A new report has revealed that the the apology for The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was penned by AI program ChatGPT.
Former Daedalic staff members spoke to Germany’s GameTwo about the various issues that plagued the project, which ranks as the lowest-rated game of the year so far. Two sources have told the publication that ChatGPT was used to write the apology, and Daedalic reportedly had no knowledge of it; instead, the apology was handled by Gollum’s publisher, Nacon.
Paul Schulze, former senior developer and technical director at Daedalic, commented:
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. 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.
A number of characters and cutscenes in The Lord of the Rings: Gollum were not animated in time for release, and as such were hidden from the player. Furthermore, the argument system that saw Gollum and Sméagol arguing with each other was scaled down dramatically, having originally been designed to replicate conversations from the movies.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was released in May 2023 and you can read our review here.