Long-delayed PSVR Exclusive ‘Golem’ to Launch Tomorrow, New Trailer Here

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It’s been a long, long road for Golem, the upcoming PSVR exclusive title that’s been in development since even before Sony’s VR headset launched in 2016. After several major delays, Golem is finally due to launch, albeit a little later than previously planned.

Update (November 14th, 2019): It seems Highwire Games has again shifted the digital launch schedule for Golem; it’s now set to release digitally world-wide tomorrow, November 15th, which comes along with a physical launch in Europe. The physical North American release is still slated for November 22nd.

To kick things off right, the studio released a fresh trailer, which you’ll find linked above and also at the bottom of this article.


Update (November 1st, 2019): Highwire Games announced that Golem will see a slight delay, and won’t be launching on November 8th as previously planned.

Golem is now slated to launch beginning November 15th 2019, starting with a physical European release. The game will then launch digitally worldwide on November 19th and be followed by a North American physical release on November 22nd.

Original Article (August 20th, 2019): Golem started developed way back in 2015 by Highwire Games, a newly formed indie studio consisting of former Bungie veterans Marty O’Donnell and Jaime Griesemer, alongside a handful of other experienced game makers.

The intriguing title promises to let players explore a unique fantasy world at vastly different scales by possessing avatars from mouse-sized dolls all the way to giant stone golems. The game had an initial release date of March 13th, 2018, which was then delayed to March 16th just before the launch. That three day delay eventually spiralled into an indefinite postponement of the title which has drifted on for nearly one and a half years.

After mostly silence from the studio in the preceding months, Highwire Games today announced that Golem will launch this Fall, though a specific release date has not been set.

Image courtesy Highwire Games
Image courtesy Highwire Games

Perp Games will release physical copy of the game in Europe and North America. The physical release will include a downloadable version of the album ‘Echoes of the First Dream’, the musical prequel to the game by Highwire’s Marty O’Donnell, the famed composer of the Halo and Destiny soundtracks.

In today’s release date announcement, the studio offered a brief summary of what players can expect from Golem:

In Golem you take on the role of Twine, an adventurous kid who has been left critically injured by a serious accident. While you can’t leave your bed, you develop an extraordinary ability to create and control large stone golems and see the world through their eyes.

You can use your golems to explore an enormous abandoned city, collecting treasure and artefacts, while unravelling a deeper mystery and discovering the connection between the city and your family. Designed from the ground up for VR, the game also has an innovative free movement control scheme and intense one-to-one melee combat that sees you feint, block, and counter-attack your enemies.

In the release date announcement, Highwire didn’t speak much about the delays beyond saying that the studio has “spent time refining and polishing the experience to the highest possible standard.”

“It’s so gratifying to see our original vision for Golem come together into a full experience. We’ve really had to push ourselves and the technology, but I think the game is beautiful and I can’t wait for everyone to be able to play it,” said Jaime Griesemer, Creative Director at Highwire. “And we’re pretty old school, so it won’t feel ‘finished’ for us until we see it on store shelves.”

Image courtesy Highwire Games

When we spoke with the studio about the delays last August, Highwire said that the game was mostly complete, and that the remaining work was “almost entirely optimization,” though given how the delay has lingered other roadblocks may have arisen.

Characterizing the game’s environment design, a spokesperson at the time told us that Golem is “closest to [something like] Dark Souls in terms of structure. Not wide open terrain or totally free navigation, but a single large interconnected environment to explore.” That structure, the spokesperson said, led to challenges with level streaming—seamlessly loading parts of the game’s large environments without interruption—something ostensibly made more complicated with the high performance requirements of VR.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • martin

    cautiously optimistic.
    waiting for those critic reviews

  • Alexisms

    Always better late than broken. Bethesda take note.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      well, that’s easier to say/do when it’s a relative small development team, not with the large teams for some of Bethesda projects (also those are crossplatform, not single platform).

      • ITALI-LORI-MONTI

        se la povera sony tirasse fuori più soldi,il gioco usciva in 1 anno!ma la sony è povera .farpoint è stato creato con 7 persone e lo hanno finito in un anno …
        p.s. w l’italia

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Make that 15 people….. And one game isn’t the other.. More money doesn’t always mean better product.. And creating a good game in 1 year? It all depends on what type of game it is, but these type of games (3d, storydriven, 6+ hours of gameplay) tend to cost way more than 1 year of development (from inital start to release).. If you think you can make a game like this that fast, well, you should really go and create games, as you know how to make them fast and with that should be make a good living out of it..

      • Randy Bradley

        Doesn’t matter on the development team size because those big studios have big money and they can and should take their time instead of launching a buggy mess. Whereas smaller developers do not have this luxury. Also keep in mind SONY first party games do it all the time and is likely the reason why their exclusives turn out amazing instead of Bethesda bug filled glitchfests threy like to call a video game.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Yeah, but it’s much easier to develop for only one closed hardware platform, than for a platform which has uncountable different configurations like the PC. But I agree, bugs on a console should be much less (and only in very specific situations which might have not been seen during testing (like a specific corner of a map where most people would not even think to go)).
          If Bethesda only had to release/develop for the Playstation or only for the Xbox or only for the Switch, than their games would probably also have little to no bugs (even the Sony exclusives have bugs).

  • Ace of Spades

    Hope it comes to PC

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Don’t expect this to come to the PC, as far as I know development is completely paid for by Sony..
      If only Sony would support the headset on PC as well, but they never even officially support dualshock 3 controllers or the Move controllers, and ofcourse they opted the PSVR to have it’s own custom USB3 connector (even though it’s just USB3)..

  • ITALI-LORI-MONTI

    2 anni di ritardi!!!spero non duri 2 Ore altrimenti sarebbe una vergogna!!!

    • Andrew Jakobs

      You know this is an english speaking forum….. so please refrain from only using your own language..
      But expect is to last longer than 2 hours, but even if it’s only 2 hours, if those 2 hours are awsome, who give a s…

      • ITALI-LORI-MONTI

        non è scritto da nessuna parte che in questo foro non si può scrivere in italiano!
        si può fare anche un gioco che dura 12 ore ed è fatto bene come re7!basta avere i soldi.se non si hanno i soldi,si cambia lavoro!ma non si ruvina la reputazione della VR con giochi che fanno schifo,perchè è la VR stessa che ne rimette!

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Really, are you really this stupid/ignorant? everybody is typing in english here, all articles are in english, and you think typing in your own language will get you any response or even read by most readers here? I’m one of the few people that actually took time to put your answer through google translate, but most wont.
          So if you really want to be taken serious, and have any chance of interaction on this site, type in english, we know you can at least read it otherwise you wouldn’t be here (or are you also using google translate on any article here, which a lot of time is really painful to read)..
          If you can’t type english, please refrain from answering here at all, so many people will not understand what you wrote, and especially with words like ‘ritardi’ (which looks a lot like ‘retards’ and using exclamationmarks, it might look that you are swearing..
          So, for your own sake, and so others can ‘enjoy’ your contributions, please type it in english.. Even not so good english is better than using your own language.. We all understand that not everybody speaks/writes native english (nor do I, so my english might also not be as good)..

          • namekuseijin

            Others will understand and interact with him. No need for language gatekeeping…

          • Trenix

            Another person who can’t assimilate. Cancer to society.

          • Warscent

            Assimilate to what? The global language is English as per the U.N.
            Do you go to Italian websites, google translate the text in the Italian forum, then type a comment in Farsi full well knowing most wont know what your saying? Thats just a form of disrespect.
            Respect the community around you child.

          • Trenix

            If you want to respect a community, don’t come into someone else’s and speak your own language which others cannot understand. I have many people in my family who speak different languages. To avoid language barriers, we use English. To disregard that is disrespectful, because it results in exclusion.

            Another thing, I was honestly not that serious. You’re the child who’s trying to virtue signal and clearly got offended with my post. Victim, oppression? Ok PC Principle, calm down.

          • Warscent

            Hmmm , so you agree with me. But no, I don’t virtue signal and offense is something I haven’t taken since preschool .

          • ITALI-LORI-MONTI

            sei solo un razzista.io scrivo come voglio,se tu sei ingnorante e non sai leggere italiano,è un tuo problema!non preoccuparti per me,nessuno è obbligato a leggere quello che scrivo.io son felice di scrivere italiano e viva l’italia !

          • Andrew Jakobs

            oh I’m a racist because I’m trying you to understand that it’s better to write in the language everybody is communicating here on this site? If that makes me a racist, well, so be it, I don’t care. But ignorant morons like you should get it into their heads that if you want to live in a society you have to adapt. It’s perfectly fine to use your own language on sites where people communicate in your own language. Hell, if I go on holiday to Italy I would even try to make an effort to learn the language or at least have some dictionairy with me so I can try to make myself clear in your native language, that’s the person I am.
            If Italian was used as a universal language between people who speak different languages, well, yeah, than I would be wrong, but in most cases English is regarded as the universal language.. And since communication on this site is completely in english you should try to do the same.. If you don’t know how to speak english, well, I guess it’s time for you to try and learn it, otherwise it will be hard for you to function in the big world.. And to close off, I think you’re the racists as you don’t seem to want to adjust to the language spoken here on this site.

          • Randy Bradley

            Apparently not everybody communicates in English on this site. Also we are not writing on this site unless you’re using a stylus because we are typing on a keyboard or keypad. We are ignorant morons? What is truly moronic is that you’re trying to defend yourself. If you’re willing to go to Italy with dictionary and you’re willing to do all that on your vacation than get your dictionary out and figure out what their comment translates to or right click on your mouse and hit translate it’s truly not that difficult.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            You do know that ‘writing’ is the correct word to use when you’re typing on a keyboard.. There is a big difference in me going to a specific country and try to use their native language, than being on a specific site where everybody is using english, but some hardheaded person is still writing in their own language instead of trying to adjust to the language used on that specific site.. Sadly there are a lot of people who refuse to write in different languages than their own, and expect others to do the ‘hard work’ of trying to understand what they meant. He/she could have used the translation themselves or try to make an effort to write in the language a lot of sites are using..

          • Randy Bradley

            That was my point with the writing/typing. Who really cares. It’s sad to see how much today’s society have become whiners.

          • Warscent

            He was just pointing out the Troll nature of that Italian post.
            If anyone’s whining it’s the virtue signaling white knights like you.

            I’m Italian American.
            I shouldn’t make anyone here use google translate just to get attention.

          • Randy Bradley

            You do realize this website is on the worldwide web, correct. Emphasis on world in which it has several different languages.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Yes, and you do realize that most websites that target that large crowd are written in english and people on those sites write in english so they can understand each other.. And that’s the reason why we try to speak one language if we are communicating with people from different countries, but sometimes there are ignorant hardheaded people who refuse to even try to make an effort. The fact the person even has Itali in their name and doesn’t even try to make an effort says enough (also calling me a racist because I don’t try to read his italian (but if I didn’t even try, I wouldn’t have known what he was writing) on a site which is completely in english and everybody is writing in english even though they are not english).. My native language isn’t english either, but I at least try to make an effort to be understood on this worldwideweb.

          • This is a very strange hill for you to die on. If someone wants to write in their own language you are free to simply not read it, as is everyone else free to not care if more or less people can understand the language they choose to communicate with – regardless what language that is. Otherwise we should plainly all be writing in Esperanto. Literally no one is hurt by this person’s choice to write in Italian.

          • ITALI-LORI-MONTI

            you received 6 dislike…………who is ignorant between you and me?

          • Warscent

            This is not the first time you have trolled this site for attention.
            I say you.

          • ITALI-LORI-MONTI

            tu sei malato.

        • namekuseijin

          Isso, amigo! Mostra a esses chauvinistas monoglotas a beleza da torre de Babel

          quanto a Golem, só posso esperar pelo melhor

  • Year 2040: we are still waiting for Golem :D

    • ITALI-LORI-MONTI

      golem for ps34 :)

  • ShiftyInc

    Sadly i think this one will be a broken mess. So many delays and then an out of the blue release date this close never bodes well for any game. Hope i am wrong, but everything that has been shown up until now isn’t really blowing me away.

  • ITALI-LORI-MONTI

    has nothing to do in life.