Daedalic's devastating Lord of the Rings: Daedalic's devastating Lord of the Rings: the story of Gollum may finally be complete. At the end of the patch notes for the "major update" released last week is a note that, from my reading, strongly suggests that the studio is now about to close the book on the subject.

Gollum was in a precarious position almost from the start, as gamers questioned (understandably) why Tolkien would want to take on the role of a tragic, sticky villain; the 2021 release date was now 2022 or 2023, and serious development problems were It became clear. I had hoped that the game would surprise us all as a sleeper hit (or as a basic competence), but it did not. It was a disaster: although we gave it a relatively high score of 64% in our review, and described Gollum as "an often beautiful and oddly endearing adventure" despite its flaws, it currently has an overall Metacritic review score of 39 and a Steam user rating of "mostly negative"

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It was so bad that Daedalic quickly apologized for the mess, saying, "We deeply regret that the game did not meet the expectations we set for ourselves and our dedicated community." He also promised to release an update that would "allow you to enjoy the game to the fullest."

As we noted at the time, Daedalic's statement led directly to the obvious question: what exactly is Gollum's maximum potential?" Bugs can be fixed, but you can't patch out the essential shit. While some of the backlash against Gollum may be exaggerated (nuance is hard to find), the fact is that the technical issues are only a small part of the problem.

Perhaps that is why today's 2.2 update has a certain finality to it. The patch promises a wide range of bug fixes and performance improvements, but concludes with a very brief message from the developers.

"Thank you players for your patience. We sincerely hope that these changes will help you enjoy The Lord of the Rings: Gollum."

There has not been much reaction to this patch announcement on Steam, but the few responses that have been posted have generally been quite upbeat, with posts encouraging Daedalic to continue work on There are a few posts urging Daedalic to keep working on it. That is unlikely: according to the Steam chart, only seven people are currently playing the game; Daedalic also recently announced that it is discontinuing "Gollum" in the wake of the failure of "The Lord of the Rings:" Following the failure of "Gollum," the company announced that it was discontinuing its in-house development department and instead announced that it would concentrate on its publishing business.

I have contacted Daedalic and asked about the possibility of further Gollum patches and will update if I hear back. The full patch notes are as follows.