The Lord of the Rings: Gollum gets a big patch but it sounds like the developers are ready to wash their hands of the whole thing
Daedalic's catastrophic Lord of the Rings: Gollum saga may finally be grinding to a conclusion. The patch notes for a beefy «major update» that dropped last week conclude with a note that, to my reading, pretty strongly suggests that the studio is putting a bow on it and calling it done.
Gollum was on unsure footing almost from the start, as gamers questioned (rightly, I would say) why anyone would want to assume the role of Tolkien's tragic, clammy villain in the first place. A planned 2021 release gave way to 2022 and then 2023, pointing to some serious problems in development, and while I held out hope that the game would surprise us all as a sleeper hit (or even just with basic competence), it was not to be. It bombed badly: We scored it a relatively high 64% in our review, saying that for all its flaws, Gollum «is an oft-beautiful and oddly endearing adventure,» but it currently holds a 39 aggregate review score at Metacritic, and a «mostly negative» user rating on Steam.
It was bad enough that Daedalic quickly apologized for the mess, saying it «deeply regret[s] that the game did not meet the expectations we set for ourselves or for our dedicated community.» It also committed to releasing updates «that will allow you to enjoy the game to its fullest potential.»
As we noted at the time, Daedalic's statement led straight into an obvious question: What exactly is Gollum's fullest potential? Bugs can be fixed but you can't patch out essentially crappiness, and while I suspect some of the backlash against Gollum may be overblown (nuance is tough), the fact is that technical troubles are really only part of the problem: The greater issue is that people just don't like the game.
That may be why today's 2.2 update has a
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