ChatGPT was used to write Gollum game apology, it’s claimed

A.I. program ChatGPT was used to write the apology for the bug-filled Lord of the Rings Gollum game, it’s been claimed.

In interviews with the German gaming outlet GameTwo (spotted by Knoebel), several former Daedalic staff members have spoken for the first time about what went wrong with the critically panned licensed game.

Following the release of Gollum, Daedalic apologized for delivering what it called an “underwhelming experience” with the final game. The company said “[we] deeply regret” that the game did not meet expectations, and pledged to improve it via future updates.

It’s now claimed that the apology was written with the AI software ChatGPT, according to two sources speaking to GameTwo.

It’s also claimed that developer Daedalic had no knowledge of the apology or its content prior to publishing and that it was handled entirely by publisher Nacon.

At the time of publishing, Gollum is the lowest-rated game of the year on both major aggregation sites Metacritic and OpenCritic, with The Guardian labelling it “a derivative, uninteresting and fundamentally broken stealth action adventure that fails to capture anything interesting about Tolkien’s fiction.”

Gollum’s development budget is reported to have been around 15M Euros, a modest sum for a game in the AAA space in 2023.

“There were people working on the game that have been developers for 10,15,20 years, and they’re good, but they can’t do magic because they weren’t given the funds,” said former Daedalic senior developer and technical director, Paul Schulze.

It was also claimed in the video that due to running out of time before the 2023 release, several characters and cutscenes that were meant to be animated were simply hidden from the player.

For example, one scene that was supposed to see Gollum eavesdrop on a conversation between two major characters was recorded, but never animated, so Daedalic had Gollum simply look at a window, and have the audio recording play, never having to show the characters that were speaking.

“You can’t just throw more money at something like that, hang on for another year and then everything will be fine. That’s unrealistic because the game underneath it doesn’t support it,” said Schulze.

It’s also claimed that the argument system, which saw Gollum and Smeagol argue over which option to take in the game was never finished, and a makeshift solution was added shortly before publication. Initially, the mechanic was supposed to replicate similar conversations in the film, which saw the camera change perspective to denote which part of Gollum’s personality was speaking.

When the mechanic was first shown off in the preview phase, a similar presentation was used. However, when the game was eventually released, players simply picked from a few options of simple text, all while Gollum’s lifeless character model floated in the background.