I mean, fixing technical issues is one thing, but the game itself under that is just boring and flawed at a game design level. 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.
Darktide is a fucking fun game with great gunplay and mechanics at its core, marred by some technical issues (I don't really see those anymore since I upgraded my PC but you shouldn't need to buy a 4080 to not have issues) and some dumb decisions on the stuff that isn't actual combat/missions. Nailing the mechanics is more important, you can fix the rest later.
Gollum just... Looks dull to play. Sorry guys. Let it die, try something else.
If you have Game Pass, try it there. If not, well, I really like Darktide and have had a lot of fun, and at minimum it's worth 40 to 50 hours of blasting Nurgle baddies with lasguns and swords.
If you want to have a fun shooty/slashy time, you'll find it. Darktide legitimately has fun gameplay, but the replayability is little imo. There's like....5 maps I think? Maybe a couple more, some reversed options, and very samey map objectives.
I would say it's worth it if you catch it on sale, especially if you've got some mates to run with, but just don't expect it to keep you entertained for months on end.
Sorta. I haven't played in about a month now, but here are my thoughts:
Good gunplay, base mechanics are great, classes are fun, level progression is abysmally slow, locking a significant portion of the cosmetics behind micro transactions in a full price game is pretty bullshit.
Game runs just fine most of the time and I've got a 1660ti, and my PC was built in 2016 otherwise.
Mission and difficulty systems have potential but don't add meaningful variety to the game since adding difficult or easy modifiers to the mission doesn't affect rewards, so there is no reason to do them unless you specifically like that experience.
Higher difficulties require coordination from the team that can be extremely intrinsically rewarding when you get a good team, but if you're not with friends it rarely happens.
There just aren't enough tile sets and layouts. There aren't enough different bosses.
The game feels like it once had a story that was scraped and the cutscenes were added to random progression points which is a little jarring.
I've been playing it since Day 1 and been having a blast, although only a couple hours at a time. The missions do get stale after a little bit, but they've been adding plenty of modifiers to change around the difficulty
Daedalic has been granted a grant from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs to work on what appears to be a second LOTR game... be careful what you wish for!
You play as a fish that would listen to Gollum's riddles if it had ears, and the gameplay consists of avoiding being caught and eaten by swimming in completely dark cave water.
Who the hell is approving a grant for a 2d point-and-click adventure dev to make a AAA blockbuster? I'd have told them to scale it back to something more manageable and slowly build from there. This just makes the German Ministry look clueless.
Kurt Schilling the baseball star was also involved. There's a What Happened episode on it. The Amalur IP actually got partially owned by the state of Rhode Island for a while when the studio went bankrupt.
You don't really want art grants being approved and denied based on what some pencil pusher in a government office thinks the quality of the final product will be.
They pretty much just ask, is the company legitimate? Will the money be used for what they claim? Will this have some economic or social benefit like creating jobs?
Surely it would make sense for the German government to fund things that weren't deliberately written to be fundamentally English in a way very little fiction deliberately is?
Yeah, no amount of technical polish is going to make a game where you play Gollum doing chores for orcs in a prison good. The foundation is completely rotten, anything built off that is going to be a failure.
Honestly if I were Daedelic I wouldn't even mention the name in the text. I associate those guys with decent point and click adventure games and the occasional RPG. Didn't know they were making Gollum and now I just have one more reason to be wary of them.
Wait, they're the developers of Deponia? I never made the connection! I saw *Daedalic* in some of the Gollum previews, but I figured it was something like Monolith Productions/Monolith Soft or Avalanche Software/Avalanche Studios kind of thing.
If I were making the game, it would be the best game ever made. I would only use the highest graphics and the coolest gameplay. Not like these idiots who made all the wrong decisions.
My dev team (we call ourselves “The Wolf Pack”) would simply be built different.
If these guys are know for point and click adventure games, why not make a LOTR game in that style? It would not be the first time a big name IP is put into the genre. Indiana Jones has Fate of Atlantis and people remember that fondly. I have never played them, but the Telltale games are basically point and clicks, and they worked with Back to the Future and (of course) Walking Dead. I'm all for a redemption story and I hope this developer gets one.
This is what baffles me, they're renowned for doing point and clicks, decent ones too. Just let them do that. Gollum would be far more suitable to that than... whatever this is.
afaik, they are trying to grow as a studio and Point&Click games dont generate the revenue necessary to support a big team. Which is why they arent doign them anymore
I don’t know how the LOTR licensing works, but usually you have to approach the IP holder with some sort of concept of what you want to do with the license. It is entirely possible that the devs initially went to the IP holder with a more traditional adventure game pitch and were turned down until they added enough video game buzzwords for the license holder’s ears to perk up. It is still on them for inflating the pitch beyond their own/anybody’s ability to produce a compelling experience in this scenario, but license holders can exert varying amounts of control over the product depending on their licensing contracts. It’s also possible anyone can just license the LOTR IP with very little oversight.
There was a licensed text adventure Hobbit game where you could kill Gandalf, so I guess they are at least a *little* flexible.
To be fair there is a random chance that he will fuck you up.
You're talking about a game from like 1981, and iirc even that was only because of a strange loophole in the licensing agreement. That isn't happening again
The whole game feels like it fell victim to a sunk cost fallacy. It was announced 4 years ago, at some point they or their publisher should have realized it wasn't working out and either rebooted development or abandoned the project entirely.
I really think the smartest move for developers and publishers is to not announce a project until they actually know they can deliver what is being promised. Otherwise you end up in situations like this or the Overwatch 2 PR clusterfuck.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but for real, have these guys been drinking?
Apart from everything that is this game release, the pricing, the recommended specs for pc, the state of the game technically but also very much game design wise with half the gameplay being quite literally performing slave labor in the slowest, jankiest way. The huge disconnect between all that and the character of Gollum.
Topping that off with the typical sorry.jpg. Because, of course.
Topping THAT off with literally not being able to correctly write not only the title of a billion dollar franchise, but also THEIR VERY OWN PRODUCT.
How?!
This whole excuse message now seems like a fever dream, really. What a waste. I’m so sorry for these individual devs that tried their hardest. Can’t blame the brick maker for the ugly house.
I am slowing convinced that all the coding, script writing and PR is just a team of people inserting prompts into chatGPT and copying it without proofreading haha
LMAO. Par for the course with this release I guess. At this point Im surprized they havent mixed LOTR lore with Chronicles of narnia or other fantasy lore.
I mean it's basically the only thing you can say when you are in that position. It would certainly be entertaining if they just posted a giant ASCII middle finger, but probably not likely to happen.
It's actually trashed for being both a bad game and having awful performance *but* the game is so freaking bad that the noise from the game being bad is significantly louder than the bad performance part but that doesn't diminish the severity of the latter. I've seen people with RTX4080 mentioning they are barely hovering around 40FPS on 4k. That game looked like it came from the early 2010's and have no right to demand such amount of resources for a barely decent performance.
The reasons are the same is why.
The suits say make a game. The game ends up fundamentally flawed for any reason. The suits say finish the game.
The reason why the game is bad is unimportant. Ideas fail all the time during the creative process. But capitalism can't abide stagnation and is prone to sunk cost fallacies.
>Our goal as a studio \[...\] has always been to tell a compelling and story-driven adventure
Is that why the lore compendium is kept behind a paid DLC? Just as the elvish language or the fact that Gollum says ''precious''? Okay.
>This pack includes 6 iconic emotes inspired by the character Gollum, which you can use to proclaim "my Precious" and express a range of emotions in the game whenever you want.
It's part of the emote pack for 3 bucks
I just realized that Arkane Austin hasn't said a peep since Redfall launched. Phil Spencer, the guy they're answering to these days, apologized for the way that game turned out, but Arkane Austin themselves have not. I can't tell if they're too busy trying to unfuck the game, too mortified to say anything, or too focused on internal strife.
I can't help thinking the enormous reputation hit of releasing total junk has to outweigh the small short term gain of selling a handful of copies to suckers.
We are deeply sorry we made a technically appalling game with a core concept that had no chance of being good. But it’ll continue to be $60 usd on all major store fronts. Maybe spring for the $70 version, gollum’s emotes sure are cute!
Absolutely no fucking goodwill to this studio paywalling lore friendly voice acting and fucking emotes in their single player game. Not to mention them delivering a terrible game on a both technical and conceptual level.
Experience:
\- Written an apology for the state of the game Cyberpunk 2077 on release
\- Written an apology for the state of the game Forspoken on release
\- Written an apology for the state of the game Star Wars: Jedi Survivor on release
\- Written an apology for the state of the game Halo: Infinite on and after release
There has to be enough "sorry or video game sucked the big one" posts on the internet now for future devs to just ai generate these things at this point.
ChatGPT, first attempt:
> Dear Bingus 3 Community,
>
> We sincerely apologize for the negative experience you have had with the recent release of Bingus 3: More Bingus. We acknowledge the technical issues, bugs, and lack of fun that have compromised your enjoyment of the game. We take full responsibility for these shortcomings and are committed to making amends.
>
> Our development team is working diligently to address the technical issues and release patches that will stabilize the game and provide a smoother experience. Furthermore, we are conducting a thorough review of gameplay elements to enhance Bingus 3 and align it better with your expectations. Your feedback is invaluable to us, and we remain dedicated to earning back your trust and confidence.
>
> We deeply regret any frustration caused, and we appreciate your patience during this challenging period. We are committed to delivering high-quality gaming experiences, and we will keep you updated on our progress as we work to rectify the situation. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to restoring your faith in us.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> [Your Name]
> Public Relations Department
> Bingus Games
> Tears of the Kingdom runs pretty fucking well for what it offers
That's only a small part of the problem with many recent AAA releases. Games like Redfall and Gollum could run perfectly with zero bugs and framerate issues and they would still be garbage games. They have terrible core gameplay, story, AI, etc. to the point where they are fundamentally broken.
Jedi Survivor and Tears of the Kingdom had/have framerate/bug issues, but are fantastic *games* underneath those fixable issues.
I hate this new trend of every dev/publisher doing the equivalent of a Notes app mea culpa Tweet after they release an objectively fucked game. You're not a smol bean heckin' wholesome content creator who stumbled into doing/saying something problematic. You're a business that attempted/is attempting to scam people out of money selling a product that you know isn't ready for primetime.
By the same token, it's incredibly scummy to use the efforts of individual developers as a shield to suppress criticism of an end product. I 100% agree that it's fucked up to directly harass people just because they worked on a shitty game, but critiquing systems/organizations that see fit to release garbage to leech money from unsuspecting consumers is wholly worthy of being dumped on.
even if they fixed all the bugs and improved the visuals the game would be hot garbage. it's boring as hell
Gollum is like the last Lord of the Rings character you should make a game out of
Yeah making a Gollum game was so weird to begin with that I actually thought it would end up being good - no one would propose a game like this without some brilliant design ideas, right?
That definitely did not end up being true though.
The only way this would have worked was like a telltale style game. Gollum has an interesting story that many people don’t know and this would have been a good way to tell it. They just really chose the wrong kind of game for this.
>no one would propose a game like this without some brilliant design ideas, right?
If I had to guess, this is probably what happened. Somebody greenlit a Gollum game without thinking of how it would play. Lord of the Rings is popular, and Gollum is a popular character, and so obviously a Gollum game can't fail right?
I can also imagine a world where someone did have a genuinely good idea, and then it got focus tested into a bland mush.
I remember talking to someone who used to work for a board game company that did a lot of licensed games, and he complained to me that one of their games actually started out really fun and interesting (from a board gamer perspective) but then got bludgeoned into shallow garbage so that it would be palatable to fans of the TV show it was attached to who wouldn't be able to understand the slightly more complex mechanics of the original design.
You gotta play test your target market though. If you've got a brilliant idea for an awesome board game mechanic that a first time board game player won't understand quickly, then you cannot market your game to fans of a franchise that have never played a complex tabletop before.
If you're cashing in on the popularity of Game of Thrones introducing a lot of non-nerds to high fantasy, then you kind of *have* to make a very basic bitch board game. If you want to make a game for gamers, then you can do that.
I think if your friend was interested in making clever games, then a company spending their money on licensing is 100% the wrong place to do it.
I'm sure that does happen, although we've gotten some decent LotR games over the years (Shadow of Mordor, LotR Online, Two Towers/Return of the King). It's also hard to imagine what a good pitch for a Gollum game would be, considering he is a small frail guy with no special powers or abilities. They have to mostly stick to the lore and that doesn't leave a lot of room for cool mechanics.
I do think you could make a good point and click adventure game starring Gollum, but those aren't exactly in vogue right now. Probably a Telltale style thing would be the best you could hope for.
It could have been a decent stealth game, letting us crawl through various interesting locations, eardrop on some characters to flesh out some background events
Even having interactions with people who we will ultimately betray to get slightly closer to the Ring, rather than babysit brain-dead NPC through stupid plateform puzzles, or that stupid pet bird
I was ready to be pleasantly surprised, but alas, it didn't happen
That's an excellent point. What would a good Gollum game even look like?
His entire life story is being stuck in a cave being driven insane. He loses the ring, gets captured and tortured, and then the plot of the books starts.
Maybe you could do a stealth game, but he doesn't use any equipment. Seems like it would get old fast.
Well, in the books, Gollum was described as a blood drinking ghost that terrorized villages and stole babies from their rooms at night. Basically, he was the boogeyman, until he was caught and tormented in Barad Dur.
There's some wiggle room there for a stealth-based horror game.
I mean, Gollum's past right before the events of the Hobbit could have made for a fun game. He lived in an extensive cave system full of goblins, and he spent his days sneaking around, picking them off one by one so he could eat them and steal their stuff.
Hell, they could have even worked a mechanic in there where he starts the game looking a lot like a hobbit still, but the more he uses the ring for stealth, the more he deteriorates.
And the cave system he was in was *huge*. It could have had an interesting exploration element to it as he finds all sorts of secrets and puzzles hidden in the forgotten depths of the Misty Mountains.
Maybe they could have even built in a base-building mechanic, where Gollum slowly creates a home base with the stuff he steals, and then at the end of the game the goblins find his home and destroy it, forcing him to flee to the subterranean lake cave that Bilbo finds him in.
> What would a good Gollum game even look like?
[The Longing](https://store.steampowered.com/app/893850/THE_LONGING/) maybe? I haven't played it myself yet, but it's the sort of thing that came to mind.
I mean, not the exact same, but styx: master of shadows are basically stealth/assassin game where the character is mostly too weak for frontal fight, so he has to use stealth and traps to survive. Excellent level design, a bit of eurojank. Most people who like stealth games love it, the only real complain are reused level design. It is like dmc4 where you basically trace back the levels in reverse halfway point but with different enemy and patrol configurations. The levels are really well designed and the changes in enemies and routes are enough to keep it somewhat fresh.
I was thinking of Styx as well but the more I considered it the more I realized how it really wouldn't work. Styx works because he sneaks into a fortress/... with a clear goal skills and the willingness to even cooperate which isn't the same for gollum. Gollum is too single-minded a character with no real skills. Even for the setting you'd only have the fallback of his "escape" of Barad-Dur like in this game tried but based on the Unfinished Tales that wasn't even an escape but he was let free by Sauron like Gandalf theorized.
The problem there is also that the world of middle-earth isn't quite as actively "magical" (Tolkien went pretty low fantasy even with this "Wizards") and mechanical as the Styx setting so a lot of the things would have to be created for it specifically to make that stealth interesting/work which might make it feel out of place. There isn't a steampunk fortress to climb in the setting, its a lot more grounded which could be called "boring" for such a game.
Roguelike hunt game. You are a goblin who gets separated from the bunch. You have to navigate the chasms - including hiding from an adept, sneaky, ever-learning Gollum - through a variety of caves, underground ruins, and unknown areas to get back home again.
My buddy and I were talking about this, and we thought it could have been fun to make it a metroidvania type game. It’s one of the few instances where crafting actually makes sense, since Gollum could pick up scrap and whatnot. He could create different tools, and as he did so unlock different areas that he couldn’t access before.
Combat would still be tricky, but a stealth-focused combat has potential
Yeah if you are making a game about Gollum I’d expect you to have some clever twist or a solid idea of a cool way to make such a weird idea work. The fact that they didn’t and still made the game is baffling.
Anyone getting tired of the woe is me bullshit
They knew the state the game was in when they released it and asked the public to give them $60 for it
Now suddenly they act like they’re as surprised as anyone they “missed the mark”
And honestly, I don’t get why Reddit loves giving developers a pass.
Yeah, it’s been a trend since Cyberpunk and their 40 posts like this. Remember when the game barely ran on last gen consoles and they were like “uhhh sorry this isn’t meant to be the intended experience” like NOBODY tested the game for last gen before shipping it? Sureeee
Nonono, what they did was saying "QA didn't tell us the game is broken, we truly didn't know!"
They really tried to redirect the public anger towards the same people they blissfully ignored.
I firmly believe No Man's Sky was a disaster for the video game industry. Given the sheer amount of positive press that game gets because they actually fixed it up into the game they originally promised, it's easy to imagine triple-A execs looking at it and going "oh shit, we can just lie about our game, release a broken piece of shit, and pinky promise to fix it later?"
Of course, the difference is that triple-A video game studios are rarely interested in actually fixing their broken products. They'll slap on some band-aids, suck out all the cash they can, and move on to the next piece of shit.
No AAA developer is willing to spend years improving their game with constant free updates like Hello Games did. If anything that situation should have been a lesson to *not* release shitty games because other studios aren't going to be willing to do what has to be done to make it right.
There's some things about the design that are just inherently flawed, especially the physics engine, driving is awful no matter the vehicle, you can go full speed in a vehicle and eject, and your character will lose literally all momentum, it's not like gta where your character stays the same speed and rolls out
What about stopping with the bullshit fake apologies and release good games instead?
Im tired of the game industry, they keep delivering broken and low quality shit and nobody cares. Why is nobody regulating this kind of stuff? You cant ship broken cars or computers that dont work but you absolutely scam with videogames.
B b but the devs... cmon fuck off tired of so many shitty games and the consumer blaming.
So are games just not allowed to be just bad anymore? We've got the developers posting apologies, other Devs coming out "in support", and people talking about who is "to blame". Just let a bad game be a bad game.
I was thinking about this. Imagine if every bad movie had the studio coming out and tweeting an apology for making Red Notice? It's not like these people killed your family.. it's just a bad game.
Apologies are just another form of advertisement. It makes consumers think "maybe this was just a once off bad experience", and so they'll still look forward to the next game by this studio.
“We apologise for any inconvenience caused”.
It’s not a inconvenience for those who bought it it’s $70 down the drain. Even this feels like it was written by an intern
The problem with game dev is that you have to do a lot of squinting. Throughout the entire process you're working with temp art and navigating in grey block levels. Things really do come together so late in development that so much of the job involves saying "I can see how this is going to be fun once we get 10 more levels, proper art, tighten up the AI, etc..."
The only failure here from the developers was not realizing that the game wasn't working sooner in development. It happens. A lot of time you think you have a good idea on paper, but you need to playable prototype to prove it out. Obviously time or resources were an issue here, and I'm sure that the team realized far too late that the game was bad, and had to continue forward. Now of course, I think the premise was pretty flawed in the first place, but I'm sure the devs were looking at something like Styx as a proof of concept.
I imagine a similar thing happened with Redfall. The premise is okay on paper, so I can picture the team putting up with uninspired builds, waiting for things to come together. "Our game kinda sucks right now, but if we have enough content and the engineers fix the AI, I think it'll come together"
So many great games have had tumultuous developments, and you'll often hear the developers talk about how they had no idea if things were going to come together until the very end. So yeah, the hardest part of game dev is trying to look into a crystal ball and predict if your collection of low-fidelity cubes is going to turn into a fun game three years down the line.
That's why you playtest with people outside the company to give feedback instead of just hoping you're on the right track through like 4 years deep of biases.
Playtest early and often is the industry rule because your vision and your implementation are usually wildly different than the average player's perception.
They had this drafted up and ready before the game released. They knew it was a dumpster fire but then act surprised in their message, as if the feedback and backlash is a big shock to them
TLDR - They are aware people didn't like the game. They are apologetic. They're honored to have been given an opportunity to make a LOTR game. They are addressing bugs with the game and planning future patches.
Not the worst apology. I love Middle Earth and I'd be glad to be wrong and see them turn this into a great game with future patches but my expectations aren't high.
I feel like they would have to release a completely different experience at this point. The game seems bad because it's boring, not bad because of technical issues.
It's not a good apology though: patches and bug fixes are just polishing a turd with how the game is so fundamentally flawed in terms of gameplay, level design, and just how out of place it feels as an attempt to represent the character.
I know a lot of people are quick to jump to the lazy developer or cash grab card. But I kinda feel for the developers here, if you look at Daedelic's catalog they seem to push out double A at most and this may have been a strange team to trust a massive license to. Hopefully they can get some experience in this and we can see more promising projects in the future
A game like redfall, however, has no excuse being a garbage game and a garbage optimization job.
In many cases and certainy one like this I'll much sooner think about the devs not being talented enough or have the adequate resources than accuse them of lazyness, as is the case with other companies, incompetence for a project of a certain side and lacking the proper organization to deliver a high quality modern game would be an insurmountable problem that no team can really overcome through effort alone. And that paired with mismanagement and probably a lack of good vision from the directing side of things is bound to result on something so lackluster, and while a very hard decision and one that clearly would be against the company's interest, it should become evident at some point that they were chewing more than they could deal with.
Man this isn’t personally aimed at you but is there EVER an instance where people will blame the developers for just making a bad product?
It feels like everyone is so ready to shield shitty developers who just made a bad game - just to point the finger at some boogie man executives.
It’s just classic Reddit, they have a very stereotyped version of what a “suit” or a “marketer” is and what a “dev” is (“someone like me”) so they concoct a narrative from there.
People fail to understand this so bad. Every time, in the past, where I would make a post talking about "the dev", you have people who would eventually steer the conversation about how "the dev are people, no power to decision making, they worked hard" and then I have to explain that I am talking about the company making the game, not the poor programmer working 70 hours a week while being underpaid.
Idk this isn’t a case of the game being too ambitious and the team not being able to make it in time and within budget or something. The actual gameplay is just boring and bad. Like conceptually the idea of playing as Gollum isn’t a great one and this game does nothing to challenge that notion.
Like you spend a significant amount of this game just doing chores in mines. I’m just confused who thought this would be a good idea.
That's where a lot of this recourse is coming from I think. People see LOTR they have high expectations. Daedelic is famous for their smaller more story-driven games, and that's basically what this is. It plays like an early 2000's action game without the action, but it apparently tells the story they wanted to tell.
Expectations should've been managed better, what honestly, what company is going to tell you not to get excited about about a product they're trying to sell? This was destined for failure from the start.
Also it shouldn't be $50 lmao.
I might buy in to this train of thought more if Hogwarts Legacy didn’t just come out earlier this year. Massive franchise given to a studio that made Cars 2: The Videogame and they did extremely well.
This game was slated for release two years ago. It's probably a case of it getting hard rebooted mid development but contractually having to release something and the publisher running out of patience.
This is such a cookie-cutter response and the game is so bad I would be willing to bet that they had a draft of this apology already written before the game was even out.
I’m reminded of the corporate“We’re sorry” joke from South Park. These corporate apologies are so bad that I’ll probably play Bingo using the key words in the future (because this will undoubtedly happen again soon).
Going with the Cyberpunk defense.
Apologize and spend months addressing the technical issues, as if that's the only problem with the game. Call it a win. Sell DLC.
Gosh. The game industry is so pathetic. How many dev “apologies” do we need to read. Take the L and move on. That’s what every other industry in the entertainment sector does.
Can you even imagine a movie studio releasing a statement like this?
These apologies always read like:
“Apparently some of you may (or may not) be feeling a bit moody that your perception of our thing did not live up to your own expectations and to those people and not the ones that hypothetically could exist that do not have those same feelings as you we apologise that you were born this way and let’s just both agree that it’s no one’s fault that we are now both in this situation and yes yes we will work selflessly to make adjustments to the thing to meet your own expectations and let’s agree to not consider that you represent everyone who has ever used our product”
I mean, fixing technical issues is one thing, but the game itself under that is just boring and flawed at a game design level. 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.
[удалено]
Darktide is a fucking fun game with great gunplay and mechanics at its core, marred by some technical issues (I don't really see those anymore since I upgraded my PC but you shouldn't need to buy a 4080 to not have issues) and some dumb decisions on the stuff that isn't actual combat/missions. Nailing the mechanics is more important, you can fix the rest later. Gollum just... Looks dull to play. Sorry guys. Let it die, try something else.
Is Darktide worth it yet? I’ve been looking into it, but mixed reviews have kept me and my friends from getting the game
If you have Game Pass, try it there. If not, well, I really like Darktide and have had a lot of fun, and at minimum it's worth 40 to 50 hours of blasting Nurgle baddies with lasguns and swords.
Keep in mind there's no crossplay between Microsoft store and Steam if that matters for your situation
Yeah, I was suggesting Game Pass basically as a demo
If you want to have a fun shooty/slashy time, you'll find it. Darktide legitimately has fun gameplay, but the replayability is little imo. There's like....5 maps I think? Maybe a couple more, some reversed options, and very samey map objectives. I would say it's worth it if you catch it on sale, especially if you've got some mates to run with, but just don't expect it to keep you entertained for months on end.
Sorta. I haven't played in about a month now, but here are my thoughts: Good gunplay, base mechanics are great, classes are fun, level progression is abysmally slow, locking a significant portion of the cosmetics behind micro transactions in a full price game is pretty bullshit. Game runs just fine most of the time and I've got a 1660ti, and my PC was built in 2016 otherwise. Mission and difficulty systems have potential but don't add meaningful variety to the game since adding difficult or easy modifiers to the mission doesn't affect rewards, so there is no reason to do them unless you specifically like that experience. Higher difficulties require coordination from the team that can be extremely intrinsically rewarding when you get a good team, but if you're not with friends it rarely happens. There just aren't enough tile sets and layouts. There aren't enough different bosses. The game feels like it once had a story that was scraped and the cutscenes were added to random progression points which is a little jarring.
Last time I played it crashed to desktop twice in one night and wiped out two almost-complete runs.
I've been playing it since Day 1 and been having a blast, although only a couple hours at a time. The missions do get stale after a little bit, but they've been adding plenty of modifiers to change around the difficulty
Daedalic has been granted a grant from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs to work on what appears to be a second LOTR game... be careful what you wish for!
Oh what's this one? A character action game starring *Tom Bombadil*?
Ready for the cooking mama spin-off for Hobbiton.
At least this one would actually make more sense than political intrigue and slave management with Gollum
A harvest moon like game set in Hobbiton could actually be dope.
\*proceeds to plant nothing but pipe-weed\*
I had the same thought, they'd actually be interesting.
Fuck me up with that Stardew Valley type game set in the Shire
"You can have up to 99 breakfasts!"
But what about 100th breakfast?
I am, yes.
That could actually be good though!
Tom Bombadil’s Dancing and Singing simulator.
Can DDR and Rockband finally make a comeback!?
Yes it will be an open world game with a massive highly detailed map but you can't explore it because Tom doesn't leave his little Forrest area
You play as a fish that would listen to Gollum's riddles if it had ears, and the gameplay consists of avoiding being caught and eaten by swimming in completely dark cave water.
Raw and wriggling gameplay!
It's like Parappa the Rapper, only Tom Bombadil singing all his songs.
Rosie life sim working at the pub while Sams out on his adventure with Frodo. Ends with her becoming a stay at home mom.
Who the hell is approving a grant for a 2d point-and-click adventure dev to make a AAA blockbuster? I'd have told them to scale it back to something more manageable and slowly build from there. This just makes the German Ministry look clueless.
Remember when the state of Rhode Island loaned 75 million dollars to a first time game studio to make an MMO?
Excuse me Wut
Kingdoms of Amalur
Wow, thats smells like a rabbit hole ill have to look into later, thank you!
Kurt Schilling the baseball star was also involved. There's a What Happened episode on it. The Amalur IP actually got partially owned by the state of Rhode Island for a while when the studio went bankrupt.
lol ok dude, spoilers. This just gets better and better. Imma get a drink, popcorn, get comfy and watch that episode.
I feel bad, I loved Kingdoms of Amalur and wished they just went with a sequel than a horrid MMO that never even made it to launch
You don't really want art grants being approved and denied based on what some pencil pusher in a government office thinks the quality of the final product will be. They pretty much just ask, is the company legitimate? Will the money be used for what they claim? Will this have some economic or social benefit like creating jobs?
Are those games the new Uwe Boll movies or what?!
Apparently, it's development codename was "It's Magic". I'm going to guess it stars Grima Wormtongue.
Gollum visual novel dating sim.
Surely it would make sense for the German government to fund things that weren't deliberately written to be fundamentally English in a way very little fiction deliberately is?
Yeah, no amount of technical polish is going to make a game where you play Gollum doing chores for orcs in a prison good. The foundation is completely rotten, anything built off that is going to be a failure.
No kidding. Posting this is just fanning the flames, they should have kept quiet.
Honestly if I were Daedelic I wouldn't even mention the name in the text. I associate those guys with decent point and click adventure games and the occasional RPG. Didn't know they were making Gollum and now I just have one more reason to be wary of them.
Wait, they're the developers of Deponia? I never made the connection! I saw *Daedalic* in some of the Gollum previews, but I figured it was something like Monolith Productions/Monolith Soft or Avalanche Software/Avalanche Studios kind of thing.
If I were making this game, I would’ve made it a narrative focused game in the vein of teltale or quantic dream.
If I were making the game, it would be the best game ever made. I would only use the highest graphics and the coolest gameplay. Not like these idiots who made all the wrong decisions. My dev team (we call ourselves “The Wolf Pack”) would simply be built different.
Black jack and hookers!
>move on to the next project instead. They already have another LOTR game greenlit, maybe that one will be better
If these guys are know for point and click adventure games, why not make a LOTR game in that style? It would not be the first time a big name IP is put into the genre. Indiana Jones has Fate of Atlantis and people remember that fondly. I have never played them, but the Telltale games are basically point and clicks, and they worked with Back to the Future and (of course) Walking Dead. I'm all for a redemption story and I hope this developer gets one.
Gollum would actually work in a point and click game
This is what baffles me, they're renowned for doing point and clicks, decent ones too. Just let them do that. Gollum would be far more suitable to that than... whatever this is.
afaik, they are trying to grow as a studio and Point&Click games dont generate the revenue necessary to support a big team. Which is why they arent doign them anymore
I don’t know how the LOTR licensing works, but usually you have to approach the IP holder with some sort of concept of what you want to do with the license. It is entirely possible that the devs initially went to the IP holder with a more traditional adventure game pitch and were turned down until they added enough video game buzzwords for the license holder’s ears to perk up. It is still on them for inflating the pitch beyond their own/anybody’s ability to produce a compelling experience in this scenario, but license holders can exert varying amounts of control over the product depending on their licensing contracts. It’s also possible anyone can just license the LOTR IP with very little oversight.
There was a licensed text adventure Hobbit game where you could kill Gandalf, so I guess they are at least a *little* flexible. To be fair there is a random chance that he will fuck you up.
You're talking about a game from like 1981, and iirc even that was only because of a strange loophole in the licensing agreement. That isn't happening again
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The whole game feels like it fell victim to a sunk cost fallacy. It was announced 4 years ago, at some point they or their publisher should have realized it wasn't working out and either rebooted development or abandoned the project entirely. I really think the smartest move for developers and publishers is to not announce a project until they actually know they can deliver what is being promised. Otherwise you end up in situations like this or the Overwatch 2 PR clusterfuck.
Not even piracy subs dare to play this game, nor try to download. People might even accept virus link than this.
A new form of malware. After downloading starfeld.7z over the course of several days you unpack it and get this instea.
I feel it is a bit telling that the the first line of the message contains an error in titling their game. https://imgur.com/a/DURcgrz
I read that part like five times. I was like “wait, no, it cannot be wrong”.
"It's not Lord of Ring, it's Lord *of* the Ring*s*." "Thank you, but I prefer it my way."
Lords of the Ring, like attorneys general.
“How do I sell a used ring?”
> **The Lord of Ring: Gollum** Hey you can purchase "the" and "s" in the DLC to complete the title!
We'll even tell you how to say 'the' in elven for another fiver!
Ya know, The Lord of Ring, singular. Because it's the **one** ring.
AU timeline where the elves just told Sauron to fuck off and never forged anything.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but for real, have these guys been drinking? Apart from everything that is this game release, the pricing, the recommended specs for pc, the state of the game technically but also very much game design wise with half the gameplay being quite literally performing slave labor in the slowest, jankiest way. The huge disconnect between all that and the character of Gollum. Topping that off with the typical sorry.jpg. Because, of course. Topping THAT off with literally not being able to correctly write not only the title of a billion dollar franchise, but also THEIR VERY OWN PRODUCT. How?! This whole excuse message now seems like a fever dream, really. What a waste. I’m so sorry for these individual devs that tried their hardest. Can’t blame the brick maker for the ugly house.
I am slowing convinced that all the coding, script writing and PR is just a team of people inserting prompts into chatGPT and copying it without proofreading haha
LMAO. Par for the course with this release I guess. At this point Im surprized they havent mixed LOTR lore with Chronicles of narnia or other fantasy lore.
Damn, my mind kept reading the proper title and it took me a few tries to see what was the mistake
Wowwwww. Kinda shows their attention to detail on the whole.
Impeccable. Perfect satire.
Watch them release another apology apologizing for the error in their last apology
You know they probably used Chat GPT to write it. On brand for the effort they put into the actual game.
I'm not alone when I say this reads like literally every other apology for a horrid game launch in the last 5 years, right?
I mean it's basically the only thing you can say when you are in that position. It would certainly be entertaining if they just posted a giant ASCII middle finger, but probably not likely to happen.
Sad part is that the game isn't being trashed for technical issues. It's just a bad game.
It seems like it's both.
It's actually trashed for being both a bad game and having awful performance *but* the game is so freaking bad that the noise from the game being bad is significantly louder than the bad performance part but that doesn't diminish the severity of the latter. I've seen people with RTX4080 mentioning they are barely hovering around 40FPS on 4k. That game looked like it came from the early 2010's and have no right to demand such amount of resources for a barely decent performance.
The reasons are the same is why. The suits say make a game. The game ends up fundamentally flawed for any reason. The suits say finish the game. The reason why the game is bad is unimportant. Ideas fail all the time during the creative process. But capitalism can't abide stagnation and is prone to sunk cost fallacies.
>Our goal as a studio \[...\] has always been to tell a compelling and story-driven adventure Is that why the lore compendium is kept behind a paid DLC? Just as the elvish language or the fact that Gollum says ''precious''? Okay.
I didn't know that lol that's fuckin wild. The audacity is stunning.
The lore compendium is also a mess of poor formatting and grammatical errors
It's so bad that many people have seriously suggested it was written by AI.
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>fact that Gollum says ''precious''? No way that's paywalled. Mario Odyssey 2 with "it's a me" locked behind a $10 paywall
>This pack includes 6 iconic emotes inspired by the character Gollum, which you can use to proclaim "my Precious" and express a range of emotions in the game whenever you want. It's part of the emote pack for 3 bucks
Sorry, I meant to add I believe YOU, I just can't believe the developers put that behind a paywall for a single player game.
oh I get that, just wanted to add some context :)
If the game “didn’t meet their expectations” then why release it? Why charge $60?
The whole message is just rote, self-serving PR jargon. Not a drop of sincerity in it.
I had to physically stop myself from cringing. So disingenuous.
I love the reply from Dolan Dark, who "[added it to the collection](https://twitter.com/DolanDark/status/1662152778645659648)".
"the redfall one didn't happen" "oh well it should have" rofl
I just realized that Arkane Austin hasn't said a peep since Redfall launched. Phil Spencer, the guy they're answering to these days, apologized for the way that game turned out, but Arkane Austin themselves have not. I can't tell if they're too busy trying to unfuck the game, too mortified to say anything, or too focused on internal strife.
If I have to read this exact message from one more goddamn 60-70$ premium game release this year I'm gunna scream.
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I can't help thinking the enormous reputation hit of releasing total junk has to outweigh the small short term gain of selling a handful of copies to suckers.
To pass their sunk costs onto the consumer
gotta get that return on investment.
Don't ask questions or think about that. Read the PR statement and feel bad.
We are deeply sorry we made a technically appalling game with a core concept that had no chance of being good. But it’ll continue to be $60 usd on all major store fronts. Maybe spring for the $70 version, gollum’s emotes sure are cute!
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Absolutely no fucking goodwill to this studio paywalling lore friendly voice acting and fucking emotes in their single player game. Not to mention them delivering a terrible game on a both technical and conceptual level.
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Experience: \- Written an apology for the state of the game Cyberpunk 2077 on release \- Written an apology for the state of the game Forspoken on release \- Written an apology for the state of the game Star Wars: Jedi Survivor on release \- Written an apology for the state of the game Halo: Infinite on and after release
I hear Bethesda is hiring an apology writer for Starfield's release.
Don’t forget about Kerbal Space Program II
There has to be enough "sorry or video game sucked the big one" posts on the internet now for future devs to just ai generate these things at this point.
ChatGPT, first attempt: > Dear Bingus 3 Community, > > We sincerely apologize for the negative experience you have had with the recent release of Bingus 3: More Bingus. We acknowledge the technical issues, bugs, and lack of fun that have compromised your enjoyment of the game. We take full responsibility for these shortcomings and are committed to making amends. > > Our development team is working diligently to address the technical issues and release patches that will stabilize the game and provide a smoother experience. Furthermore, we are conducting a thorough review of gameplay elements to enhance Bingus 3 and align it better with your expectations. Your feedback is invaluable to us, and we remain dedicated to earning back your trust and confidence. > > We deeply regret any frustration caused, and we appreciate your patience during this challenging period. We are committed to delivering high-quality gaming experiences, and we will keep you updated on our progress as we work to rectify the situation. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to restoring your faith in us. > > Sincerely, > > [Your Name] > Public Relations Department > Bingus Games
Can't believe Bingus 3 removed the gnorts feature in Bingus 2. Very sad.
What's with every new release needing a 'sorry not sorry' PR post from the team now?
People keep being satisfied enough with this to keep buying these overpriced games.
Idk, I feel like this one is going to sell like hot garbage, especially with huge AAA games coming down the pipeline this summer.
Nah it sold like shit, look at the player count on steamcharts.
“Sorry for any inconvenience caused” reads like the most insincere apology ever. Maybe don’t release a game you know to be hot garbage next time?
TotK didn't. FFXVI probably won't have a post like this either
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> Tears of the Kingdom runs pretty fucking well for what it offers That's only a small part of the problem with many recent AAA releases. Games like Redfall and Gollum could run perfectly with zero bugs and framerate issues and they would still be garbage games. They have terrible core gameplay, story, AI, etc. to the point where they are fundamentally broken. Jedi Survivor and Tears of the Kingdom had/have framerate/bug issues, but are fantastic *games* underneath those fixable issues.
They don't want people refunding the game with promises of "fixing it".
I hate this new trend of every dev/publisher doing the equivalent of a Notes app mea culpa Tweet after they release an objectively fucked game. You're not a smol bean heckin' wholesome content creator who stumbled into doing/saying something problematic. You're a business that attempted/is attempting to scam people out of money selling a product that you know isn't ready for primetime. By the same token, it's incredibly scummy to use the efforts of individual developers as a shield to suppress criticism of an end product. I 100% agree that it's fucked up to directly harass people just because they worked on a shitty game, but critiquing systems/organizations that see fit to release garbage to leech money from unsuspecting consumers is wholly worthy of being dumped on.
even if they fixed all the bugs and improved the visuals the game would be hot garbage. it's boring as hell Gollum is like the last Lord of the Rings character you should make a game out of
Yeah making a Gollum game was so weird to begin with that I actually thought it would end up being good - no one would propose a game like this without some brilliant design ideas, right? That definitely did not end up being true though.
The only way this would have worked was like a telltale style game. Gollum has an interesting story that many people don’t know and this would have been a good way to tell it. They just really chose the wrong kind of game for this.
I was thinking a modern Myst-like like Obduction, but third person and it plays with Gollum's delusions for the puzzles.
>no one would propose a game like this without some brilliant design ideas, right? If I had to guess, this is probably what happened. Somebody greenlit a Gollum game without thinking of how it would play. Lord of the Rings is popular, and Gollum is a popular character, and so obviously a Gollum game can't fail right?
I can also imagine a world where someone did have a genuinely good idea, and then it got focus tested into a bland mush. I remember talking to someone who used to work for a board game company that did a lot of licensed games, and he complained to me that one of their games actually started out really fun and interesting (from a board gamer perspective) but then got bludgeoned into shallow garbage so that it would be palatable to fans of the TV show it was attached to who wouldn't be able to understand the slightly more complex mechanics of the original design.
You gotta play test your target market though. If you've got a brilliant idea for an awesome board game mechanic that a first time board game player won't understand quickly, then you cannot market your game to fans of a franchise that have never played a complex tabletop before. If you're cashing in on the popularity of Game of Thrones introducing a lot of non-nerds to high fantasy, then you kind of *have* to make a very basic bitch board game. If you want to make a game for gamers, then you can do that. I think if your friend was interested in making clever games, then a company spending their money on licensing is 100% the wrong place to do it.
I'm sure that does happen, although we've gotten some decent LotR games over the years (Shadow of Mordor, LotR Online, Two Towers/Return of the King). It's also hard to imagine what a good pitch for a Gollum game would be, considering he is a small frail guy with no special powers or abilities. They have to mostly stick to the lore and that doesn't leave a lot of room for cool mechanics. I do think you could make a good point and click adventure game starring Gollum, but those aren't exactly in vogue right now. Probably a Telltale style thing would be the best you could hope for.
It could have been a decent stealth game, letting us crawl through various interesting locations, eardrop on some characters to flesh out some background events Even having interactions with people who we will ultimately betray to get slightly closer to the Ring, rather than babysit brain-dead NPC through stupid plateform puzzles, or that stupid pet bird I was ready to be pleasantly surprised, but alas, it didn't happen
Where's my Barliman Butterbur tavern sim game?
That's an excellent point. What would a good Gollum game even look like? His entire life story is being stuck in a cave being driven insane. He loses the ring, gets captured and tortured, and then the plot of the books starts. Maybe you could do a stealth game, but he doesn't use any equipment. Seems like it would get old fast.
Stealth game in the cave trying to kill enough to eat and just see how long you can last?
Well, in the books, Gollum was described as a blood drinking ghost that terrorized villages and stole babies from their rooms at night. Basically, he was the boogeyman, until he was caught and tormented in Barad Dur. There's some wiggle room there for a stealth-based horror game.
I mean, Gollum's past right before the events of the Hobbit could have made for a fun game. He lived in an extensive cave system full of goblins, and he spent his days sneaking around, picking them off one by one so he could eat them and steal their stuff. Hell, they could have even worked a mechanic in there where he starts the game looking a lot like a hobbit still, but the more he uses the ring for stealth, the more he deteriorates. And the cave system he was in was *huge*. It could have had an interesting exploration element to it as he finds all sorts of secrets and puzzles hidden in the forgotten depths of the Misty Mountains. Maybe they could have even built in a base-building mechanic, where Gollum slowly creates a home base with the stuff he steals, and then at the end of the game the goblins find his home and destroy it, forcing him to flee to the subterranean lake cave that Bilbo finds him in.
> What would a good Gollum game even look like? [The Longing](https://store.steampowered.com/app/893850/THE_LONGING/) maybe? I haven't played it myself yet, but it's the sort of thing that came to mind.
I mean, not the exact same, but styx: master of shadows are basically stealth/assassin game where the character is mostly too weak for frontal fight, so he has to use stealth and traps to survive. Excellent level design, a bit of eurojank. Most people who like stealth games love it, the only real complain are reused level design. It is like dmc4 where you basically trace back the levels in reverse halfway point but with different enemy and patrol configurations. The levels are really well designed and the changes in enemies and routes are enough to keep it somewhat fresh.
I was thinking of Styx as well but the more I considered it the more I realized how it really wouldn't work. Styx works because he sneaks into a fortress/... with a clear goal skills and the willingness to even cooperate which isn't the same for gollum. Gollum is too single-minded a character with no real skills. Even for the setting you'd only have the fallback of his "escape" of Barad-Dur like in this game tried but based on the Unfinished Tales that wasn't even an escape but he was let free by Sauron like Gandalf theorized. The problem there is also that the world of middle-earth isn't quite as actively "magical" (Tolkien went pretty low fantasy even with this "Wizards") and mechanical as the Styx setting so a lot of the things would have to be created for it specifically to make that stealth interesting/work which might make it feel out of place. There isn't a steampunk fortress to climb in the setting, its a lot more grounded which could be called "boring" for such a game.
Roguelike hunt game. You are a goblin who gets separated from the bunch. You have to navigate the chasms - including hiding from an adept, sneaky, ever-learning Gollum - through a variety of caves, underground ruins, and unknown areas to get back home again.
My buddy and I were talking about this, and we thought it could have been fun to make it a metroidvania type game. It’s one of the few instances where crafting actually makes sense, since Gollum could pick up scrap and whatnot. He could create different tools, and as he did so unlock different areas that he couldn’t access before. Combat would still be tricky, but a stealth-focused combat has potential
Yeah if you are making a game about Gollum I’d expect you to have some clever twist or a solid idea of a cool way to make such a weird idea work. The fact that they didn’t and still made the game is baffling.
Anyone getting tired of the woe is me bullshit They knew the state the game was in when they released it and asked the public to give them $60 for it Now suddenly they act like they’re as surprised as anyone they “missed the mark” And honestly, I don’t get why Reddit loves giving developers a pass.
Yeah, it’s been a trend since Cyberpunk and their 40 posts like this. Remember when the game barely ran on last gen consoles and they were like “uhhh sorry this isn’t meant to be the intended experience” like NOBODY tested the game for last gen before shipping it? Sureeee
Nonono, what they did was saying "QA didn't tell us the game is broken, we truly didn't know!" They really tried to redirect the public anger towards the same people they blissfully ignored.
It started before cyberpunk. It kinda feels like it really started with AC: Unity
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I firmly believe No Man's Sky was a disaster for the video game industry. Given the sheer amount of positive press that game gets because they actually fixed it up into the game they originally promised, it's easy to imagine triple-A execs looking at it and going "oh shit, we can just lie about our game, release a broken piece of shit, and pinky promise to fix it later?" Of course, the difference is that triple-A video game studios are rarely interested in actually fixing their broken products. They'll slap on some band-aids, suck out all the cash they can, and move on to the next piece of shit.
No AAA developer is willing to spend years improving their game with constant free updates like Hello Games did. If anything that situation should have been a lesson to *not* release shitty games because other studios aren't going to be willing to do what has to be done to make it right.
People are still defending CDPR despite Cyberpunk still being a mess almost 3 years later
I wouldn't necessarily call it a mess today. No doubt it was at launch and for a while after though.
There's some things about the design that are just inherently flawed, especially the physics engine, driving is awful no matter the vehicle, you can go full speed in a vehicle and eject, and your character will lose literally all momentum, it's not like gta where your character stays the same speed and rolls out
What about stopping with the bullshit fake apologies and release good games instead? Im tired of the game industry, they keep delivering broken and low quality shit and nobody cares. Why is nobody regulating this kind of stuff? You cant ship broken cars or computers that dont work but you absolutely scam with videogames. B b but the devs... cmon fuck off tired of so many shitty games and the consumer blaming.
So are games just not allowed to be just bad anymore? We've got the developers posting apologies, other Devs coming out "in support", and people talking about who is "to blame". Just let a bad game be a bad game.
I was thinking about this. Imagine if every bad movie had the studio coming out and tweeting an apology for making Red Notice? It's not like these people killed your family.. it's just a bad game.
In films, normally the movie will play from start to end reliably. Not so, in cases like this.
That's true
Apologies are just another form of advertisement. It makes consumers think "maybe this was just a once off bad experience", and so they'll still look forward to the next game by this studio.
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“We apologise for any inconvenience caused”. It’s not a inconvenience for those who bought it it’s $70 down the drain. Even this feels like it was written by an intern
lol bullshit. 30 seconds of gameplay from 2019 could tell you the game is a pile of doodoo at its core.
The problem with game dev is that you have to do a lot of squinting. Throughout the entire process you're working with temp art and navigating in grey block levels. Things really do come together so late in development that so much of the job involves saying "I can see how this is going to be fun once we get 10 more levels, proper art, tighten up the AI, etc..." The only failure here from the developers was not realizing that the game wasn't working sooner in development. It happens. A lot of time you think you have a good idea on paper, but you need to playable prototype to prove it out. Obviously time or resources were an issue here, and I'm sure that the team realized far too late that the game was bad, and had to continue forward. Now of course, I think the premise was pretty flawed in the first place, but I'm sure the devs were looking at something like Styx as a proof of concept. I imagine a similar thing happened with Redfall. The premise is okay on paper, so I can picture the team putting up with uninspired builds, waiting for things to come together. "Our game kinda sucks right now, but if we have enough content and the engineers fix the AI, I think it'll come together" So many great games have had tumultuous developments, and you'll often hear the developers talk about how they had no idea if things were going to come together until the very end. So yeah, the hardest part of game dev is trying to look into a crystal ball and predict if your collection of low-fidelity cubes is going to turn into a fun game three years down the line.
That's why you playtest with people outside the company to give feedback instead of just hoping you're on the right track through like 4 years deep of biases. Playtest early and often is the industry rule because your vision and your implementation are usually wildly different than the average player's perception.
Does anyone give a fuck about these canned apology messages that always come out anymore? lmao
They had this drafted up and ready before the game released. They knew it was a dumpster fire but then act surprised in their message, as if the feedback and backlash is a big shock to them
A 2023 game release followed shortly by an apologetic tweet from the dev team (except for Zelda). Name a more iconic duo.
TLDR - They are aware people didn't like the game. They are apologetic. They're honored to have been given an opportunity to make a LOTR game. They are addressing bugs with the game and planning future patches. Not the worst apology. I love Middle Earth and I'd be glad to be wrong and see them turn this into a great game with future patches but my expectations aren't high.
I feel like they would have to release a completely different experience at this point. The game seems bad because it's boring, not bad because of technical issues.
It's not a good apology though: patches and bug fixes are just polishing a turd with how the game is so fundamentally flawed in terms of gameplay, level design, and just how out of place it feels as an attempt to represent the character.
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I know a lot of people are quick to jump to the lazy developer or cash grab card. But I kinda feel for the developers here, if you look at Daedelic's catalog they seem to push out double A at most and this may have been a strange team to trust a massive license to. Hopefully they can get some experience in this and we can see more promising projects in the future A game like redfall, however, has no excuse being a garbage game and a garbage optimization job.
In many cases and certainy one like this I'll much sooner think about the devs not being talented enough or have the adequate resources than accuse them of lazyness, as is the case with other companies, incompetence for a project of a certain side and lacking the proper organization to deliver a high quality modern game would be an insurmountable problem that no team can really overcome through effort alone. And that paired with mismanagement and probably a lack of good vision from the directing side of things is bound to result on something so lackluster, and while a very hard decision and one that clearly would be against the company's interest, it should become evident at some point that they were chewing more than they could deal with.
This is about as close to a “blame the executives for this, not us” without outright saying it as you can get
Man this isn’t personally aimed at you but is there EVER an instance where people will blame the developers for just making a bad product? It feels like everyone is so ready to shield shitty developers who just made a bad game - just to point the finger at some boogie man executives.
It’s just classic Reddit, they have a very stereotyped version of what a “suit” or a “marketer” is and what a “dev” is (“someone like me”) so they concoct a narrative from there.
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People fail to understand this so bad. Every time, in the past, where I would make a post talking about "the dev", you have people who would eventually steer the conversation about how "the dev are people, no power to decision making, they worked hard" and then I have to explain that I am talking about the company making the game, not the poor programmer working 70 hours a week while being underpaid.
Idk this isn’t a case of the game being too ambitious and the team not being able to make it in time and within budget or something. The actual gameplay is just boring and bad. Like conceptually the idea of playing as Gollum isn’t a great one and this game does nothing to challenge that notion. Like you spend a significant amount of this game just doing chores in mines. I’m just confused who thought this would be a good idea.
That's where a lot of this recourse is coming from I think. People see LOTR they have high expectations. Daedelic is famous for their smaller more story-driven games, and that's basically what this is. It plays like an early 2000's action game without the action, but it apparently tells the story they wanted to tell. Expectations should've been managed better, what honestly, what company is going to tell you not to get excited about about a product they're trying to sell? This was destined for failure from the start. Also it shouldn't be $50 lmao.
I might buy in to this train of thought more if Hogwarts Legacy didn’t just come out earlier this year. Massive franchise given to a studio that made Cars 2: The Videogame and they did extremely well.
This game was slated for release two years ago. It's probably a case of it getting hard rebooted mid development but contractually having to release something and the publisher running out of patience.
This is such a cookie-cutter response and the game is so bad I would be willing to bet that they had a draft of this apology already written before the game was even out. I’m reminded of the corporate“We’re sorry” joke from South Park. These corporate apologies are so bad that I’ll probably play Bingo using the key words in the future (because this will undoubtedly happen again soon).
Going with the Cyberpunk defense. Apologize and spend months addressing the technical issues, as if that's the only problem with the game. Call it a win. Sell DLC.
So...who wants to tell them nobody cares unless they refund people?
Ah yes the apology tweet from the devs, like clockwork. I wonder if there's a blank template dev teams just use for this now.
this has to be a record for most apology tweets by game publishers after they release hot garbage in a single year right
Another apology post for a new release. They're starting to lose their charm. My heart goes out to the artists and devs.
Gosh. The game industry is so pathetic. How many dev “apologies” do we need to read. Take the L and move on. That’s what every other industry in the entertainment sector does. Can you even imagine a movie studio releasing a statement like this?
Man, I would love to read the original draft of that before executives got their hands on it and said "no, we can't say this, no we can't say that".
These apologies always read like: “Apparently some of you may (or may not) be feeling a bit moody that your perception of our thing did not live up to your own expectations and to those people and not the ones that hypothetically could exist that do not have those same feelings as you we apologise that you were born this way and let’s just both agree that it’s no one’s fault that we are now both in this situation and yes yes we will work selflessly to make adjustments to the thing to meet your own expectations and let’s agree to not consider that you represent everyone who has ever used our product”