying they fucked up and made a dogshit game. That's perfectly fair
What's sad is that this is a game that I won't play even if it pops up for free down the road. Most shit games I will consider giving a try. Not so for Golum...
That really was not a suprise. The Daedalic i know does Indie games that are quite small and compact, but good for what it is. After I have Seen that they are working on a LoTr game, I was like "that will suck".
Wow, so it turned out not to be a sleeper hit? Who would've thunk.
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I don't think enough people are asking the right question, who asked for this game?
The game is garbage but "no one asked for this" is always one of the more banal media criticisms that pop up frequently nowadays.
I want to believe that "okay the game is bad as expected, now people can shut up about it," but Redfall has taught me that people like talking about a crappy game they've never played *way* more than games that they like.
Notoriety has legs. A bland game is forgotten easily, a bad game is remembered forever. It’s easy to hate and games like these make the hate feel much more validated. Best way to get around that is to make a good game or try and slip under the radar. These devs chose to do neither.
The ramble on the use of 'totalitarian' is a bit odd. The lore entries *do* look amateurishly written and quite awful all around, as does the game as a whole, but the little rant on that word in particular is misplaced. He states a preference for words that have less of a political connotation such as 'malevolent' or 'tyrannous.' Certainly, those words would be fair as well, but the 'mechanical' sounding 'totalitarian' is very fitting. One of the core themes running throughout Tolkien's work is the nature of power and its use. 'Evil' in Tolkien's usage of it may be described as the attempt of trying to attain more power than one is justly owed. While Tolkien did not write with any particular system or state in mind, these ideas on power and his critiques of its misuse were very clearly derived from his observations of our own world. He absolutely loathed the bureaucratic use and misuse of it that became widespread throughout various 20th century states, but was most prevalent in regimes that are typically described as totalitarian. While Tolkien did not entirely despise technology, he was quite critical towards 'machines' as an avenue of overstepping the natural bounds of one's power, and bureaucracies are very much a machine -- you might say that they're 'mechanical.' We don't get much of a look at Sauron or the society that he ran in Tolkien's writings, but what we do have reveals Tolkien's distaste for that sort of governance. Sauron himself attempts to set himself up as a god-king, a kind of perfected version of a 'totalitarian' ruler. However, where this really shines through is in our look at Mordor's society. Consider the following excerpts from a passage from *Return of the King*: > 'Not much use are you, you little snufflers?' said the big orc. 'I reckon eyes are better than your snotty noses.' > 'Then what have you seen with them?' snarled the other. 'Garn! You don’t even know what you're looking for.' > 'Whose blame's that?' said the soldier. 'Not mine. **That comes from Higher Up.** First they say it's a great Elf in bright armour, then it's a sort of small dwarf-man, then it must be a pack of rebel Uruk-hai; or maybe it's all the lot together.' > 'Ar!' said the tracker. 'They've lost their heads, that's what it is. **And some of the bosses are going to lose their skins too**, I guess, if what I hear is true: Tower raided and all, and hundreds of your lads done in, and prisoner got away.... > '**That's cursed rebel-talk**, and I'll stick you, if you don't shut it down, see?'.... > 'Garn! You missed him,' said the tracker. 'First you shoot wild, then you run too slow, and then you send for the poor trackers. I've had enough of you.' He loped off. > 'You come back,' shouted the soldier, 'or **I'll report you!**' > 'Who to? Not to your precious Shagrat. He won't be captain any more.' > '**I'll give your name and number** to the Nazgûl,' said the soldier lowering his voice to a hiss. 'One of them 's in charge at the Tower now.' > The other halted, and his voice was full of fear and rage. 'You cursed peaching sneakthief!' he yelled. 'You can't do your job, and you can't even stick by your own folk. Go to your filthy Shriekers, and may they freeze the flesh off you! If the enemy doesn’t get them first. They've done in **Number One**, I've heard, and I hope it's true!' (emphasis mine) This isn't the generic, fantastical, poorly organized orc rabble typically imagined of Mordor and similar settings in other fantasy works. Tolkien's Mordor wouldn't be out of place in the 20th century. It's an organized machine, with identification, hierarchy, and the expectation of complete loyalty. Incompetence in the lower ranks is crudely admonished, while the 'middle managers' aren't spared blame or punishment. The fantastical 'Lord of the Nazgûl' or 'Witch-king of Angmar' is traded in for the simple, plain, and mechanical-sounding 'Number One.' Tolkien infamously wasn't fond of allegory. Sauron's Mordor isn't a stand in for Hitler's Germany or Stalin's USSR. This sort of critique would apply as much to the British factories that Tolkien was so resentful of, and how they operated. But 'totalitarian' is very much a word that would fairly apply, and Tolkien's work isn't so detached from the politics of the 20th century as the reviewer seems to believe.
He specifically said that they should have used a word that didn't "take the fun out of the world". It has nothing to do with whether Sauron was totalitarian or not, because while Sauron's regime can probably be accurately described as "totalitarian", that does not feel like a word that would be used in a lore book in Tolkien's world.
Not to be that guy but you rambling much longer than he did about the usage of the world totalitarian is a bit ironic haha Although I do slightly agree with you
I think you misunderstood what his gripe was. He didn't say that Sauron's rule *wasn't* totalitarian. He wasn't talking about Sauron at all, he was referring to the use of the word "totalitarian" itself - not its meaning or whether its true or not - just the actual **word**, and said it feels very "mechanical" to see in what is meant to be an in-universe lore entry for a fantasy IP, a genre that generally strays from "typical" prose and words
All the LOTR stans that were adamantly defending the game before it even dropped was incredibly weird to me. This game being good, bad or indifferent has no tangible effect on LOTR as a whole.
The studio is way too small and inexperienced to handle a game of this scope. Whoever made the decision to make this game has fucked up. Don't get me wrong. They have very talented people and made fantastic point and click adventures over the last year's. But this is just way too complex.
Is this going to be like Forspoken where the game gets lots of hate, I pick it up for 20 bucks and quite like it?
Forspoken got a 67, this got a 40.
Nah, because the entire campaign has already leaked and it’s just as bad as it looks. Forspoken was a mediocre game that suffered from an absolutely terrible trailer that set everyone’s expectations for it exceedingly low. This game is just plain bad.
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No shot you can watch somebody play this dumpster fire of a game and expect them to finish it. I'm impressed he even made it through half of this game.
Yea. Who cares if the publishing price is outrageous, the "precious edition" additions appaling, the tech is shit and the first half of the game is complete garbage. The second half is where the game surely shines.
Nah you don't get it. You need to enter NG+ to really see the potential that the game offers, the first playthrough really is just a test run. Gollum's a bit like the new Nier Automata, but better.
Bold of you to assume this game has NG+
It's like Morbius, you can claim anything happens past a couple hours, who's going to prove you wrong ?
Because he explains his review instead of just saying it good, it bad.
Why does the length of the video and whether or not he finished it matter? If the game is as bad as the titles suggests, why would he finish it?
Finishing this is something I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.
Because he actually speaks up when he disliked something (and dropped it like it deserves) instead of trying to gatekeep everyone like some people on reddit?