The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

[00:00:10] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Period Bonus Podcast. I'm one of your hosts Cameron Warren and I'm joined as always by the pixel professor Jacob Price. It's May 19th, 2025. We're back to talk about video games. Jake, looking ahead. I'm at a little bit of a lull right now. So I am staring straight ahead.

[00:00:40] To Elden Ring, Night Reign. Jake, what is your... So much so that I even sat there the other night and I was like, should I start another Elden Ring playthrough just for kicks? And I was like, no. Can't do it. Yeah, it's too late. Yeah, it's too late. I'm going out of town in like two days and I was like, no, when I get back, there's... Night Reign's gonna be here. So don't do it. Jake, what's your hype levels for Night Reign?

[00:01:07] They're getting pretty high. Yesterday, I looked up just like how many days it is until a few big releases. Dude, Ghost of Yotei is still like 130 days out. And that to me, I was like, dude, that's a long time. We still got plenty of time between now and then. And so I was like, well, Elden Ring comes out in just under two weeks.

[00:01:35] Elden Ring, Night Reign. I haven't done it. Like I haven't done anything in Elden Ring, like because I don't think it would actually help prepare you. It might just help you get back into the mindset of that world. But you have player classes and they are way more agile than anything that you can do in Elden Ring. So I'm just kind of treating it as just a new, like a brand new game in some ways.

[00:02:00] But man, I'm super stoked for it. I'm considering doing like a late night stream. Just like, I don't know when it launches, but like when it launches, like what time? But I don't know. I'm super excited for that. I'm also, I don't know if I mentioned this on the main show, but I'm also super excited for this indie game coming out on May 28th. It's called Kabuto Park.

[00:02:26] And at first blush, this game looks like a really kid friendly bug catching game. Kabuto Park. Kabuto Park. And yeah, you do catch a lot of beetles in it specifically. But it has like this amazing deck building beetle sumo wrestling battle system. Like, dude, this battle system is freaking awesome.

[00:02:53] And the beetles that you catch, they basically have like Pokemon equivalent of stats. I think it's like attack, stamina, defense. And then you, those are all, all those number values are, have some RNG. So you can like catch two of the same beetle, but one might just be objectively better because its base stat values are higher than another one. Yeah. So it's like the perfect amount of min maxing for me for a team.

[00:03:21] And then you have teams of three and each beetle has its own like deck of cards. And then you basically just play your deck of cards in real time and you try to push the opposing sumo beetle team out of the ring. And whoever does that wins. I think it's like two out of three or something. Dude, I'm crazy stoked for this game. It's got an amazing battle system. And I know that I'm overthinking it because I'm treating it.

[00:03:47] This is like, this is just like a little old game, but I'm like, dude, I'm going to min max like from the demo. This beetle crushed it. Like I'm going to optimize and steamroll my way through this game. Jake, what are, that's, that is super interesting. What are, what are the top two innings of 2025 so far?

[00:04:15] Ooh, that's a really good question. Let's see. I loved Citizen Sleeper 2. That's definitely, that's a top one for me. Gotcha. Yep. I forgot about it. Yep. I also recently played, this just came out. Rift Riff is a very. Oh yeah. The tower defense. Yeah. It's a very good, very good. Like I loved it. This excellent tower defense game. That's awesome.

[00:04:45] I would say that maybe. And then Des Pelotes I'd put up there. Now that's a really different game. It's a really narrative focused game. It looks different and it feels different. But let's see. I think that's probably my top three indie games at the point, at this point right now of 2025. Those are ones that I would say they're must plays.

[00:05:10] Notice Jake did not say critically acclaimed blueprints, which will be our Outer Wilds moment of 2025.

[00:05:50] Yep. I legitimately tried so hard for something to click in Outer Wilds. And I can see why people consider it to be so good. I literally can see it. I can see it. I can feel why people feel that way about it. But it just did not happen for me. Yeah. I mean. That's exactly the same thing with blueprints. That was, yeah, exactly the same thing with blueprints.

[00:06:18] I played like two hours max of blueprints. And I was like, I could see how somebody could really enjoy this. Like it's a roguelike and then you eventually get better rooms and more items to unlock more rooms. But, but dude, it just did not do it for me. I was just like this. And it's just like Outer Wilds. I think it's a preference thing. Cameron and I just both happened to not enjoy those games. Just, we just didn't. Jake, one more question on Elden Ring Night Reign.

[00:06:48] Since you're the reigning champion. Nice. Scholar knight of From Software. Lore. Oh no. Is Elden Ring Night Reign going to have story elements? Barely. Will it have narrative beef to it? Well, okay. I think From Software will surprise us with something. But I do think that they have been pretty clear in that this is a spinoff game.

[00:07:14] Do not read into like this being some sort of multiversal hub for all these From Software games. Despite the fact that you have a ton of returning bosses. I feel like they've been pretty clear to the From Software lore nerds. So like, guys, this is mostly just about the gameplay. Right? And I think they're going to have some sort of narrative explanation as to why this is happening. And I think the lore nerds will get deep into that.

[00:07:42] But we know there's going to be stuff. There's going to be a little lore droplets in there. For sure. I think there'll be lore droplets. My hunch, so take this with a grain of salt. My hunch is that it'll just be further like nuggets of lore that contribute to bosses that we know something about already. So for example, we know Nameless King is going to show up from Dark Souls 3. And my assumption would be like the lore drops about Nameless King.

[00:08:10] Just add a little more juicy detail to what we already know about him. Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean that trailer seemed like it had some juice to it in terms of story stuff. Like, what's the main hub? What's the base hub called? The round table hold, right? The round table hold is all like jacked up in there. Remember they showed that in the trailer.

[00:08:39] And the world is going to have dynamic events. I think there's going to be some connections to Elden. Like the lore of Elden Ring that's going to expand that. I think so too. I just don't think it's going to be like a fully fledged story. Right, right, right. It's not going to have 27 hour YouTube. I mean, maybe it will. I mean, if somebody does, good for you, I think. And it will probably have, I mean, I imagine there's going to be a million Easter eggs in this game and secrets to find.

[00:09:11] But otherwise, I think this is really just FromSoft testing the waters of this type of game. I've said it before and I'll say it again real quick. Elden Ring was such a smash hit financially that FromSoftware has a unique opportunity to experiment. We're seeing that come to fruition with Elden Ring, Night Reign, and with the Duskbloods. And I say, hey, let them experiment. Let's see what they're cooking.

[00:09:37] Because it's just, at the very least, it's developing specific skills for their development or specific skills for their teams. They're getting better at their craft. I say let them do it. There's a reason they're doing it. Yeah. Yeah, there's a reason they're doing it. I think it looks to people on the surface as like, well, how come FromSoft's like following the trends, you know? That's kind of, I think that's kind of in the narrative. But the thing is, like, they can do whatever they want.

[00:10:05] Like, nobody made them make anything. Yeah. So, the fact that they're doing Night Reign and the Duskbloods tells me that they just have some interesting ideas that they want to explore out. And so, I think, I'm very confident. I actually think they will. I mean, if you can't be confident in FromSoft, like, who could you be confident in? Pretty much nobody. So, they pretty much don't miss.

[00:10:36] When's their last miss? I don't know, man. Because I feel like they had the Armored Core franchise that had its success. They had King's Field that had its success. And then Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. And we're kind of, maybe we're coming towards the, I won't say the end, but definitely a new era of, like, the Souls side of FromSoft. I don't know when their last miss was.

[00:11:02] I think diehard King's Field fans would say it was Armored Core and diehard Armored Core fans would say it was Souls. But they've only grown in popularity. Yeah. They're mainstream now. Yeah. Well, speaking of mainstream... Yeah, please follow up this transition. Speaking of mainstream... The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings. Jake...

[00:11:29] I made a promise to Jake, ladies and gentlemen, that if... That Hollow Knight Silksong, which we speak in hushed tones about on this podcast with irreverence, if you will. Because I have some spite for Team Cherry and their inability to market their game correctly.

[00:11:57] But I told Jake that at the Switch 2 reveal presentation, that we would see a Silksong full trailer and release date. We did get a basically 15 second, 5 second, perhaps sizzle reel. 5 seconds. Sounds about right. Yeah. And in exchange, I promised him that I would play Gollum on stream.

[00:12:24] And so, last Saturday night, on twitch.tv slash chipdip18, I appeared on the chipdip18 stream and painstakingly made my way with incredibly bad video and audio. And for those of you, if you listen to this and you watch that stream, you are the truest fans you can possibly imagine.

[00:12:50] Because this was abysmal audiovisual quality. Jake and I... Jake... Me mostly, but Jake also played Gollum. And so we decided, hey, we gotta do an episode on this because we got a lot to say. Jake, how are we gonna break down Gollum on today's episode? I don't... Normally, we do categories. And those categories are narrative, game design, and impact on the industry. It's...

[00:13:19] Listen, this game is kind of one giant Gordian knot. It's a mess. It's a total mess. And... I don't know. I kind of just want to try... I don't even know if dividing Gollum up to category... Into categories is the right way to approach this game. You know what I mean? I think... I don't know. Are you okay if we... I'm just kind of throwing this at Cameron. Are you okay if we just, like, talk about the game as we played it? Yeah. Yep.

[00:13:46] For clarity's sake, we didn't get to the end of chapter three. Because... I think... I think somewhere in chapter... We played a solid four and a half hours of this game. We played four and a half hours of this game. We made it... I double-checked on the walkthrough that I was looking at. We made it to, like, the very end, I feel like, or near the end of chapter three. Chapter two was way too long. Cameron, at some point, was just like, I'm done.

[00:14:15] And so that's when I picked up the controller. I mean, I felt like I gave it a pretty good effort. Fair shake, dude. You did a great job. Yeah, yeah. Fair shake. And then I was like, okay, you know, I can see some stuff in here that's quality. But it was... I don't know. It was past midnight our time. It was near the end of chapter three. And the game's like, please follow this convoluted process to hatch a bird. And I was like, I'm done. I'm too tired for this crap.

[00:14:44] Like, I think a part of me, like, out of anger was like, I want to just complete this chapter just for some closure. Yeah, yeah. But the chat, Cameron was like, Jake, throw in the towel. You do not have to put yourself and all of us through this. And so then that's when I pulled the plug. Man, I mean, where to begin? Do we start with the positives and then go into the negatives? Or do we just kind of lay it bare?

[00:15:13] I don't really know, man. We just have to dive right in. Yeah. I mean, this is the... This is the story of... This is basically... I have some more clarity now that we played. But so there's subtext in Lord of the Rings about... And in the movies as well. Of Gollum being imprisoned and, like, tortured by the Dark Lord and Barad-dur. Right? Yeah. That's what this game is about. It's about Gollum's time and Barad-dur.

[00:15:44] It's a prison simulator. Or it should have been, but... Or it should have been. It would have been better if it was. Yeah. But yeah, this is a prison simulator, both mentally and metaphorically. It's just... Dude, this is a story that both... Cameron pointed this out in the stream, but I want to reiterate this because I think it's a good point.

[00:16:14] Both in the books and in the movies, Gollum's imprisonment in Barad-dur is a very minor plot point that essentially explains what was going on with Gollum between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Right? And The Hobbit, he's a minor character. He's an important character, but he's a minor character. He disappears at one point and doesn't really show up for the rest of the book. In The Lord of the Rings, he becomes a major character.

[00:16:42] And so here, narratively, we're filling in the gaps. Right? And so the story itself doesn't have a lot of meat on the bones. And then you make a... On how long to beat? This is a 14-hour game if you're mainlining it. And then you make a 14-hour game based on one minute of the movie. Baggins! Shire! And then I don't know how many pages of the books.

[00:17:10] But like, not much. Well, I... Dude, they're making a motion picture film. On this. I'm struggling, dude. I'm struggling. Why this plot point? Why this plot point? I don't understand what people like about Gollum. Well, I can tell you that. I can tell you what I think anyway. But... But... Gollum?

[00:17:39] I'm interested to hear. Because clearly, clearly in two different instances. One with this video game. Yeah. Somebody, they sat in a room and went, you know what would be really cool way to utilize the Lord of the Rings license that we have to make video games? Make a Gollum game. Okay? Yeah. And then they did the... They just did the same thing with the films. They just said... They all got together. Peter Jackson and all his peeps. And they're like...

[00:18:08] Hey, you know what it would be really interesting? A movie about the hunt for Gollum. Which is like one sentence in the Lord of the Rings books. I believe. Yeah. So basically, when Gollum escapes from Barad-Dur, he does at some point. And he's trying to track down the ring. Aragorn and other rangers are talking with Gandalf. And they're trying to find Gollum. Well, guess what? They're unsuccessful. And Gollum ends up finding them in the mines of Moria. If you remember from the Fellowship of the Ring.

[00:18:37] So it's not a super exciting plot point. Really. But I think the reason why people like Gollum is because historically, like in popular 20th century literature, Gollum is a super fascinating character in terms of his psychology. And in terms of... It's just a really well-written sort of morally gray character. Like you feel a lot of sympathy towards him. But at the same time, he commits villainous acts that he is responsible for. Right?

[00:19:07] Right. I think CEOs really like him because there's a conflict of good and evil in there. But he constantly picks evil over good. And so CEOs can relate to that. So I think that's why they're greenlighting these projects. I mean... I don't understand. I don't understand the video game. The movie... Because we know... The movie is pretty much just going to be a D.H. Viggo Mortensen.

[00:19:37] So... And he needs money. I mean, the movie is not really going to be about Gollum. It's going to be about Viggo Mortensen. It's going to be about like young Aragorn. And it's going to be set up as a prequel to The Fellowship of the Ring. Oh, man. They're going to D.H. Hugo weaving in there too as Elrond. Yeah. They're going to use the AI technology. I mean... I don't know. Stellan Skarsgård looked pretty good. And Andor. D.H. Yeah. Slight spoiler. But I don't know. Yeah. Anyway.

[00:20:07] Let's not talk about the film. That's neither here nor there. The game. All right. So, you've got this just mind-boggling choice to use Gollum, right? Okay. You made your choice to use this one-line placement of... You've got no meat on the bone as it is. Yeah. Okay. And then you're entering and you're making a single-player Gollum game. And there's just narratively...

[00:20:36] I know we're not doing our main categories, but just narratively, it's so dry. Literally nothing happens. Like nothing. It starts off when you've got Wizard. For some reason, they don't say it's Gandalf. Right. I don't know why. Right. Is that a licensing thing? We don't know. It can't be. Right? The most poorly designed human-looking character that you've ever seen in your life.

[00:21:02] And then the absolute most... Matt Fresh called it Avocado Toast Navi. Because it starts off and it's like... It's a flashback. I think he's in like an elven prison or something like that. Yeah. And Gandalf shows up and there's an elf. And it shows the elf briefly. And you're like, what the heck is that? By the way, the Sindarin voiceovers did not work. Jake paid for the DLC and it didn't work.

[00:21:31] Dude, I'm a little ticked about that. Anyway. But maybe because there hadn't been any elves in the entire part of the story that we played. I guess technically the only elves that we saw were speaking to non-elves. So they were speaking the common tongue. That's what I understand. Seems like a cop-out. Gandalf understands elvish, right? Oh, definitely. Perhaps. Yeah. So there's just nothing here. There's nothing here. There's nothing happening. There's nothing going on in the story.

[00:21:59] There's just random moments of Gollum going about and doing various chores in the prison. Because he's a prisoner. There's no exploration of like... The only kind of maybe sort of kind of moments of story here are the Microsoft Times New Rome looking...

[00:22:28] Smeagol versus Gollum like moral choices that seemingly have no impact on the actual game like whatsoever other than just pop up on the screen and say, oh yeah, pick one. And it's like, okay, why am I picking one? It's like, you're just... You just are. That's... That's it. So there's nothing there. Yeah. I mean... It is such a... Okay. This is me being kind. Let me be kind for a sec here. All right. All right. All right.

[00:22:56] Reading with the subtitles on, it was really, really unusual that they would... Say wizard and then parentheses off. It read very much like a movie script that was incomplete. And I think most of the dialogue was actually in an incomplete state. Meaning that it was... Let me maybe rephrase that. It felt like the entire script had been written, but they simply did not have time to actually revise it. It felt like a draft.

[00:23:25] And so I am inclined to believe that this game got rushed like crazy bad when it came to the script because they did not even edit out when it was a voiceover that was off screen or not. Now, maybe that's an accessibility choice. Maybe. But I would be surprised if that's the case because the rest of the game was so hollow and

[00:23:54] didn't have accessibility options anyway. So that's me. I'm trying to find some rationale for why it is. No, I think you're exactly right. This is clearly... There's no chance. There's no chance that this was not a situation of an incredibly rushed team that was in disarray, likely being forced to make a version of this.

[00:24:23] I believe that there was a decision to make this game that was legitimate and honest. But the version that we got is not what anyone wanted. There's no chance... There's no chance that the people who worked on this game were working with... Under some sort of like self-interest to make something... To make the thing that they would want to make. There's no chance. There's clearly like some sort... It's not... I don't know.

[00:24:53] It probably wasn't like coercion or something, but it was... This was like... Seems like it was a hostage situation. Like some kind of... Yeah. Or it's like you have to make this game. You don't have a choice. You have one year or six months to get it out the door. And we were releasing it no matter what. And sorry. And basically these developers were like, Okay, well... I got to make a living. So we're just... We're going to literally just ramshackle something together. Yeah.

[00:25:21] I mean the script, the dialogue, the everything... When it comes to the writing felt like a first draft. And listen, the first draft is never supposed to see the light of day. And I was shocked, for example... And we were making jokes about this during the stream. You had names that felt like Death Stranding Kojima names. Like Candleman. And the first time you see Candleman, literally has like a candle topper to snuff out candles. I was like, there's no way. There's no way that the final name for this dude was Candleman.

[00:25:51] And he's one of the lieutenants of Saodon. Right? The Dark Lord. Right? Like what absolutely... What a major tonal difference. Just like in nomenclature there. And then they introduce this other villain, Cruel Woman, who is the daughter of Candleman. Right? I mean, it just felt like... I mean, because I can only imagine... If you put me in a room and you're like, all right, Jacob, I need you to come up with

[00:26:19] Lord of the Rings black speech names for these high-ranking officials in Barad-dur and Mordor. Dude, I'm going to be spending a lot of time trying to come up with a name that sounds believable in the Tolkien universe in a highly specific scenario. Right? Like Candleman, Cruel Woman, that's not it. And so... And you had these characters and their interactions really just felt like impersonal. Like way too straightforward.

[00:26:49] And so then you throw... I feel... What I firmly believe is like a first draft of a script over to a bunch of voice actors. And they're like, all right, dude, you got some major heavy lifting to do here. Lift with your legs because this stuff is... This stuff is pretty raw. And I think the voice actors, it wasn't great, but man, they weren't given a great script to work with. And so... Yeah, I kept seeing like nuggets of things that could have been interesting. Right? So for example,

[00:27:17] you have this strange moment as Gollum Smeagol where like the Dark Lord is speaking to you directly through the Eye of Sauron. And you feel like Smeagol slash Gollum, right, is tasked with finding the ring for the Dark Lord. And so you have these moral choices where do you reveal like this mission that has been tasked to you specifically? And I'm like, dude, there could have been something compelling in that. If Gollum believes he's acting as an agent

[00:27:47] of the Dark Lord, Sauron himself, and that's why he's obstinate against all these little lower, you know, or all these other people like here, Mordor, Barad-Dur. Like there were nuggets of things that could have been compelling, but the execution, man, was just like an early draft. I'll just... Yeah, it's like there wasn't even a vertical slice made for this game, which is weird. Because like usually that's how games get greenlit,

[00:28:16] is you put together a concept and then a couple team members get together and you make like a super rough vertical slice. And a vertical slice is supposed to convince people to greenlight the project, right? It seems like that did not even happen. I'm like super fascinated. I'm... Jason Schreier's got to have the scoop on this one. I don't know if that's in a book or maybe he already wrote an article and I never read it. I don't know. He probably did. I'd love to know. Yeah. Yeah. Gameplay-wise,

[00:28:46] yeah, I say that because gameplay-wise doesn't get any better. This is a combination... This is a mix of very, very light, interactable elements in the world doing... I mean, dude, there's a full hour and a half section of just doing random tasks in the prison and collecting things around the prison with extremely light platforming elements. There's a much larger platforming section. Jake got to play part of this.

[00:29:15] It's like Uncharted if Uncharted was like worse than the PS1 era. Like it feels so bad. Dude, I've never been more... Because I went into this legitimately being like, you know what? There's no way this can be as bad as people say it is. Right. And dude, it's every bit as bad as every person says it. It's so... It's so shockingly bad that you're like... It feels literally to the point of

[00:29:45] that it was like sabotaged by the team that had to work on it. Like it was purposefully sunk to... You know, we don't know all the reasons, right? Or all the what ifs. But... No, I mean, so basically light stealth elements that are completely glitched and don't work. Yeah. Half the time. Super light platforming, jumping from ledges, backwards jumping. The best thing in the game

[00:30:14] is the wall run. Oh, by far. Yeah. Like if you had to take one thing in this game that it's like that... Like that one little piece is not complete crap. Is the wall run. Yeah. Everything else around it, complete crap. What's even crazier to me, Jake, is just how incredibly bad the design of Gollum himself is. Yeah. It's so...

[00:30:43] Like even just the whole design of just like the face and all that itself. The hair. The hair alone. I just... I don't... Yeah. I just like don't know what happened. Yeah. I want to touch on a few points you made here. Thinking... I've been thinking about this since we played just two nights ago, right? Um... The platforming... I would say like the actual level design of platforming,

[00:31:13] like what platforms, how they're arranged and how you get from one to another, it felt at least par for the course. Sometimes there's moving platforms. Sometimes you got to hunt maybe for the right platform to get to. Maybe there's a little bit timing and jumps and distances that you need to clear. Like all of that, I feel like was really par for the course. Like Cameron says though, most of your movement abilities felt off. They were too floaty. Sometimes you'd slide a little bit. Um...

[00:31:42] Starting and stopping your sprint didn't feel really intuitive or really optimized. The wall run, yeah, for whatever reason though, that felt good and that animation looked the best by far. Everything else was a little stilted. Um... But yeah, I have to say the platforming actual like level design was okay. I... I didn't mind either that, um... This game does have some signposting with like yellow paint. But I also didn't mind and actually thought

[00:32:12] maybe this is a good part of the platform level design is that there were at least a section that I played didn't feel entirely linear even if it was. And what I mean by that, it was like you had to use the... You had to look around the whole 3D space of the room that you were in to find the next platform to get to and to make your way from point A to point B. So I thought that was a good thing. The stealth sections and the platform sections that I watched Cameron play though, those felt super, super basic. Really rudimentary.

[00:32:42] Again, they really felt like a first draft that was spruced up to look like a final draft. Um... Yeah, man. All of the eyes in this game... Again, this game to me just screams not enough time. All of the eyes looked really weird. The eye animations were weird. Gollum's eyes were just freaky. And then way too much hair in a game and I feel like... I know I'm rambling a bit here, but I feel like in video games there are three things

[00:33:11] that are really difficult to animate and that is water, fire, and hair. Like, a game could look drop-dead gorgeous but maybe those three things like in terms of the physics and the animations and how they move... Hair physics. Hair physics field... Get you every time, man. Dude, there's... Yeah. But this Gollum has quite a head of hair I would say compared to other representations of Gollum which to me was like, dude, oof. The hair is never going to look

[00:33:41] good just because there's too much of it and it doesn't behave well, I guess. No, it does not. Yeah, man. I mean, there's no way. This game was made in like a year or less. I don't know. I'm sure there's an article that we haven't read. We should have probably... I probably should have looked that up before we started. But no, I'll say one other nice thing about the game. Environmental design and there is some very redeemable environments and art direction here. Oh, yeah.

[00:34:11] There's some impressive looking backgrounds. Jake posted a screenshot in the Discord of this like beautiful stained glass window which was overshadowed by the fact that there was a model of a solar system of which does not exist in the universe of Middle Earth. So, you know, that's just yet another signposting of the fact that the people who made this had absolutely no passion for what they were creating. That being said, the environments, whoever did

[00:34:41] the environmental art and like the backgrounds and stuff, I'd hire you in my game studio. Oh, yeah. Environmental art looked really good. You get a snapshot at Grand, which is the name of the battering ram that they used to break into meanest. Yeah, yeah. That was cool. That was kind of one of the coolest vistas. That was one of the coolest vistas. Seeing Grand under construction was like super dope, right? Yeah, the interior where Candleman resides and the tower was very cool. The stained glass was cool. There were some like super amazing paintings

[00:35:11] that were just on the wall. I was like, dude, these look amazing. These look super great, you know, so. Dark Lord paintings. The Dark Lord paintings, which we were joking about, but that means that in Mordor there is a team of artist orcs who paint the Dark Lord. There's commissioned painters and architects in Mordor. Yeah, all the interiors, like that stuff looked really good. Like that was cool.

[00:35:41] Like it definitely looked like, hey, this is someone's artistic interpretation of Mordor. Very cool. And I agree with you. I think that was definitely the best part of the game. But I would say when it came to any humans or humanoids in the game, man, it just it just felt unpolished through and through, which is a shame. Let's talk about

[00:36:11] Impact, Jake. So because I think this game was made by Dydalic. Correct. I'm not clear on if they were Dydalic is not owned by Embracer Group, but I think they got the license from Embracer. Pretty sure. Yes.

[00:36:40] And Dydalic was a formerly a publisher and they yeah, yeah. Okay. So Embracer funded it and it was a write-off and I think yeah, yeah. Okay. So it failed. Embracer lost all the money that they put into it and then they had Embracer had a $2 billion Saudi investment that fell through

[00:37:08] which led to the mass layoffs across like a whole bunch of studios a bunch of studios getting closed, canceled projects and then now Embracer's like completely cut to the bone to just a couple studios who can only make Lord of the Rings games ironically. Zero lessons learned perhaps. So that is the this is a game that has a real and legitimate impact on

[00:37:38] the industry Embracer group being like specifically Embracer group has the obviously has the Lord of the Rings I need to look that up too as well Jake like what is Embracer group does Embracer group hold the Lord of the Rings game license because was it did WB sell it because they had those like Shadow of Mordor games I don't know man I think they did Embracer

[00:38:08] group holds okay I'm getting said hold significant rights to develop and license video games based on the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit in August 2022 Embracer acquired Middle Earth Enterprises from the Saul Zane's company securing extensive rights to these iconic literary works through Middle Earth Empires Embracer controls worldwide rights to I can't be right motion

[00:38:40] I mean it doesn't really matter I mean it seems to me that Didalic Entertainment exists as a publisher still I understand the difference Embracer group entered into agreement to acquire IP rights to Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit literary works oh interesting for which they paid 395 million that's it dang yes so they paid 400 million for the Lord of

[00:39:10] the Rings literary works but I believe Amazon holds the rights to make like films yeah the motion picture rights anyway point being it's just it's such a

[00:39:43] can you think of any other game that was like this terrible I'm struggling like in recent memory Gollum is I mean it is the go-to example of a game that's bad and had severe consequences for being bad right I mean this should be considered like the greatest lesson to learn especially when you're handling like a major IP and it's curious because this game was first announced in March 2019

[00:40:13] it was delayed to 2021 and then it came out in 2023 so the wild thing to me is like how does this game feel so rushed when it was delayed considerably right and I just can only imagine that it went through maybe a bunch of reboots that's kind of what it feels like to me and probably the version that we ended up getting again I don't know this I'm just guessing because the game feels so much like a draft that I 18

[00:40:43] month development time or something like from 2021 to 2023 right like maybe they just scrapped it just two years before it actually came out but yeah I mean this game let's see it caused a lot of problems for didelic entertainment from what I gather it so Wikipedia has here that it shuttered its development division

[00:41:12] became right yep that's what I just read and now just publishes and I'm looking at the games that they're publishing and you can't find Gollum anywhere on their website so it's it's interesting that like okay so I got some clarity on the licensing so Amazon holds the rights to TV premium TV based off anything but The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and they

[00:41:42] paid how much for that for that they paid 300 million for that for those rights Embracer Group owns exclusive rights to film video games like the whole gamut and then they license they like sell the license as part of their like business model of which Warner Brothers works with them like to handle licensing stuff but Warner Brothers also has legacy rights because they produce

[00:42:12] obviously the original Lord of the Rings films and The Hobbit so Embracer's entire business is milking the Lord of the Rings literary like and The Hobbit literary license to make money so and they do have one decently successful game in this place which is Return to Moria that oh right and that came out a year ago maybe something like that yeah which

[00:42:42] we never played but supposedly is not bad it's actually it's like I've gotten a lot better and they've patched it and it's pretty good it's like survival crafting dwarves yeah I mean camera what do you think is the greatest lesson to learn in all this about Gollum for the industry do not work with Embracer Group to make a video game brutal but also

[00:43:12] license games are tough because yes you have a license that everybody loves but you are going to get absolutely raked over the coals on your margin if that game is not an insane success take a look at Spider-Man Jedi the Jedi games Jedi games are phenomenally successful games Jedi Survivor Jedi Fallen Order those teams still had cuts

[00:43:41] those teams are not like EA is not going like oh man Respawn is making so much money they're literally cutting Respawn so dude it's a it's a man it's so cool to work with a license that you love and I'm sure if you got the chance to work on a Lord of the Rings game like you would jump at the chance or you know Harry Potter same thing although Harry Potter is a good story because Avalanche did that and that game made a bajillion dollars and it's going to

[00:44:11] make even more money on Switch 2 and all steam ahead full steam ahead by the way on the sequel for that game massive priority for WB games like a huge sequel to Hogwarts Legacy but yeah I think that's the lesson and that also you cannot make a video game in like 8 months and this is definitely a situation where that's what happened yeah listen the only successful games that I've

[00:44:41] seen that have been made in a time frame that's under a year and that's like pre-production production and post production and launch are indie desktop idler games like those are the only ones that I've seen that have come out with big success there's some exceptions to that like a game about digging a hole is a game I think that was made in like two months or something but folks take a look at what these games are and then take a look at what Gollum tried to be right and here here's the crazy thing right Cameron brought this up

[00:45:11] and I've actually been thinking about this more than anything ever since we played the game is that if Gollum was like a true prison sim and then this is me adding my thought to it and it

[00:45:41] like poor decisions documented in the first draft but 15% of this game feels like dude that could have worked that could have been something right like even if it was

[00:46:11] as consumers we like give Star Wars games like a ton of flack right for example but man it just makes me think that trying to make a game with a specific license is actually just more of a chokehold than it is

[00:46:41] play Plague Tale we decided we decided that we were going to fix Gollum in our extended edition so if you're a subscriber on Patreon our extended edition version of this episode we're going to continue the conversation by we will fix Gollum armchair dev style armchair dev stuff but no to close out kind of our Gollum analysis this lived up to the not hype

[00:47:11] the critically unacclaimed game is deservedly so just baffling decisions at every turn seemingly created by there's only two options either A this is a group of developers that had a gun to their heads that were forced to make something they didn't want to make B it was actively being destroyed from within for various reasons

[00:47:40] or C it was created by people who had no idea what they were doing and they just couldn't put it together and it's so it's only one of sad situation

[00:48:10] Lord of the Rings is a wonderful IP I think there could have been something interesting here but yeah this is once again a business that destroyed something that potentially could have been creative and cool and yeah that's unfortunate yeah the last thing I'll say is that there's an article here there's a it's titled new report makes disturbing allegations against the Lord of the Rings Gollum developer from IGN that came out on October 9th

[00:48:40] 2023 and it cites most of the things that we had talked about apparently the budget of the game was 15 million euros and they were expecting a triple A product out of that okay so yeah so they tried to make a triple A game with indie game money with indie game money and no time cool well there you go folks that's the answer

[00:49:11] yeah don't do that clearly it doesn't work ladies and gentlemen this has been another episode of the period about his podcast having an unfortunate discussion on Gollum but you know we felt it was our duty to talk about this game hey and you know what we played it we did our part we did our part okay Jake paid money for this title yeah 10 bucks we played it if you're interested in watching that stream it's gonna be up on Jake's VODs I believe on Twitch and we may or

[00:49:40] may not get that up dust off the old YouTube channel and get that posted up there that would take a little bit of work but we might make it happen if you want more stuff from us you can get it patreon.com slash Petercast like I mentioned including the extended edition of this episode continuing our conversation where we will attempt to fix Gollum as armchair developers if not you can follow us on Blue Sky you can support us by giving a review on your

[00:50:10] podcast platform of choice you can also join in the conversation and get active in our community period bonus podcast community on discord link to that