The dramatic irony in all of this is that a Point'n'Click adventure game starring Gollum would've probably fared better overall. It wouldn't have been a blockbuster, probably just be something that hardcore LotR fans would seek out, but it also would've fit more into the budget and scope that Daedelic could manage. RIP Daedelic, hope everyone who got let go because of this utter mismanagement landed on their feet
I had somehow gotten the impression that the game was originally supposed to be a point-and-click, and that a more ambitious action game was forced on the studio by investors despite the studio not having the manpower, experience or budget to pull it off (perhaps I mistook speculation in an article or video for fact?). I was genuinely surprised to learn that they actually planned something considerably *more* ambitious, despite the studio not having the manpower, experience or budget to pull it off.
@@FubukiTheIcyKing I'd say asking a dentist to perform open heart surgery would be a better analogy (since it's at least tangentially related to their field, but there's almost no way it wouldn't end in disaster), but either way it's not likely to end well.
There was some other detail that the studio was already on the bubble. Managements bad mood may be the fact their games never did well, so they were constantly bleeding funds and the death of the studio was inevitable. Gollum was just their hail mary to avoid the studio disappearing.
This is honestly a really sad story, as a German I can say that over here Daedalic was very much not an under the radar developer. They were known in Germany at least, and part of the reason why point & click adventures are still popular in Germany. Seeing them go down like this is a real blow to the German gaming industry that is not very large, we have only a handful of notable studios and Daedalic was one of them. It stings every time a studio has to close down but it does sting a bit harder in this case because there is comparatively little else to cushion that blow.
Honestly I've seen a German video about this where they even interviewed some of the workers and it's horrifying to hear the abuse they had to go through. It's a shame because I really loved their point&click adventures. I just hope those people find work where they'll be appreciated. Edit: The video is by "Game Two" and also has eng subtitles as mentioned in a comment below. It's an indepth documentary about the studio and especially about the working conditions.
@@Graf27green Genau die! Es ist so schade wie der ganze Ruf dieses ursprünglich tollen Entwicklerstudios durch Geldgier und unmenschliche Arbeitspraktiken ruiniert wurde.
The worst part is that a Gollum game is not the worst idea ever, they could've made an entire game that would be a true survival horror set in TLOR world and show how Smeagol and Gollum fight for control of the other, even showing that Gollum as slimy as he is does keep them both alive but oh well, at least dreaming is free
Honestly yeah, everyone keeps saying it was such a bad idea, but this idea interested me far more then another fantasy action game, let me play as a weird little gremlin man skulking around the shadows, that's far more unique.
It could have been good if they had another 100 million to execute on the full vision, but I assume investors weren’t lining up to throw money at Gollum.
Man, this one's sad to see. It's a rare thing to see a project just so thoroughly doomed from the start. Usually there's another world where it could have worked, but the moment Daedelic higher-ups decided they were going to make a game like this, there was no saving it. Gollum was doomed from inception, and that's a rare thing indeed
I think knowing there was no saving makes less sad, IMO. I think when you're left wondering what could have been is more painful since it's an actual loss. In this case there was nothing to be lost.
@@Dave.A.RUNLESS you sont consider these devs people. Afterall, they just wasted their lives on this project. So thats is pretty sad still. Should have spend it on another approable project.
@@Deliveredmean42 That's a good point. I was comparing between knowing and not knowing there was no saving, though. Both are sad, I just think not knowing is worse due to the aforementioned reasons.
I'm german and here in germany, the name Daedelic used to have a good reputation for their adventure games which were excellent. it was a really well liked studio and to have seen it end like this... its really really sad and kinda heartbreaking but it is what it is
I played the heck out of their adventure games when they were newer. Seeing them go down with a fate like this feels like the game industry version of seeing a fun old friend die to a drug overdose.
"This has to be a record!" - in reference to the development team being shut down in a month after release. Matt, I'm from the future and let me tell you the tale of The Day Before"
This whole game seems like it would have gone so much better if Daedalic had stuck to their adventure gaming roots and made this closer to a Telltale-style one.
@@8Kazuja8 Yeah I thought the same a point & Click game could work and they could take it slightly less serious and have some whacky characters and story. LotR has quite a number of whimsical elements that might actually have worked with something like this. Just make clear from the start it isn't going to be as serious as the movies and isn't a completely lore accurate adaptation and most people would probably have been ok with that.
I am really (negatively) surprised, by how Nacon manages to avoid the negative publicity it sorely deserves. This company is really an "AA version" of the likes of EA or Acti - yet nobody talks about their pathologies. They are the guys behind subpar release of VtM: Swansong; and another hero of Matt's series, "Werewolf: The Apocalypse". They are behind the ultra-scummy release of "Blood Bowl 3"; the botched condition of a really promising "Ad Infinitum"; they even have their yearly sport series in "Rugby" or "Cricket". They really are a wannabe EA, with all the related flavours.
Very obvious psychopath run company. Every single time I hear about them they're doing something that's definitely immoral and also sounds at least borderline-criminal. How anybody still does business with them is a mystery to me. I guess nobody ever does background checks for who they go into business wtih.
Two things I’m surprised that Matt didn’t point out is the horrific Gollum design, like he looks so weird, and also the fact that you had to buy dlc for a lore compendium, you know the thing that every game with a deep story has
He looks fake. His eyes being comically huge changes the design too much and conflicts with how the rest looks, especially since they made his jaw and face small. He’s uncanny where the original just looked neglected.
OH no you broke my heart in the very first few minutes! I never put together that the same devs who made the very awesome Deponia series made this! oh that hurts me, that hurts so much.
One of those messy development stories that's going to be a lot more sad than funny. Amidst all the backlash I really feel for Daedalic going under. Knowing devs were pushed into a super ambitious project on a shoe-string budget and tight deadlines. All while being forced to juggle new mechanics they had minimal experience with. Honestly think it might have worked if they had simply been allowed to go forward with the project being a weird little point-and-click adventure game like their usual style.
I think a classic point and click would have been a perfect game for a gollum based game. Its out of the norm from previous games (like gollum) and you could do choice based stuff much smoother and stylisticlly. Its a shame if they just used their strengths they could have made something not probably immensely ground breaking, but something fun and endearing I feel many fans would have enjoyed more than what we got.
Even a point-and-click game sound awesome for gollum but also i think they can make something whit a kind of dark humour whitout be extreme and i see gollum talk to himsefl whit smeagol (?) when you click on a object to see 2 perpsective.
The wasted potential of the IP, and what sounds like a solid team (within their field) is really disappointing. I really wonder if Management ran the whole "cocaine" idea past anyone. They should have run it by most of, if not the whole team.
I'd say it's mainly deadlines. Because I seen game companies that only have like 40 people and a tenth of the budget of these games, and still make masterpieces.
Embracer Group teared down the studio within a month after Gollum's release. That is a new record. The Day Before: Yes... until I came along. My studio disappeared within the next day.
I knew about Daedalic (since I'm an adventure games fan) way before the Gollum game's release, so it was sad to hear that the studio had decided to stop developing games afterwards (only focusing on publishing). I saw some people talk about the studio in such a way that it felt obvious to me they weren't familiar with Daedalic or its previous works. Their previous games are point 'n click games, with 2D art styles, and a focus on puzzle-solving. The Gollum game appeared to be a disempowering stealth game, in a 3D space, with platforming mechanics. It was such a mechanically different game from their previous experience.
The brains and developers of the point-and-click adventures are long gone. The "true" Daedelic has been dead for years. Long before they even got the rights for Gollum.
Everywhere I hear about this game I always see a follow up question of “Who even wanted this game?” Which always made me feel bad for thinking before hand that a choice-based story game starring Gollum I felt had a LOT of potential, and that wasn’t just a bias of him being my favourite LOTR character. The mechanic of having to convince your other half to make a decision I felt had AMAZING potential if done right. You never see that at all in choose your own adventure games and it could have been a great way to immerse you in the schizophrenic Gollum’s shoes. If only they actually wrote Gollum decently and properly to warrant that interesting game mechanic
People are only asking that because the game is such a trainwreck. If Daedalic had managed to pull it off there would have been an entirely different response.
A narrative driven game describing the gradual downfall of Smeagol and the rings corruption is actually something I would have liked. There's something intriguing about that to me at least. To me it's just not that interesting starting when Gollum is already corrupted.
@@wuztron I’m inclined to agree, but I know I was also hearing confusion about the concept as a whole well before the game even released, usually in the comments of the cinematic trailers, with people saying things like “Who’d even want to play as Gollum?”
Hot take: I think it's a decent idea BECAUSE nobody was expecting it. I love action games as much as anyone, but something totally unexpected and out of left-field as this for a franchise that's gotten an unfair reputation as being kind of generic and "action-y" really could help push the idea of what stories are possible to tell in LoTR rather than just "hobbits and handsome people thwart evil".
Daedalic made some truly excellent point and click titles, like The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav and the Deponia series. Shame they had to go out like this.
Seems like this game's biggest problem was it was being developed by a smaller studio that bit off way more than it could chew. They were trying to make a triple A game with an indie budget. A stealth game starring Gollum makes a lot of sense to me, and I like experimental, out-of-the-box games. Not every game has to star an attractive, badass hero.
I don‘t even think a „Gollum“ game is such a bad idea! Sneaking, jumping and climbing have been cornerstones of core gameplay loops for ages. And Gollum‘s split personality would lend itself to interesting mechanics, like RPG or leveling systems… or even entirely NEW, CREATIVE concepts. And Gollum‘s backstory is actually full of adventures and interactions with interesting characters. „Gollum“ is not a bad idea for a videogame, and I think it‘s a shame that everybody always dismisses it on the basis of the concept. It‘s literally the execution that killed this thing…
I first learned about Daedelic through the Blackguards duology. It's sad but not surprising that this is how things would end for them. I hope all those devs find much better working conditions
Thanks for covering this one, Matt! I loved Daedalic and the stories they told in their point 'n clicks, and when I heard they were doing something this big I thought "Cool...but can they really handle this pressure? Seems like something that a bigger (named) developer would normally handle". I'm glad you used music and clips from the Deponia series, as that's what people should REALLY know them for...not this mess.
Honestly....this game has irony written all over it. Gollum became who he was due to pursuing a ring that promised him untold fortunes. Daedalic took a similar shellacking by treating a big property with something so salacious....and got fried in magma-flavored retribution.
If it's true that you're doing literature too now, the I think the granddaddy of all What Happened stories has got to be the Silmarillion. Over 60 years of development, and it still had to be published posthumously.
Shadow Tactics is a super underrated game and the Deponia series were great back in the earlier days of Steam. It's so sad how many times a studio gets shut down after one flop.
In my mind a perfect Gollum game should be a lot like Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice where you constantly hear both sides of his psyche and instead of doing tasks over and over again as a gameplay it would just be a more traditional action RPG where you can either prioritize stealth to avoid danger or kill enemies from the shadows.
This year's been crazy, so many good games, and even before the worst game of the year could get a what happened episode, we were blessed with another contender. I wonder if Kong has a story of how it happened, or if the answer to "what happened?" Is just "gamemill"
Deadalic was such a great company several years ago. Germany still loves some Point and Click adventures which Deadalic did some really great ones. Sad to see them destroyed.
Man I had no idea these were the same people behind the Deponia series, it really is a shame. But hopefully this can serve as a lesson for project leads and developers to…oh who am I kidding we’ll probably see another fiasco like this again soon.
I was looking forward to the Gollum game due to it actually being something that could be awesome as a side story in the grand story of Lord of the Rings, plus the gameplay would be something a bit different than what we are used to being about a character who sneaks around and stalks it makes sense to go the Stealth game direction, it's a shame the project failed as far as it did, the studio really wasn't the best choice due to them lacking any experience in the action adventure genre at the least and Nacon being part of the project was an automatic red flag due to their previous history of treating everyone they work with like crap, like what happened with Frogwares, that was a disaster.
Probably the best Daedelic game is Harvey's New Eyes. Put on the english subs with the german voice acting and you're having an amazing time, I'll promise. Sad that Daedelic really let itself go ever since development on Gollum started, if not even earlier. Alot of former devs didn't review their time at Daedelic all to well, with the bosses uncaring while spending money on expensive private stuff, staff getting replaced with interns left and right and basically the only positive feedback being "I loved my coworkers and how we all stood together". Gollum was just the most gigantic final nail in the coffin.
Daedalic Entertainment: “Can we make a Lord Of The Rings game?” Middle Earth Enterprises: “Sure you can a make a LOTR game but *YOU CAN’T COVER ANY MAJOR EVENTS FROM THE MAIN CONTINUITY, YOU’LL ONLY HAVE A 5$ BUDGET & IT CAN’T BE ABOUT ANY MAJOR CHARACTERS ONLY WITH GOLLUM!* “ (Daedalic Entertainment makes & releases the game) Middle Earth Enterprises: “OH GOD YOU IDIOTS ACTUALLY WENT AHEAD TO MAKE THIS GAME WE’RE JUST JOKING?!”
How could you forget the other Tolkienverse game: "War of the Ring". A LOTR RTS game that was *totally not* overshadowed by Battle for Middle Earth coming out a year later, was *totally not* a clone of Warcraft 3, and *totally not* only remembered by most people cus Mandaloregaming made a video about it.
As someone who played The Hobbit on GameCube, hearing all of that soundtrack played back as part of this video brings back memories that even now I feel inclined to recreate.
In The Lord of the Rings movies, I’m looking at a Gollum who I believe is there, despite him being CGI’d into the real world. In this game, everyone is computer-generated, yet Gollum looks as if Dr. N. Gin from Crash Bandicoot was dropped into a low-budget God of War title.
Could we get a "wha happuh" on Code Vein? Between having a tutorial area separated off into an optional dungeon, four of the first five bosses being bad, and everything wrong with the DLCs both at launch and in modern day, I feel like there's a story to tell.
@@EvilDoresh I will begrudgingly acknowledge that yes, Code Vein's mostly generic anime waifus are better than the wooden planks Miyazaki insists are women. Like the Fire Keeper.
I've been waiting for this episode. I've played almost all of Daedelic's games in a whole hearted fan I love them so much. It broke my heart to see them go under and I just had to ask. What happun.
The worst thing about all this is knowing not only did shortly after the last living relative of Tolkien pass away Amazon inflicts a horrible "prequel series" which borders on the worst fan-fiction imaginable, but now knowing all the MiddleEarth IP is just been gorged upon by some soulless corporation just like that is beyond depressing.
I feel like a Gollum story could work... if it were attached to another game entirely. Like, make his story happen alongside another character (with more interesting gameplay (insert rimshot here)) and then you get some Gollum levels then maybe gauge reactions and see if people want more of it for a potential sequel or DLC, etc, etc... but making an entire game based _only_ around Gollum just seemed doomed from the start. It's appealing to only the hardest of the hardcore LOTR fans.
I work in game development. The project I'm currently on, with one of the largest publishers in the world, has been a train wreck lol. I've assumed that someday I will see it featured on this show.
Daedalic has to be my favourite game developers from my childhood, Deponia is one of my most favourite game series of all time. I'm surprised that they made Gollum as I don't really keep up with them after Doomsday. It makes me wanna play the game actually XD. Seeing them try and tackle a full 3D game with much more complex gameplay is really interesting. Aaaand I just got to the part of the video where Matt mentions Daedalic shutting down... curds. Aaaaaaah, nooo. Welp, that's gonna be on my mind for the rest of time... Apparently Poki and most of the team left a few years back but it's still too bad to see a name I remember so fondly fall apart so... ungloriously. Well, whatever, to the sour sour future then ;v;
The goofy deponia series, the fantastical Night of the Rabbit, the humble Whispered World. I remember them all fondly. They weren't earth-shattering mega-hits, but clearly were doing well enough to keep the studio running. Sadly it seems like just doing fine wasn't enough and they started to skew priorities at the cost of their own games. Now, nothing remains. Going out with not a bang or in glory, but a sad whimper having made one of the worst LOTR games ever made... sad indeed.
Daedalic makes _great_ "point & click" adventure games. When I heard *they* were making this I was kinda excited. But then that excitement was gone quickly when seeing it wasn't going to be P&C since that's what they're actually good at.
I know this is just a random comment, but i'd love to see an episode on FFXV. 10 year dev cycle, change in names, change in consoles, multimidia paralel projects, trailers that look nothing like the final product. Should make for an interesting story.
I worked at daedalic entertainment 2017-2020 they destroyed the Company by "passivley throwing out" one of the Founding members and lead creators. A lot of people including me left with him. They did this to themselfs.
I think this whole mess of licensing shuffle and Embracer gobbling up everything is the reason behind the weird new Italian versions of LOTR. They commissioned a whole new translation, which changed names and words that had been accepted as the default translation for decades; and any copy of The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings you can find in Italian bookstores today is basically unrecongniazble from either the films or the version of the books you could've bought only a few years ago.
My reaction as a middle earth fan with a somewhat working knowledge of game design. When I first heard the announcement of a Gollum video game my reaction was: "Hold up, wait a minute... how the F are they going to make a decent game based around that?" A question even now I do not have a answer to.
I have no idea why anyone thought a Gollum game would be a good idea in the first place. Why not a Blue Wizards game or a Radagast game? Those guys aren’t exactly the most riveting or fleshed out characters in the legendarium either but you could easily come up with gameplay and a hook for them.
Probably just because he's super well known, recognizable to mainstream fans. Radagast? Not so much. Most mainstream fans will be like, "Oh, that annoying shit bird man from that first hobbit movie?"
@@MattMcMuscles I always assumed that it's that, *and* they wouldn't need to pay for a movie actor's likeness to make the character instantly recognizable. It's why Yoda and Darth Vader are all over cheap Star Wars merch like birthday cards and not Luke Skywalker.
A Gollum game isn't really a bad idea in itself. It all comes down to execution. If you focused on the downfall of Smeagol, watching the ring gradually corrupt him, that could actually be a tragic story in the Darth Vaders journey to the darkside way. But hindsight is always 20/20.
I mean, you could have made a simple hunting/fishing sim game with Gollum as the player character. Like a walking sim with a list of different things for him to taste. Maybe light puzzle strategy to catch things like sparrows and deep water fish. But a action-RPG with a morality system? That was a poor choice. Gollum is a simple creature, so a simple game would be better.
I think Gollum should've been a much smaller gave. Maybe make it a survival game where you're trying to not get killed by animals or orcs while you go around doing Gollum stuff. Maybe make it a psychological horror that shows how Gollum went from a normal dude into..that thing. Start as a normal Hobbit, pick up a ring, then slowly go insane. The quests could start out as "Go fishing" then turn into "Go into the water and catch the fish with your hands" then eventually "The ring is all you need, forget about fish"
I strongly recomend people to play Daedelics older games Pillars Of The Earth and Night Of The Rabbit, they were point and click games that captured such an atmosphere through their handrawn 2D artsyle. If they kept Gollum in that style, merged the puzzle style of Rabbit with the narrative choice system of Pillars, it could have been something special instead of a Playstation 2 throwback
I’ve been saying since day one that there had to be absolutely juicy behind the scenes drama with this game, but hearing about the studio and the previous games they made was definitely tragic.
I bought a brand new copy of this game at GameStop on Halloween. The price was pretty hilarious: The starting price sticker says $60. That was marked down to $40. On Halloween it was on a 75% off sale, bringing it down to $10. I'm a rewards member, so I had a $5 coupon. So I walked out with a NEW game that came out in May 2023 for $5!
Kinda crazy that "70-100 employees" is seem as small to some projects. Also thanks Matt for the episode, I really enjoy the show, I like to watch it as I eat, alongside Worst Fighting Game
At least at looks like they tried to make something unique with Gollum as opposed to the avatar tlab and King Kong licensed games we got earlier this year.
Man, this would bring a tear to my mother's eye, as she is a Lord Of The Rings superfan. While it is nice to see quality licensed games make a comeback in recent times, they can often be a gamble, especially depending on the IP at hand.
I’m really convinced this could have worked; there is a big chunk of Gollum’s story worth exploring between The Hobbit and Two Towers, but beyond that, more importantly, if they had dialed in the gameplay then Gollum lends himself well to platforming action and puzzle stealth and there’s no reason those elements couldn’t have made for a really fun experience.
Lord of the Ring: Gollum; when you fart, but a liquid comes out instead and you immediately clench your sphincter, reeling from the unexpected acidity.
at the announcement, i originally was kinda excited. outside of Metal Gear, i don't have a lot of experience in stealth games, so having one focusing on Gollum as he climbs his way up Mt Doom sounded like a good prospect. but after seeing the footage, and how they changed his appearance from the movies, i quickly changed my mind and pretended it didn't exist but now taking another look at it, it brought to mind another title with a similar situation. PS3 game called I Am Alive. the premise being you just survived some huge disaster, and now you have to find your way to safety in much the same manner of climbing damaged or misshapen structures and managing a stamina meter. read about it in a magazine and sounded interesting. but in gameplay, it was really underwhelming and bare bones
14 DAYS LEFT to order the Matt McFighter Plushie ➤ shorturl.at/bfoJS
Whenever you're ready to finally tell us what happened to Septerra Core, I'm sure all 17 of its surviving fans will be very grateful.
@@princeami7344oh fuck i bought it on steam, is it not a good game?
@@princeami7344definitely I'm one of them
Just ordered the plushie, it looks great!
If you ever want to do a "what happened" on Magic Legends, I was an artist on the team during it's development. It was a shit show.
The dramatic irony in all of this is that a Point'n'Click adventure game starring Gollum would've probably fared better overall. It wouldn't have been a blockbuster, probably just be something that hardcore LotR fans would seek out, but it also would've fit more into the budget and scope that Daedelic could manage.
RIP Daedelic, hope everyone who got let go because of this utter mismanagement landed on their feet
That's what I've been thinking. Going to point and click developers to make an action game is like asking a dentist to make a plane.
I had somehow gotten the impression that the game was originally supposed to be a point-and-click, and that a more ambitious action game was forced on the studio by investors despite the studio not having the manpower, experience or budget to pull it off (perhaps I mistook speculation in an article or video for fact?). I was genuinely surprised to learn that they actually planned something considerably *more* ambitious, despite the studio not having the manpower, experience or budget to pull it off.
@@FubukiTheIcyKing I'd say asking a dentist to perform open heart surgery would be a better analogy (since it's at least tangentially related to their field, but there's almost no way it wouldn't end in disaster), but either way it's not likely to end well.
There was some other detail that the studio was already on the bubble. Managements bad mood may be the fact their games never did well, so they were constantly bleeding funds and the death of the studio was inevitable. Gollum was just their hail mary to avoid the studio disappearing.
@@jic1 Kinda like what happened to the people making the game Redfall.
I’m surprised he hasn’t done a whole video on THQ yet. That’s a very interesting yet depressing spiral they go through.
THQ and THQNordic as a 2 parter.
The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of THQ would be a great story.
That Saga is more depressing than the Titanic movie
I remember the NES games...
The story isn't over yet as we still don't know the full story behind the failed billion dollar deal of Embracer Group that sunk the company.
This is honestly a really sad story, as a German I can say that over here Daedalic was very much not an under the radar developer. They were known in Germany at least, and part of the reason why point & click adventures are still popular in Germany. Seeing them go down like this is a real blow to the German gaming industry that is not very large, we have only a handful of notable studios and Daedalic was one of them. It stings every time a studio has to close down but it does sting a bit harder in this case because there is comparatively little else to cushion that blow.
Honestly, the Deponia series is still one of my favorites. It’s very sad to see a good developer from anywhere go down this way.
I really liked pillars of eternity. It was a beautiful game
@@johnrivers3813 You mean Pillars of the Earth?
@@john_michael97the lead writer of deponia left daedalic before gollum though. He's a musician now.
Deponia also was insanely popular in France. Perhaps Germany itself is just an under the radar country
Honestly I've seen a German video about this where they even interviewed some of the workers and it's horrifying to hear the abuse they had to go through.
It's a shame because I really loved their point&click adventures.
I just hope those people find work where they'll be appreciated.
Edit: The video is by "Game Two" and also has eng subtitles as mentioned in a comment below. It's an indepth documentary about the studio and especially about the working conditions.
The Game Two Documentary? If so I saw it too. It's pretty sad what happend to Daedalic :(
What a sad turn of events.
@@Graf27green Genau die! Es ist so schade wie der ganze Ruf dieses ursprünglich tollen Entwicklerstudios durch Geldgier und unmenschliche Arbeitspraktiken ruiniert wurde.
@@leithaziz2716 indeed, It's such a shame...
If anyone is interested in the video, the whole thing has english subtitles.
The worst part is that a Gollum game is not the worst idea ever, they could've made an entire game that would be a true survival horror set in TLOR world and show how Smeagol and Gollum fight for control of the other, even showing that Gollum as slimy as he is does keep them both alive
but oh well, at least dreaming is free
"TLOR"
I saw what you did there.
Honestly! When this was first announced my mind went mad over the smeagol v gollum concept, I genuinely thought it could be incredible, such a shame.
@@allegedlyfalse6779 I couldn't resist
Honestly yeah, everyone keeps saying it was such a bad idea, but this idea interested me far more then another fantasy action game, let me play as a weird little gremlin man skulking around the shadows, that's far more unique.
It could have been good if they had another 100 million to execute on the full vision, but I assume investors weren’t lining up to throw money at Gollum.
Man, this one's sad to see. It's a rare thing to see a project just so thoroughly doomed from the start. Usually there's another world where it could have worked, but the moment Daedelic higher-ups decided they were going to make a game like this, there was no saving it. Gollum was doomed from inception, and that's a rare thing indeed
I think knowing there was no saving makes less sad, IMO. I think when you're left wondering what could have been is more painful since it's an actual loss. In this case there was nothing to be lost.
Well there was something to be lost. The jobs of people who tried their best to make this game
@@Dave.A.RUNLESS you sont consider these devs people. Afterall, they just wasted their lives on this project. So thats is pretty sad still. Should have spend it on another approable project.
@@Deliveredmean42 That's a good point.
I was comparing between knowing and not knowing there was no saving, though. Both are sad, I just think not knowing is worse due to the aforementioned reasons.
I'm german and here in germany, the name Daedelic used to have a good reputation for their adventure games which were excellent. it was a really well liked studio and to have seen it end like this... its really really sad and kinda heartbreaking but it is what it is
I played the heck out of their adventure games when they were newer. Seeing them go down with a fate like this feels like the game industry version of seeing a fun old friend die to a drug overdose.
@@cattrucker8257 I mean the Lead of these Games left before Gollum... so.. guess we know who took the integrity with him.
@@Kairos_AkumaDaedelic without Poki isnt the same
"This has to be a record!" - in reference to the development team being shut down in a month after release.
Matt, I'm from the future and let me tell you the tale of The Day Before"
my mind came right back to this video when it happened, I said out loud "they broke the record"
Oh boy, 2023 was one hell of a year wasn't it
This whole game seems like it would have gone so much better if Daedalic had stuck to their adventure gaming roots and made this closer to a Telltale-style one.
@@8Kazuja8 Yeah I thought the same a point & Click game could work and they could take it slightly less serious and have some whacky characters and story. LotR has quite a number of whimsical elements that might actually have worked with something like this. Just make clear from the start it isn't going to be as serious as the movies and isn't a completely lore accurate adaptation and most people would probably have been ok with that.
I am really (negatively) surprised, by how Nacon manages to avoid the negative publicity it sorely deserves. This company is really an "AA version" of the likes of EA or Acti - yet nobody talks about their pathologies. They are the guys behind subpar release of VtM: Swansong; and another hero of Matt's series, "Werewolf: The Apocalypse". They are behind the ultra-scummy release of "Blood Bowl 3"; the botched condition of a really promising "Ad Infinitum"; they even have their yearly sport series in "Rugby" or "Cricket".
They really are a wannabe EA, with all the related flavours.
not to mention the whole Sinking City incident which matt has covered in his Sinking CIty video, yeah Nacon are legit scummy
Don't forget the weird despute they have with Frogwares (the Sherlock Holmes adventure game studio)
Very obvious psychopath run company. Every single time I hear about them they're doing something that's definitely immoral and also sounds at least borderline-criminal. How anybody still does business with them is a mystery to me. I guess nobody ever does background checks for who they go into business wtih.
Who cares, it was Daedelic who mismanaged the project.
I guess it's because they offer those 3rd party controllers, I guess.
Two things I’m surprised that Matt didn’t point out is the horrific Gollum design, like he looks so weird, and also the fact that you had to buy dlc for a lore compendium, you know the thing that every game with a deep story has
He looks fake. His eyes being comically huge changes the design too much and conflicts with how the rest looks, especially since they made his jaw and face small. He’s uncanny where the original just looked neglected.
OH no you broke my heart in the very first few minutes! I never put together that the same devs who made the very awesome Deponia series made this! oh that hurts me, that hurts so much.
My favorite part of the game is when Gollum locks himself in a bathroom, devours a sandwich and starts having panic attacks.
For anyone not in the know what this is referencing, check out the Mega 64 Gollum sketch. It's a quality time!
Such a relatable character
One of those messy development stories that's going to be a lot more sad than funny. Amidst all the backlash I really feel for Daedalic going under. Knowing devs were pushed into a super ambitious project on a shoe-string budget and tight deadlines. All while being forced to juggle new mechanics they had minimal experience with.
Honestly think it might have worked if they had simply been allowed to go forward with the project being a weird little point-and-click adventure game like their usual style.
I think a classic point and click would have been a perfect game for a gollum based game. Its out of the norm from previous games (like gollum) and you could do choice based stuff much smoother and stylisticlly. Its a shame if they just used their strengths they could have made something not probably immensely ground breaking, but something fun and endearing I feel many fans would have enjoyed more than what we got.
Even a point-and-click game sound awesome for gollum but also i think they can make something whit a kind of dark humour whitout be extreme and i see gollum talk to himsefl whit smeagol (?) when you click on a object to see 2 perpsective.
The wasted potential of the IP, and what sounds like a solid team (within their field) is really disappointing.
I really wonder if Management ran the whole "cocaine" idea past anyone. They should have run it by most of, if not the whole team.
I'd say it's mainly deadlines.
Because I seen game companies that only have like 40 people and a tenth of the budget of these games, and still make masterpieces.
Point and clicks don't sell. They wouldn't even recoup the license that well, let alone the dev costs.
Embracer Group teared down the studio within a month after Gollum's release. That is a new record.
The Day Before: Yes... until I came along. My studio disappeared within the next day.
I knew about Daedalic (since I'm an adventure games fan) way before the Gollum game's release, so it was sad to hear that the studio had decided to stop developing games afterwards (only focusing on publishing). I saw some people talk about the studio in such a way that it felt obvious to me they weren't familiar with Daedalic or its previous works. Their previous games are point 'n click games, with 2D art styles, and a focus on puzzle-solving. The Gollum game appeared to be a disempowering stealth game, in a 3D space, with platforming mechanics. It was such a mechanically different game from their previous experience.
The brains and developers of the point-and-click adventures are long gone. The "true" Daedelic has been dead for years. Long before they even got the rights for Gollum.
@@bottomless666 its been dead since the Founder Poki left
He was heart and Soul of the studio
15:00 "this has to be a record". If only we'd known about Days Before!
Everywhere I hear about this game I always see a follow up question of “Who even wanted this game?” Which always made me feel bad for thinking before hand that a choice-based story game starring Gollum I felt had a LOT of potential, and that wasn’t just a bias of him being my favourite LOTR character.
The mechanic of having to convince your other half to make a decision I felt had AMAZING potential if done right. You never see that at all in choose your own adventure games and it could have been a great way to immerse you in the schizophrenic Gollum’s shoes.
If only they actually wrote Gollum decently and properly to warrant that interesting game mechanic
People are only asking that because the game is such a trainwreck. If Daedalic had managed to pull it off there would have been an entirely different response.
A narrative driven game describing the gradual downfall of Smeagol and the rings corruption is actually something I would have liked. There's something intriguing about that to me at least. To me it's just not that interesting starting when Gollum is already corrupted.
@@wuztron I’m inclined to agree, but I know I was also hearing confusion about the concept as a whole well before the game even released, usually in the comments of the cinematic trailers, with people saying things like “Who’d even want to play as Gollum?”
Think it was a strange choice of main character. How important can your choices feel when his story is already written and everyone knows how it ends
Hot take: I think it's a decent idea BECAUSE nobody was expecting it. I love action games as much as anyone, but something totally unexpected and out of left-field as this for a franchise that's gotten an unfair reputation as being kind of generic and "action-y" really could help push the idea of what stories are possible to tell in LoTR rather than just "hobbits and handsome people thwart evil".
Daedalic made some truly excellent point and click titles, like The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav and the Deponia series. Shame they had to go out like this.
The Deponia games were fun! Amazing how underrated the "fun" part is in modern gaming. Who doesn't like ... fun?
They should’ve stuck to that instead of trying to be ambitious.
@@Ihartwalrusguy Nothing wrong with trying to go a little bigger-if you have the budget and infrastructure to support it, which they didn’t :(
I never got unto Deponia...Rufua was just too much of a scumbag to make it any fun. I loooooved Memoria though.
@@mrsnatural2368 good because you probably wouldn’t like the ending.
Such a tragedy. I feel sorry for the devs going through that
Seems like this game's biggest problem was it was being developed by a smaller studio that bit off way more than it could chew. They were trying to make a triple A game with an indie budget. A stealth game starring Gollum makes a lot of sense to me, and I like experimental, out-of-the-box games. Not every game has to star an attractive, badass hero.
Not so much 'trying to' as 'were told to by Money Men'.
I don‘t even think a „Gollum“ game is such a bad idea!
Sneaking, jumping and climbing have been cornerstones of core gameplay loops for ages.
And Gollum‘s split personality would lend itself to interesting mechanics, like RPG or leveling systems… or even entirely NEW, CREATIVE concepts.
And Gollum‘s backstory is actually full of adventures and interactions with interesting characters.
„Gollum“ is not a bad idea for a videogame, and I think it‘s a shame that everybody always dismisses it on the basis of the concept.
It‘s literally the execution that killed this thing…
14:31 I can't wait for the inevitable "Skull Island: Rise of Kong - What Happened?" video.
I first learned about Daedelic through the Blackguards duology. It's sad but not surprising that this is how things would end for them. I hope all those devs find much better working conditions
As soon as I saw the first trailer of the game, I knew it would be here eventually, not for anything good, but never THIS bad.
Thanks for covering this one, Matt! I loved Daedalic and the stories they told in their point 'n clicks, and when I heard they were doing something this big I thought "Cool...but can they really handle this pressure? Seems like something that a bigger (named) developer would normally handle". I'm glad you used music and clips from the Deponia series, as that's what people should REALLY know them for...not this mess.
Honestly....this game has irony written all over it. Gollum became who he was due to pursuing a ring that promised him untold fortunes.
Daedalic took a similar shellacking by treating a big property with something so salacious....and got fried in magma-flavored retribution.
My heart goes out to the artists, coders and other workers at Daedelic trying to make this work under the circumstances they had to.
@19:02 A toxic executive who berates and yells at staff, whose title+last name is LITERALLY COO HARMS. You can’t make that up.
Thanks to this game, 2003's the return of the king for PC is aging like wine fine.
If it's true that you're doing literature too now, the I think the granddaddy of all What Happened stories has got to be the Silmarillion. Over 60 years of development, and it still had to be published posthumously.
The A Song of Ice and Fire franchise then, too...
Shadow Tactics is a super underrated game and the Deponia series were great back in the earlier days of Steam. It's so sad how many times a studio gets shut down after one flop.
Thanks!
In my mind a perfect Gollum game should be a lot like Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice where you constantly hear both sides of his psyche and instead of doing tasks over and over again as a gameplay it would just be a more traditional action RPG where you can either prioritize stealth to avoid danger or kill enemies from the shadows.
The episode we all have been waiting for!
The Dark Cloud Background music put a smile of my face
This year's been crazy, so many good games, and even before the worst game of the year could get a what happened episode, we were blessed with another contender. I wonder if Kong has a story of how it happened, or if the answer to "what happened?" Is just "gamemill"
Deadalic was such a great company several years ago.
Germany still loves some Point and Click adventures which Deadalic did some really great ones.
Sad to see them destroyed.
Daedalic got done dirty. Their Shadow Tactics and Desperados entries are SO GOOD
Man I had no idea these were the same people behind the Deponia series, it really is a shame. But hopefully this can serve as a lesson for project leads and developers to…oh who am I kidding we’ll probably see another fiasco like this again soon.
5:44 That description reminds me of the Yakuza 0 phone dating minigame lol
I was looking forward to the Gollum game due to it actually being something that could be awesome as a side story in the grand story of Lord of the Rings, plus the gameplay would be something a bit different than what we are used to being about a character who sneaks around and stalks it makes sense to go the Stealth game direction, it's a shame the project failed as far as it did, the studio really wasn't the best choice due to them lacking any experience in the action adventure genre at the least and Nacon being part of the project was an automatic red flag due to their previous history of treating everyone they work with like crap, like what happened with Frogwares, that was a disaster.
I really appreciate the use of King's Field music in a lot of Matt's videos recently.
Probably the best Daedelic game is Harvey's New Eyes. Put on the english subs with the german voice acting and you're having an amazing time, I'll promise.
Sad that Daedelic really let itself go ever since development on Gollum started, if not even earlier. Alot of former devs didn't review their time at Daedelic all to well, with the bosses uncaring while spending money on expensive private stuff, staff getting replaced with interns left and right and basically the only positive feedback being "I loved my coworkers and how we all stood together".
Gollum was just the most gigantic final nail in the coffin.
A game based around Gollum could work if devs can find a way to work in his internal conflict. Essentially a Gollum vs Smeagol game.
Sad to see Dae go. Deponia is one of the best quest series I've played.
The argument between Matt and Gollum near the end...sheer brilliance! 😊
Referring to shadow of mordor's celembrimbor as "fucking kellogg's boo berry" is the biggest burn I've ever heard on that game series
Daedalic Entertainment:
“Can we make a Lord Of The Rings game?”
Middle Earth Enterprises:
“Sure you can a make a LOTR game but *YOU CAN’T COVER ANY MAJOR EVENTS FROM THE MAIN CONTINUITY, YOU’LL ONLY HAVE A 5$ BUDGET & IT CAN’T BE ABOUT ANY MAJOR CHARACTERS ONLY WITH GOLLUM!* “
(Daedalic Entertainment makes & releases the game)
Middle Earth Enterprises:
“OH GOD YOU IDIOTS ACTUALLY WENT AHEAD TO MAKE THIS GAME WE’RE JUST JOKING?!”
The Lords of the Ring: Gollum
When Diary of a Wimpy Kid made that joke about a movie called The _Lords_ of the Ring
How could you forget the other Tolkienverse game: "War of the Ring". A LOTR RTS game that was *totally not* overshadowed by Battle for Middle Earth coming out a year later, was *totally not* a clone of Warcraft 3, and *totally not* only remembered by most people cus Mandaloregaming made a video about it.
The next one MUST be Kong. That one was a disaster... and I'm VERY interested in hearing what happened there.
As someone who played The Hobbit on GameCube, hearing all of that soundtrack played back as part of this video brings back memories that even now I feel inclined to recreate.
It's a charming little PS2 game that I'd like to go back to myself
I came here because the XSX version is currently under ten bucks on Amazon and I needed a reminder why I shouldn’t pull the trigger on that lol
In The Lord of the Rings movies, I’m looking at a Gollum who I believe is there, despite him being CGI’d into the real world.
In this game, everyone is computer-generated, yet Gollum looks as if Dr. N. Gin from Crash Bandicoot was dropped into a low-budget God of War title.
Could we get a "wha happuh" on Code Vein? Between having a tutorial area separated off into an optional dungeon, four of the first five bosses being bad, and everything wrong with the DLCs both at launch and in modern day, I feel like there's a story to tell.
@@EvilDoresh I will begrudgingly acknowledge that yes, Code Vein's mostly generic anime waifus are better than the wooden planks Miyazaki insists are women. Like the Fire Keeper.
I've been waiting for this episode. I've played almost all of Daedelic's games in a whole hearted fan I love them so much. It broke my heart to see them go under and I just had to ask. What happun.
3:00 that Smaug looks like Malebolgia from the 1997 Spawn movie
hahah
The worst thing about all this is knowing not only did shortly after the last living relative of Tolkien pass away Amazon inflicts a horrible "prequel series" which borders on the worst fan-fiction imaginable, but now knowing all the MiddleEarth IP is just been gorged upon by some soulless corporation just like that is beyond depressing.
Oh Daedallic, the greatness of Deponia will never be forgotten...
Good night sweet prince.
I feel like a Gollum story could work... if it were attached to another game entirely. Like, make his story happen alongside another character (with more interesting gameplay (insert rimshot here)) and then you get some Gollum levels then maybe gauge reactions and see if people want more of it for a potential sequel or DLC, etc, etc... but making an entire game based _only_ around Gollum just seemed doomed from the start. It's appealing to only the hardest of the hardcore LOTR fans.
I work in game development. The project I'm currently on, with one of the largest publishers in the world, has been a train wreck lol. I've assumed that someday I will see it featured on this show.
Daedalic has to be my favourite game developers from my childhood, Deponia is one of my most favourite game series of all time. I'm surprised that they made Gollum as I don't really keep up with them after Doomsday. It makes me wanna play the game actually XD. Seeing them try and tackle a full 3D game with much more complex gameplay is really interesting. Aaaand I just got to the part of the video where Matt mentions Daedalic shutting down... curds. Aaaaaaah, nooo. Welp, that's gonna be on my mind for the rest of time...
Apparently Poki and most of the team left a few years back but it's still too bad to see a name I remember so fondly fall apart so... ungloriously. Well, whatever, to the sour sour future then ;v;
The goofy deponia series, the fantastical Night of the Rabbit, the humble Whispered World. I remember them all fondly. They weren't earth-shattering mega-hits, but clearly were doing well enough to keep the studio running. Sadly it seems like just doing fine wasn't enough and they started to skew priorities at the cost of their own games. Now, nothing remains. Going out with not a bang or in glory, but a sad whimper having made one of the worst LOTR games ever made... sad indeed.
I here I thought the curse of licensed video games was over.
Daedalic makes _great_ "point & click" adventure games. When I heard *they* were making this I was kinda excited. But then that excitement was gone quickly when seeing it wasn't going to be P&C since that's what they're actually good at.
Finally, I have been waiting for this for a long time! I can't wait to see a Skull Island video too!
I know this is just a random comment, but i'd love to see an episode on FFXV. 10 year dev cycle, change in names, change in consoles, multimidia paralel projects, trailers that look nothing like the final product. Should make for an interesting story.
I worked at daedalic entertainment 2017-2020 they destroyed the Company by "passivley throwing out" one of the Founding members and lead creators. A lot of people including me left with him. They did this to themselfs.
I think this whole mess of licensing shuffle and Embracer gobbling up everything is the reason behind the weird new Italian versions of LOTR. They commissioned a whole new translation, which changed names and words that had been accepted as the default translation for decades; and any copy of The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings you can find in Italian bookstores today is basically unrecongniazble from either the films or the version of the books you could've bought only a few years ago.
My reaction as a middle earth fan with a somewhat working knowledge of game design.
When I first heard the announcement of a Gollum video game my reaction was:
"Hold up, wait a minute... how the F are they going to make a decent game based around that?" A question even now I do not have a answer to.
Trying to make it more about good stealth mechanics. You know, the things this game lacks.
I have no idea why anyone thought a Gollum game would be a good idea in the first place. Why not a Blue Wizards game or a Radagast game? Those guys aren’t exactly the most riveting or fleshed out characters in the legendarium either but you could easily come up with gameplay and a hook for them.
Probably just because he's super well known, recognizable to mainstream fans. Radagast? Not so much. Most mainstream fans will be like, "Oh, that annoying shit bird man from that first hobbit movie?"
@@MattMcMuscles I always assumed that it's that, *and* they wouldn't need to pay for a movie actor's likeness to make the character instantly recognizable. It's why Yoda and Darth Vader are all over cheap Star Wars merch like birthday cards and not Luke Skywalker.
A Gollum game isn't really a bad idea in itself. It all comes down to execution. If you focused on the downfall of Smeagol, watching the ring gradually corrupt him, that could actually be a tragic story in the Darth Vaders journey to the darkside way. But hindsight is always 20/20.
I mean, you could have made a simple hunting/fishing sim game with Gollum as the player character.
Like a walking sim with a list of different things for him to taste. Maybe light puzzle strategy to catch things like sparrows and deep water fish.
But a action-RPG with a morality system? That was a poor choice. Gollum is a simple creature, so a simple game would be better.
@@tomforge614Yeah, a Gollum game with a modest budget and modest expectations would make some sense. As a AAA game, it's a hard sell.
And we didn't even have to wait too long for the sequel to Gollum, Rise of Kong! 😂😂😂😂
If your mind is blown from an entire team being laid off only a month after release, just wait till you hear about the Day Before Devs 😂😂
At this point, He’s probably going to do the most recent King Kong game in a few weeks or months from now.
What worse is that their apology note was note made from heart, it was made in Chat GBT, that’s bad.
I think Gollum should've been a much smaller gave. Maybe make it a survival game where you're trying to not get killed by animals or orcs while you go around doing Gollum stuff. Maybe make it a psychological horror that shows how Gollum went from a normal dude into..that thing.
Start as a normal Hobbit, pick up a ring, then slowly go insane. The quests could start out as "Go fishing" then turn into "Go into the water and catch the fish with your hands" then eventually "The ring is all you need, forget about fish"
I strongly recomend people to play Daedelics older games Pillars Of The Earth and Night Of The Rabbit, they were point and click games that captured such an atmosphere through their handrawn 2D artsyle. If they kept Gollum in that style, merged the puzzle style of Rabbit with the narrative choice system of Pillars, it could have been something special instead of a Playstation 2 throwback
It was me, Matt! I made the Gollum argument meme blow up!
Also, shoutouts to XtremeXavier for the Goku version of it
That golem argument skit legit made me laugh more than it had any right to XD
Keep on keeping on man!
I’ve been saying since day one that there had to be absolutely juicy behind the scenes drama with this game, but hearing about the studio and the previous games they made was definitely tragic.
I bought a brand new copy of this game at GameStop on Halloween. The price was pretty hilarious: The starting price sticker says $60. That was marked down to $40. On Halloween it was on a 75% off sale, bringing it down to $10. I'm a rewards member, so I had a $5 coupon. So I walked out with a NEW game that came out in May 2023 for $5!
A company that's named after Daedalus destroying itself by trying something too ambitious is a bit on the nose.
They should’ve made a game about Tom Bombadill. That’d have some potential.
Where's my Deponia fans at? I loved that series. The saddest part of all this is Daedelic's demise over this Gollum disaster.
Kinda crazy that "70-100 employees" is seem as small to some projects.
Also thanks Matt for the episode, I really enjoy the show, I like to watch it as I eat, alongside Worst Fighting Game
15:01 the day before took that record lol
At least at looks like they tried to make something unique with Gollum as opposed to the avatar tlab and King Kong licensed games we got earlier this year.
the way that he snuck in that 80's PC though @4:05
If you're down for requests, I'd love to see you do a video on _Redfall!_ 🔥🧄🙏
Man, this would bring a tear to my mother's eye, as she is a Lord Of The Rings superfan.
While it is nice to see quality licensed games make a comeback in recent times, they can often be a gamble, especially depending on the IP at hand.
I’m really convinced this could have worked; there is a big chunk of Gollum’s story worth exploring between The Hobbit and Two Towers, but beyond that, more importantly, if they had dialed in the gameplay then Gollum lends himself well to platforming action and puzzle stealth and there’s no reason those elements couldn’t have made for a really fun experience.
I was expecting this. Thanks for delivering it as excellent as always
Oh I’ve been waiting for this episode for a while!!!
Lord of the Ring: Gollum; when you fart, but a liquid comes out instead and you immediately clench your sphincter, reeling from the unexpected acidity.
Sure its not "The Lord of Ring: Gollum"?
Gollum was a complete garbage fire. Which is surprising that Rise of Kong Skull island showed up and said: hold my beer.
at the announcement, i originally was kinda excited. outside of Metal Gear, i don't have a lot of experience in stealth games, so having one focusing on Gollum as he climbs his way up Mt Doom sounded like a good prospect. but after seeing the footage, and how they changed his appearance from the movies, i quickly changed my mind and pretended it didn't exist
but now taking another look at it, it brought to mind another title with a similar situation. PS3 game called I Am Alive. the premise being you just survived some huge disaster, and now you have to find your way to safety in much the same manner of climbing damaged or misshapen structures and managing a stamina meter. read about it in a magazine and sounded interesting. but in gameplay, it was really underwhelming and bare bones
It’s genuinely precious that they thought this was a game people would actually accept as a thing.
The concept could've been a fun extra game mode for another LotR game..... But as a standalone...... Big oof on that one.
WE MAKIN IT OUT OF MORDOR WITH THIS ONE