The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was launched to a wave of negative reviews, and even an official apology from the developer. Yesterday, Daedalic Entertainment said it "deeply regrets" the state of the game at launch, saying that Gollum was the "biggest challenge" it had ever faced. It promised disgruntled fans that patches are on the way, addressing technical issues such as poor visuals and bugs.
However, many fans are worried that this won't be enough. While there are plenty of complaints about these issues, some players fear that Gollum's problems run far deeper than that, and aren't something that patches can address. Even without the bugs, some argue that the gameplay, the story, and even the premise of the game bring the experience down, issues that are difficult to address post-launch.
"Fixing technical issues is one thing, but the game itself under that is just boring and flawed at a game design level," says Reddit user onegamerboi, in a thread about Daebalic's apology. "As bad as I feel for any of the devs who have some passion for the project, I'd say it'd be smarter to let it die and move on to the next project instead."
Game design isn't the only issue that some have with the game. "You can’t fix something that never should have existed in the first place," says DivinePotatoe. "Honestly, the whole concept of this is flawed to begin with. Who the hell wants to play as Gollum during the least interesting time of his life?"
"I don't think patches are gonna fix this game," agrees SYRLEY. "It needs to be completely remade in a totally different way for it to be fixed."
There is one silver lining in all of this: Daedalic is getting the chance to make another Lord of the Rings game. A patent spotted online suggests that this second Daedalic-developed Tolkien game has been in development for a while, having been subsidised by the German government last year. Right now, all we know is that the subtitle of the game is listed as "It's magic", but this is likely a placeholder. It will be a 3D action-adventure game, and will "transport the player into a lush world full of mythical creatures and magic" from the perspective of an unknown character.
The patent suggests that it is targeting a release date of August 2024, although it's possible this will be pushed back due to recent events. Gollum is also meant to be ported to Nintendo Switch, too, so Daedalic will certainly have its hands full.