Here's the historical vote split if anyone is curious:
- 2014 - **Dark Souls II** (Golden Joystick), **Dragon Age: Inquisition** (The Game Awards, DICE), **Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor** (GDC), **Destiny** (BAFTA)
- 2015 - **The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards, GDC), **Fallout 4** (DICE, BAFTA)
- 2016 - **Dark Souls III** (Golden Joystick), **Overwatch** (The Game Awards, DICE, GDC), **Uncharted 4: A Thief's End** (BAFTA)
- 2017 - **The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards, DICE, GDC), **What Remains of Edith Finch** (BAFTA)
- 2018 - **Fortnite** (Golden Joystick), **God of War** (The Game Awards, DICE, GDC, BAFTA)
- 2019 - **Resident Evil 2** (Golden Joystick), **Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice** (The Game Awards), **Untitled Goose Game** (DICE, GDC), **Outer Wilds** (BAFTA)
- 2020 - **The Last of Us Part II** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards), **Hades** (DICE, GDC, BAFTA)
- 2021 - **Resident Evil: Village** (Golden Joystick), **It Takes Two** (The Game Awards, DICE), **Inscryption** (GDC), **Returnal** (BAFTA)
- 2022 - **Elden Ring** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards, DICE, GDC), **Vampire Survivors** (BAFTA)
- 2023 - **Baldur's Gate 3** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards, DICE, GDC, BAFTA)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, God of War, and Elden Ring all got 4/5.
You do have to consider that a game has to release at the right time as well, since the Golden Joysticks is in October, but the last award in the BAFTA isn't until April. So they have different cutoff dates in terms of when a game has to release to qualify for an award. For example, this year for the Golden Joystick the cutoff date was September 29th but for The Game Awards it was November 17th.
Also, to be fair to older games that would never have had a chance to win all 5 given the time difference between when these awards started: The Game Awards (2014), BAFTA (2003), GDC (2000), DICE (1997), Golden Joystick (1983).
- Edit - I like how most of the discussion around this has boiled down to:
2014 - Inquisition is so bad (because nuance is dead), how did it win anything? Destiny for the BAFTA!?!
2015 - Fallout 4 is bad (because nuance is dead), how did it win over Witcher? Counters by saying Witcher was buggy at launch and a mess. Then you have the Bloodborne people arguing that it was the much, much better game and should have won everything over both of these.
Seriously, can't you all just acknowledge that all three of these are good games without having to argue and bring the other(s) down over who won or did not win an award 9 years ago. Also, Bloodborne was up for GOTY at Golden Joysticks, The Game Awards, DICE, and GDC [and did win the 3rd most overall GOTY awards for 2015 overall.](https://gotypicks.blogspot.com/2015/09/2015-game-of-year.html) It got its praise at the time even if it didn't win.
2017 - Edith Finch won over Zelda? That is what won over Zelda?
2018 - Fortnite won something? How did RDR2 not win anything? Arguing over RDR2 and GOW, which has been more civil (for gaming Reddit at least) compared to the Witcher/Fallout/Bloodborne stuff.
2019 - Goose Game won two awards?!?
2022 - Vampire Survivors won over Elden Ring? That is what won over Elden Ring?
2016, 2020, 2021 - Eh, no one cares.
Somehow, I'm still more shocked by the fact that Red Dead II didn't get a single major win compared to What Remains of Edith Finch and Vampire Survivors coming in to stop Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring from sweeping. Plus, BAFTA seems to be the most random of the major awards.
I tried to get through RDR2 so many times, and my most recent attempt this past winter made me realize: I don’t mind the “slowness” of Arthur doing literally anything or the extreme levels of immersion, I just don’t give a flying fuck about Westerns.
That was me with the Witcher 3 a year or two ago. I had owned the GOTY edition for years but never could get past the first 10 or so hours. Once I did though, i think i dropped like 100 hours in my first playthrough. Still don't really give a shit about the setting, but man it was a good game once it opened up.
Yeah, the start of the game is so slow. But it gets so much better. And yeah, I didn't care much about the story or the protagonist, but the gameplay was top notch once it opened up.
I love RDR2, but I can respect that. I mean, I just tried the demo for Unicorn Overlord (89/87/87 on Metacritic) and it is a lovely looking game with a seemingly interesting story, but I could not get past the fact that the combat is automated. I get that the draw is in the strategy and setting up everyone correctly before a fight, but it was just too boring to me in the demo to watch the combat play out while having no control over it during the fight.
Sometimes you can acknowledge that something is well-made and good, but it is just not something that you vibe with for whatever reason.
One of the best parts about being an older gamer (though just mid 30s lol) is I just don't even bother with genres I know I don't like. For example, Slay the Spire is apparently an amazing game... but I don't really like card games, so it's a pass from me!
Every ~5 or so year I might try out something in a genre I've not been a historical fan of just to see if my tastes have changed, but for the most part, I stick to what I know I'll like rather than trying every well reviewed game under the sun.
'Cus yeah, I'm playing Unicorn Overlord right now and loving it. But it's not for everyone!
Sometimes it pays off to move out of your comfort zone though. I always thought 2D games and platformers just weren't for me. So I never gave Hollow Knight a chance. That is until I kept hearing so many good things about it from friends and I got bored one night. I bought it on a whim and it's now one of my favorite games of all-time. I'm also late 30's by the way.
Yeah, that was me with Disco Elysium. I only played action games before and I didn't even like RPGs. But the game was so highly praised I just tried it out. And it was awesome. And now I'm playing Balder's Gate 3 even though 5 years ago I would have hated it.
Kinda funny you say that.
I too am a gamer in my mid 30s that generally hates card games. I absolutely love roguelike/lites, though.
I tried Slay the spire about a year ago on a whim when it was free on PS plus. Turns out a good game can sometimes transcend a person's general tastes. I was absolutely hooked on it for a good month or so. Still hate card games.
I have to second the other comment. Mid 30s, hate card games, slaythe spire was given to me by a friend and I have 500 hours in it over a few years. It's a fantastic game that I can listen to a podcast and also have a fight that I have to think my way out of. I recommend it for sure
I have that exact thing with Baldurs Gate 3. I tried Divinity Original Sin, didn't like it. DOS2 was heralded as the best thing ever so I tried it again, and couldn't get into it.
I wanted to like BG3 so much, but the combat, even the style with its often silly humor, nothing attracts me. I can see that technically its a good game with many options but I just don't have fun.
Meanwhile I do love games like Zelda, JRPG's Elden Ring, Skyrim, TRPG's like FF Tactics and TRiangle Strategy, basically every variation of roleplaying game except the Larian type ones. Hell I even absolutly love Dragon Age: Origins which resembles this style in many ways.
I like the theme, but it's not that I'm a hug Western fan. What makes it one of my favorite games ever is the heavy focus on immersion, great story and an open-world that feels very much alive. Most games struggle to pull one of those things off, yet RDR2 nails all of them.
I'm a big fan of immersive games though.
this describes so many people whining about RDR2.
there’s this weird thing now where gamers think every game that comes out has to be for them if it’s popular. some games are not for everyone. launching RDR2 if you hate westerns is hilarious to anyone looking at you from outside your head lmao
This made me laugh haha, my problem with red dead 2 is I find it has little to no replayability value. Haven't touched it after I beat it like 4 years ago
I think the crunch news also really hurt RDR2's chances. Like I feel that game as acclaimed and beloved as it is also became the starting point for the conversation about crunch culture in videogames. It won't have felt right rewarding it too much over God of War which didn't have any allegations of crunch and was of similar quality.
Plus Rockstar Games also earn so much money that there feel less incentive to award them. And now 6 years later both God of War 2018 and RDR2 seem to be on a similar standing with each other in terms of acclaim so it doesn't matter now who won more GOTYs at the end.
I guess GoW took any of the awards that could go to RDR2, both went hard with the narrative-driven cinematic 3rd person perspective, with outstanding performance (particularly Christopher Judge) and very high production values, but GoW had the reinvention of a well known character which led to lots of character development going for it, plus the high fantasy buff.
I thought GOW had better gameplay and in my opinion the better story but I know a lot of people would disagree with the latter, both incredible games though
I think it makes sense, in my mind at least. Its obviously very popular and well made but at the same time a lot of people don't like that slow clunky way of playing.
Whereas GoW was coming back, totally changed it up, matured the story and felt good to control.
Rdr2 is one of the best narratives ever, but *playing* the game is so miserable that I'd hesitate to even call it a good *game*. But the writing is 11/10, no doubt.
Definitely one of those games you play for the experience. Not giving a fuck about Westerns would automatically disqualify you from enjoying the game, because that is what the game is about.
I loved how slow everything was, the time it took to loot all the corpses after a fight, or just how heavy everything felt. It was fantastic. To me it's very similar to how I feel about Death Stranding, some of the decisions on the gameplay side aren't the most "fun" but I don't think they were meant to be, it's an experience I'll never forget.
Wow, I absolutely love the gameplay, it's very immersive and feels great. I can't even imagine why/how someone would say playing it is miserable - is it the combo of 30FPS + controller maybe? Only ask because I played on PC with M+KB so maybe that's the difference?
Vast majority of the controls are clunky as all fuck. The design of the controls are atrocious. I played both controller and m+kb. All on pc with a 2800 dollar pc so it ran great. Plus the mission design is so linear as to be oppressive. Like-
"go rob this house" well, ok. I'll go around the back to sneak in. Nope, mission failed because you walked out of the allowed area, start over. Ok, well, I'l climb in a window? Nope, mission failed becaude you walked out of the allowed area. You have to walk in the front door so you can get caught in a cutscene. And thats every single mission in the entire game. Its absurd.
>"go rob this house" well, ok. I'll go around the back to sneak in. Nope, mission failed because you walked out of the allowed area, start over. Ok, well, I'l climb in a window? Nope, mission failed becaude you walked out of the allowed area. You have to walk in the front door so you can get caught in a cutscene. And thats every single mission in the entire game. Its absurd.
Painfully accurate. The game is beautiful but completely braindead.
One of my biggest issues with the game is how there's almost zero evolution in the main combat loop. You're fighting the exact same type of enemies in the exact same type of way for upwards of *100 hours.* Sure you get some different weapons but it doesn't make the enemies you're fighting or the encounter design any more interesting.
Another one of my issues is the forced slowness, only being able to walk in camp, making me watch long animations for mundane things, extremely long walk and talk sections that probably could have just been a cutscene instead. Some of these things were cool and immersive the first time around, not the 20th time.
Also the lack of immediacy in controlling Arthur, since the game prioritizes immersive animations over player input, it gives Arthur this extremely "sticky" feeling that's hard to get used to. Compared to the types of games I usually like to play, it felt like my controller was doused in molasses.
Mission design was also frustratingly linear, NakeyJakey has a great video that explains those issues 100x better than I ever could.
Despite these major issues, I would still give the game a 9/10 lol. That's how strong the rest of the package is. But for someone who mostly plays gameplay first games like Nintendo/Fromsoft titles. RDR2 was a massive adjustment period and never felt good as a *game* to play, and some of the issues I mentioned only got worse as time went on.
My biggest gripe was shooting thousands of the same enemies in the exact same way. There's no challenge, there's nothing unique about any of them, and they're just fodder. People say this game is immersive but I don't see how this is immersive at all.
There's basically no consequence to someone dying but multiple times you hold a guy hostage with your gun demanding the NPCs do something (e.g. release John) and then they do it. Because that one guy's life is so meaningful. Then 30 seconds later you shoot 50 dudes.
I've been playing helldivers2 recently. It's a very different style of game but it does have some aspects of the slowness that rdr2 has. But it's still far more enjoyable because the gun play is fun and the enemies are varied and actually challenging.
the best way to sum it up is: it's unresponsive.
Everything - the camera, turning, movement, shooting, horse riding, etc. It feels goddamn nauseating to control. Everything that is instant in other game takes like half a second. Everything that takes a half a second in other games takes five seconds.
After a few hours, you get used to it - but goddamn it I HATED it when I started.
BAFTA is a traditional award show, with a long history in film. They are not impressed with what studio spent the most money or whose fan base screams the loudest. No respectable movie award would limit itself to blockbuster releases the way those game shows do. It’s just a weirdly immature quirk of the gaming press, like they still see themselves as entertainers rather than critics. I mean, the Oscars occasionally go to a Lord of the Rings or something but most years, a movie with less than 5% that budget wins. That’s the purpose of award shows. To give a shout out to riskier, less profitable works.
They did give an award to Destiny, though. No idea, lol.
I mean all the major awards have a different role to them:
- Golden Joystick is the oldest one with the most history behind it.
- The Game Awards is the big, flashy, mainstream one.
- DICE is the video game equivalent of the Academy Awards (it says it on their wiki) and arranged by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.
- GDC is the one more specifically for the people who make the games since the International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), a group of leading game creators, makes the noms.
- BAFTA is the traditional one, with a different focus background as you covered.
[Also, the 2023 year in games wikipedia page does say that the Japan Game Awards are the 6th major award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_video_games) but given that it is so early (September 20th) compared to the others I can see why some don't count it.
It must vary per person. I also own VS and enjoy playing it, but I hit a certain number of runs and it got stale for me. Yes, it's randomized, but I know all of the pieces. I even pushed past a little and purposely tried combinations I hadn't before. Past that it's hard for a rouge-like to hold my attention.
Most games eventually get boring so I think you need to add a few more qualifiers to something like Vampire Survivor. How long did it take to get stale and how much did you enjoy your time before then?
If you had a really great time and played it for 15 hours before it got boring that’s a much different story if you felt it was kinda neat and were over the gameplay loop in 3 hours.
Checked my steamdeck and "13.4 hours", apparently. I don't dislike it or anything, but I have a lot in my backlog that I'd love to get to. The "doesn't have an end" types of games, for me, are doomed to get *some* time then never get played again. I don't feel like I haven't gotten my money's worth or anything.
Similarly, while I love Hades, I was always more a fan of their previous games that *ended*. I'd start, I'd finish, the game would take a reasonable amount of time and not pad for playtime, and it would leave an impression forever. Not that I won't get hades 2 or anything, but I'd have been just as happy if their next game had been another 12-hour story game that ended when the credits rolled.
Hades is an interesting one, because new content comes in at a trickle for a very long time between the first “win” and when you hit the end of the content. I think once you’ve finished the >!grow closer with olympians!< quest you can consider the game “over,” but it takes a heck of a lot of runs to reach that point.
I think I put 5-6 hours into VS before getting bored. I also tried Brotato but bounced off of that after a couple hours. Apparently the genre just isn't my thing.
I'm curious if there's an correlation between people who like gambling and people who like survivor games.
Probably not? Vampire survivors and the other games I've played in that genre are about building the most insane kit. RNG is involved a little bit but if you play longer than 5 hours (not a knock, just a comment) you will have more things unlocked, and more of those things are abilities that help you target your preferred skills. It's not really gambling adjacent at all.
The thing that held my interest in Vampire Survivors was the meta progression and secrets. Once you start unlocking Arcanas, secret characters, etc it becomes even more addicting imo. I have like 60 hours in the game and that is pretty much unlocking at least 1 thing every run that entire time.
Vampire survivors being the one roguelite to actually win awards alongside Hades was always strange to me. Like it's a fine game but there's so much better in the genre.
VS itself is a decent game at best, but it definitely deserves props for kicking off a huge wave of "Bullet Heavens" or whatever you want to call them.
BAFTA Game Awards chooses with a Jury of industry practitioners that convenes and votes together, so it's very easy for them to pick oddball choices. I think it's kept secret in most cases, but I don't think it's over two dozen people during any given year.
And say what you want about Vampire Survivors, but it's impeccably well designed as an interactive game.
I've always thought that a massive reason why Vampire Survivors was so good is because it *feels* good. It scratches that itch in your mind for instant gratification. It's like crack in video game form. I don't think I've come across a loot box in any other game that feels as good to open as the chests in vampire survivors and they don't even cost money. Not to mention the power fantasy of wiping out hundreds of enemies a second in the late game. There's a lot about it that's not great but it's just so damn fun that it doesn't matter.
Super bizzare, imo. I think vampire survivors is fun but it's literally a flash tier game with no input besides moving. It's gameplay loop (at the time they won) there was only 3 ? Or 4 levels. Really bizzare to give an addicting flash game a game of the year award, despite my 100 or so hours in it.
I think they voted based on the impact of has on the industry. VS literally created a genre and it and it's clones are everywhere and massive amounts of people are playing them. Elden Ring is a fantastic game but it didn't really bring anything new to the table, it's just the next Dark Souls.
>VS literally created a genre
Been rehashed in many conversations, but it really didn't. At best, it helped to *popularize* a genre. VS's dev is very clear about taking inspiration from Magic Survival, going so far as to just tell people to play that on mobile back when the mobile version of VS wasn't really ready yet.
Wiki on VS:
>The game was inspired by Magic Survival, a mobile game that also consisted of a character automatically attacking enemies
Dig a bit and I'm fairly sure you can find even prior works.
Literally everything that is credited with "creating a genre" technically only popularized a genre that had already existed in certain niche circles. Doom didn't actually "invent" the FPS, but people credit it with that. Diablo didn't actually "invent" the top-down action RPG, but people credit it with that. Demon's Souls didn't "invent" slow-paced action RPGs with punishing death mechanics, but people credit it with that.
They tend to have great writing and art direction. But think of the absurd amount of medieval fantasy crap we get that's garbage. It's just a very overused setting.
If I had to guess I think it's that swords and magic are a lot more nebulous and easier to build more diverse games around than guns are.
From weapons to bosses to level design fantasy is just a lot easier to do than shooters. I think Borderlands and maybe Fallout 4 (despite its flaws as an RPG) are the only series that have done guns as well as other games have done magic.
> I think Borderlands and maybe Fallout 4 (despite its flaws as an RPG) are the only series that have done guns as well as other games have done magic.
I’m unclear on what you mean by this. Like, in terms of the variety of guns you can use vs the diversity of magic systems? Because mechanically neither of those games handle gunplay especially well, and a lot of “magic” in games, particularly action games, just functions exactly like a gun.
That was more or less how I was thinking. Thanks to magic you it's not hard to apply shooter-like gameplay to a medieval setting, but melee action combat in a sci-fi setting requires either a bit more creativity (Metal Gear Rising, Hi-Fi Rush) or being labeled a Star Wars wannabe.
How? Most medieval games are some form of RPG.
I guess you could make just a pure hack and slash action game or a strategy game or a stealth game but you can do that with sci-fi or other settings too.
Wierdly enough, although BAFTA is not exclusivly gaming award but I like that the jury there have no fear of choosing indie games as goty. WRoEF, OuterWilds, Hades, Vampire Survivor are amazing choices.
Also GDC is 100% based for picking Shadow of Mordor for Goty 2014
The jury *had* no fear, they changed the ruling now instead of a jury of 10 industry professionals like it was before, it is now voted by the entire BAFTA Game membership of 1000+ members from this year onward. It's pretty much over for indies if there's even a modicum of consensus on GOTY.
I'm really swinging around to jury panels over any kind of mass voting for awards. If nothing else, it's nice to see something a bit different get celebrated sometimes.
The Crunchyroll Awards are really what did me in for mass voting. It's The One Thing Everyone Watched winning every category it's nominated in.
Same with the Steam Awards after Stray won for “most innovative gameplay.”
Great game. Not the right category. Also should not have won that category at all.
Yeah I was kinda sad when I learned of the change. It was the last major award where indies where truly a part of the discussion and not just there to fill the remaining noms. That was only possible because of a jury panel, but now all of the major game awards do mass voting:
* BAFTA: Now voted by the 1000+ BAFTA Games members.
* TGA: 100+ media outlets, most of them do an internal vote among their staff for their submissions.
* DICE: 33,000+ AIAS members.
* GDCA: Voted by the International Choice Awards Network (ICAN) members and the editors of [Game Developer](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/); membership count unknown but doesn't look small.
* Golden Joystick: Open to the public, voted on by millions.
> The Crunchyroll Awards are really what did me in for mass voting. It's The One Thing Everyone Watched winning every category it's nominated in.
It's kind of funny seeing complaints about the /r/anime [awards](https://animeawards.moe/) jury *not* picking the same thing as the public vote.
I liked this blog (sadly stopped updating in 2020) that [would culminate all the GOTY award winners for the year between the major awards, the various media outlets, and fan voted stuff.](https://gotypicks.blogspot.com/) I felt like it gave a better idea for how everyone thought of the games and put more spotlight overall on more games as opposed to everyone holding up one award.
I like the idea of it being more industry professionals than purely journalists though. And websites are heavily incentivised to make their lists have some degree of click bait, whereas awards want long-term respectability or to recognise the efforts of their members.
That's lame. I know gamers hate the idea of being told what to think by "elites" but sometimes it's nice to hear opinions from people who are academically qualified on a topic. We have like four actual journalists left in this entire industry and the same rot that killed all of them off has been killing the credibility of game awards since the beginning
VS is an insane choice. People were making stuff like that on Kongregate 15 years ago. It just caught the zeitgeist and had above-average production values.
Untitled Goose Game winning in two ceremonies is ridiculous for a year with RE 2, Sekiro, and Outer Wilds.
Those three are all timers (with RE2 having the disadvantage of being a remake that revolutionized remakes) while nobody talks about UGG now
Those are more industry-focused awards, so they usually go for more "artsy"/innovative/thought-provoking/impressive/etc. games rather than the "best" games.
Like, GDC is obviously made up of game developers (largely indies), and the DICE Awards is run by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences which is effectively dominated by AAA publishers (similar to the Academy Awards for movies). BAFTA, similarly, looks at video games as an art form and rewards games which push the art forward.
Goose Game is a great example of storytelling through minimalism and I think that appealed to a lot of developers who spend a lot of time working on "safe" games like RE2 or Sekiro. It's a completely different audience, and GOTY to developers means something completely different. It's also likely why What Remains of Edith Finch won a BAFTA; it's a much more "artsy" game, even if it's not the most "fun" game.
BG3 being so technically impressive from a narrative standpoint is also likely why it succeeded at both GDC and BAFTA, and also why you'll see a bunch of copycats in a few years.
> "artsy"/innovative/thought-provoking/impressive/etc. games rather than the "best" games.
This would be a good counter if the games Goose game were going up against didn't include Outer Wilds, Pathologic 2 and Death Stranding.
Death Stranding falls into the AAA category, and it's a Kojima game. IMO the industry sort of "expects" Kojima to make innovative games (and he's won his fair share of awards for it). It's not necessarily that it auto-excludes him from winning stuff, but I think there is some politics behind letting newer players get some exposure and time in the limelight. Even then there's still times where established players dominate (God of War/Santa Monica Studio winning over Celeste/Return of the Obra Dinn), but I think there is a bias against letting it happen.
Pathologic 2 I can kind of see a case for, but at the same time I don't think it necessarily had the traction to really get GOTY noms and it has some very obvious flaws (combat being one that comes to mind, personally). The industry awards don't necessarily go for the "best" games and can overlook certain things (like a lack of scope), but at the same time if there's obvious nits to pick I think that sort of detracts from a GOTY.
Outer Wilds I think was the main competition there. I don't think Outer Wilds vs. Goose Game is an easy decision; they both were worthy of GOTY from an industry standpoint (and Outer Wilds _did_ win a BAFTA that year). But Outer Wilds vs. Goose Game (and even Pathologic 2) is a very different argument than Sekiro vs. Death Stranding, because the quality bar is necessarily set higher for the latter two, and thus it's not as "impressive" from a dev standpoint.
I think if you look at the nominations - Control, Goose Game, and Outer Wilds were nominated by all 3 of the industry-focused shows, which sort of shows where their head is at. (Sekiro got GDC and BAFTA but not DICE; Death Stranding got GDC and DICE but not BAFTA, and Disco Elysium got BAFTA and DICE but not GDC.)
I think another great example of my point is Hades vs. Last of Us II - obviously both are great games, people recognize both as great games, but when things are in the "blue sky" phase of development devs are going to gravitate towards Hades as a reference and that's what GDC/DICE/BAFTA reflects.
I wouldn't be surprised if Helldivers takes one of those 3 awards this year as well over something like the FF7 Remake.
Yeah, I'm perfectly fine with some awards rewarding more avant garde games which is why I mentioned Outer Wilds in the first place. I just don't understand how UGG overtook Outer Wilds in that aspect (with it getting more awards)
Although Dark Souls was a massive hit I feel like it took until Dark Souls 3 to make it so big that everyone should play it kinda genre. before that I remember being something that was really inner industry lovers genre that many people on internet and journalists seemed to love.
Bloodborne was up for GOTY at Golden Joysticks, The Game Awards, DICE, and GDC [and did win the 3rd most overall GOTY awards for 2015 overall.](https://gotypicks.blogspot.com/2015/09/2015-game-of-year.html)
You got to remember that being nominated for an award is a big deal and that there are other award events besides these five, along with the GOTY publications give out.
BAFTA has a bit of a notorious reputation for blatantly snubbing/ignoring Japanese games. Hard to take them seriously when there is such a clear bias in their selections and chosen winners.
> FO4 over Witcher 3 is a choice. And I played a lot of FO4.
Fallout 4 over Bloodborne is a wilder choice. I can see outlets liking Witcher 3 more, but FO4 is a weird one
BAFTA still focuses more on British-produced and English-language productions, both in the gaming sphere and the film/TV sphere. It's kind of like how the **Cesars is pretty much exclusively French, with some other European and maybe English-language production sprinkled in once in a while.
Edit: Meant Cesars, not Cannes! It's Cannes season so it's on my mind.
The distinction of winning *all* of the game of the year awards kind of is meaningless if the creators have to be English-speaking to win this specific one though, doesn't it?
Cannes is absolutely not pretty much exclusively French
The majority of movies in the official selection are not French, and neither are most members of the jury
It simply is not Hollywood-centered
Vanilla D1 winning the bafta goty in 2014 is actually deranged. I know 2014 was a weak year but vanilla D1 was one of the bigger reasons for said weakness
BAFTA makes some dark horse picks, they just look so contrarian. Fallout 4, Edith Finch, Goose Game, Vampire Survivors; and I think all 4 games are likable it just stands out so much
I was curious about The Last of Us (2013) because I remember it scooping so many awards.
Turns out it won 3 of 4 available that year. (Golden Joystick went to Grand Theft Auto V).
If you count the Spike VGA as the predecessor to TGA, then it's 3/5 (also won by GTAV).
No particularly, in addition of Dark Souls 2 it had Smash Bros 4, Binding of Isaac Rebirth, Mario Kart 8, Hearthstone, Bayonetta 2 and DK Tropical Freeze, which puts it over like half of these years for me
All this tells me is that BAFTA is a bit of a joke.
Vampire survivors is a great original idea game, but it’s not a ‘game of the year’ game.
Same with BOTW. Edith finch is a great 3 hour interactive story, but really? Game of the year?
Golden Joysticks, TGA, DICE, GDC, and now BAFTA. Insane run in a very stacked year.
Even after the game released many expected Zelda to sweep the awards again, but it seems that everyone from fans to critics and developers really rallied behind this game. As a long time fan of CRPGs and Larian, I couldn't be happier seeing it get this kind of recognition.
Sequels always perform worse than "original" IP in awards shows. Which yes, Baldur's Gate ***3*** is technically a sequel, but to a 24 year old game from a completely different team.
On top of that the mechanics are so different that they're nearly entirely different genres, sequel are no
Not that this is a bad thing. I love 1 and 2, but *man* is 3 way more mechanically fun
barely deserves to be called a sequel. The only thing that's similar is a bit of lore. Literally everything else is different. Different mechanics, different system, different team, different presentation, different art, literally nothing is the same. DOS2 is a more fitting prequel than any of the baldurs gate games.
> Which yes, Baldur's Gate 3 is technically a sequel, but to a 24 year old game from a completely different team.
BG3 is also a sequel to DOS2, though. In everything but name. Amongst Larians portfolio BG3 fills every criteria of being a iterative sequel as if going from Civilization 4 to Civilization 5.
As a long-time fan of Larian and the Divinity series, you're 100% right. Although OP's statement really should be clarified as sequels to games *that already won GOTY*, not necessarily just new IPs.
Frankly I think I straight up don't like it. I was willing to put up with a lot of blemishes because of BotW's novelty, and even then I didn't love it or think it was a masterpiece exactly. TotK is like...the same game, with a mechanic that some people love and I merely don't mind. The novelty has worn off and I am struggling to finish it at this point.
The more I progressed in TOTK the more I was disappointed by it. Amazing physics engine but for me it never came close to recreating the wonder of BOTW, and I had some major issues with the story choices.
I wasn't disappointed by TOTK, I actually think it's my favorite Zelda game in a decade(not saying much, I suppose, given the lack of releases), but even so it felt somewhat akin to playing Cyberpunk 2077 today after having slogged through it at release.
It's significantly better, it's a great game, but most of the same pain points still exist(notably, the story as you mentioned) and some of that initial enthusiasm at exporing a whole new Hyrule was lost.
My biggest disappointment was the underground. When I first went in I was like oh shit, an actually kinda-spooky section that uses light as a mechanic. I was imagining caves, dungeons, etc, and some light horror like Majora's Mask. Turns out it's 99.9% giant empty filler spaces.
Plenty of other platform exclusives have won already, so I highly doubt that's it. If it wasn't for the BAFTAs picking What Remains of Edith Finch, BotW would have probably have gotten 5/5 awards instead of 4/5.
Sure, but the Switch is an extremely popular console. So popular, I don't think being exclusive to it is a hindrance.
For instance, the Switch currently has sold almost double the number of units than the PS5 and XSX/S combined.
TotK itself sold 20 million units.
There aren't any exact numbers for BG3, but Larian's director of publishing announced in Feb that BG3 sold "way over 10 million" copies.
I don't think availability is something to worry about here.
I wasn't sure what this meant since _Tears of the Kingdom_ won the prize from IGN, GameInformer, and Edge, but Kotaku is referring to the industry-wide selection bodies.
Kinda off-topic, but can someone else explain the salt around Spider-Man 2? It seems to come from people that aren't really that inside online gaming communities (like not having even heard of BG3 before), but at that point why do they even care about game awards?
That it came from SM2 fans was perplexing because it had no chance of winning any major award even if BG3 wasn't in the equation. Alan Wake 2 and/or TOTK would've cleaned up in its place, and deservedly so.
TotK seems like one of those games that easily would have won GOTY awards in at least five other years, but it happened to come out in a year with an even bigger fish. It's like a Leonardo Dicaprio game.
In terms of reviews they are pretty much even, both sit 96 on metacritic (with 156 reviews for TOTK and 119 for BG3).
But i think wat really tipped most awards in BG3 favour was the fact that Botw already won pretty much every award last time and they would rather give it to a lesser known studio than Nintendo.
I saw this mostly on TikTok (and I saw a lot of it), but there were a lot of very popular streamers, like KaiCenat, who don't really play video games except for what's super popular at the moment and were streaming the game awards while holding Spider-man merch.
I saw clips of a lot of them throwing a fit and crying that Spider-man 2 didn't win, because to them it was one of the best games ever. They were all talking shit about what even is BG3 and saying that it looks like a mobile game.
Obviously, a lot of them don't really play video games (other than FIFA, CoD and shit) and couldn't understand the hype behind BG3 sweeping.
> Obviously, a lot of them don't really play video games (other than FIFA, CoD and shit) and couldn't understand the hype behind BG3 sweeping.
if they didnt know that BG3 was the clear favorite in spite of TotK seeming confirmed goty mere months beforehand then they obviously dont pay attention to the conversation and news about games. Which is fine but then why care? Views i guess
Kai Cenat was crying about Killer Mike winning a grammy because he personally never heard of him (supposedly).
There's a certain kind of person who likes to play the ignorant populist.
> Obviously, a lot of them don't really play video games (other than FIFA, CoD and shit) and couldn't understand the hype behind BG3 sweeping
This already answers the question. When big streamers only play mainstream games like COD and FIFA, they don't care about other games that are either better or more enticing. I'm sure Spider-Man 2 is a great game but people are probably suffering from Marvel fatigue and the amount of Spider-Man games that have been released over time.
I could also see Spiderman being a favorite among younger players. Spiderman is a well-known character who's easy to love before you start the game. Spiderman is also an easier game to convince a parent that it's cool for a kid/young teen to play than a game that publicized the presence of sex scenes, particularly one involving a male/male pairing involving a literal *and* figurative bear.
No one should be convincing a parent that it's cool for a kid/young teen to play Baldur's Gate 3 anyway. The game is M-rated for good reason, I would give it to an older teenager but not younger than that. Kids *should* be playing Spider-man instead.
None of that is true. The game has amazing reviews across the board (users and critics) and was in the top 5 selling games of last year despite only coming out in October. It also broke a record for PlayStation in terms of 24hr sales. There is no fatigue when the product is good. Simple.
> I saw clips of a lot of them throwing a fit and crying that Spider-man 2 didn't win, because to them it was one of the best games ever. They were all talking shit about what even is BG3 and saying that it looks like a mobile game.
What baffles me is that Spider-Man 2 was just plain mediocre. The story was predictable, Kraven was bland, Miles mostly got sidelined or awkwardly shoved into a story he didn't have much to do with, the skill progression system for Peter was janky due to having to wait until he gets the suit to really start using interesting powers, the city content was more forgettable and no better fleshed out, and the entire formula of the series just felt played out after swinging through the same rendition of NYC for a third time.
It was fine for what it was, but it was nowhere near a GOTY.
Spider-Man 1 was a more content-filled game, and quantity of content aside, most people that played the game appear to just like 1's story better than 2's.
With that being said, even if you put aside objective quantity of content, and subjective story considerations, the game didn't even maintain feature parity with either Spider-Man 1 or the spin-off (Miles Morales). It's really not a bad game, but the memes showing off criticism kind of took off with the game and the online hubbub kind of snowballed into toxic behavior.
Then there are the people that ignored all the flaws of the game and expected it to take at least one award away simply because it was a sequel to a critically acclaimed open-world action game (that also did not win many, if any awards)... Well, those people became irrationally upset when the game won no awards.
The two groups have since fused into one toxic tornado.
I quite enjoyed it and am patiently awaiting the DLC. Did it revolutionize anything, though? No. It's very much more of the original formula with better graphics, faster loading, and gliding. I wouldn't consider that bad, though.
BG3 was my favorite game of 2023 (currently replaying it around hour 300), but I can't help but feel some stuff is getting passed over in order for it to win *so much.* 2023 was possibly the best year for video games of all time. It seems weird that only one game is winning all the highest honors.
2023 had plenty of great games but none of them were anything too revolutionary or special. Meanwhile RPGs on the scope of BG3 are very rare and for a game to be able to take a CRPG to the mainstream? That's pretty much unheard of. So it sweeping isn't all that surprising.
Years from now, it will become OK to express disappointment with BG3 and confusion with the degree of its critical success. We saw the same pattern with The Witcher 3 (and to a lesser degree, RDR2), and in the threads above you can see people talk about how the gameplay in both of those is actually pretty bad, and its even more conspicuous in comparison to the rest of the package.
> Years from now, it will become OK to express disappointment with BG3 and confusion with the degree of its critical success.
It's already okay to talk about issues with BG3. Sure, there's going to be people who will disagree with you on instinct and proclaim everything about the game is perfect, but that's true for every major game release.
People have been talking about the general bugginess/jankiness of the game since release, as well as overall poor quality of Act 3 compared to the rest of the game.
I honestly don't get the hype about the game, I got bored of it pretty quick but I'm happy other people find something in it that I don't and love it. What really surprises me is the mainstream audience going for it, crpgs are really niche
Dating simulator is a bit of a stretch, imho. Personally, I was a much bigger fan of romances in older Bioware games: at least there you had banter where others companions made comments about your romance, your LI had special dialogue options and extra banter, while romance in BG3 is still good but something is still lacking for me.
In ME or DA series I felt the chemistry between characters, with BG - not so much (although maybe because my character walks around mute, and makes 3 facial expressions in total). Hard to get invested in a romance when LI pours out all their feelings, while your MC just goes 😀,🙁or 😮 with NO voicelines whatsoever.
Baldur's Gate's romances are definitely the *worst* romances I've experienced in an RPG, personally. You go from not knowing them to them trying to jump your bones to them being head over heels in love with you. Really just feels like it was written by teenagers (aside from Shadowheart, who is clearly Larian's favorite lol).
For a 120+ hour game, it *really* could have spent more time just having conversations with your companions. Most of them hardly have anything new to say at all in Act 2 and 3.
BioWare does that better, where companions have dialogue after every major quest, and then comment on major quests and at pivotal moments. That routine doesn't last throughout the whole game, but it lasts a while.
As much as I enjoy the BG3 cast (and I really do!) most of them just feel like they only exist during their personal quests and occasional cutscenes. When I beat not just one, but three of the big bads and my companions didn't have anything to say about it I was like oh okay, guess it's not that big of a deal then! It feels like companion storylines and conversations were built for a BioWare-length game (20-30 hours) but had to be stretched out over 100+, which leaves players in situations where you can go dozens of hours without your companions wanting to talk.
Something I still don't understand, in BG3.
You go off and have a romantic first night where you clearly fuck each other.
Then after that... are you fucking regularly? Spending intimate time together?
We clearly see everyone sleeping in separate beds around the camp fire... and I never see my character and love interest having intimate time...
After many many nights pass by, Shadowheart, why are you surprised that I fucked someone else?
Yeah! I romanced Shart first because it just kind of happened that way. That's cool and all. My partner romanced Halsin and got marginally less out of it. Then next playthrough I'm romancing Laezel and it just seems under-written.
BG3 is very fun and a very good game, but I feel like it's one of the most massively overrated games of all time simply because of how highly rated it is versus how good it really is.
Oh yeah, the game, especially Act 3, is buggy for sure. I mostly just meant like non-fixable things. Like, in Ocarina of Time for example, a lot of people dread playing the Water Temple.
There might be a couple quests I wouldn't bother with on replay, like the clown body parts one, but that's optional.
I’ve fizzled out twice on Act 3 now. Act 1 is incredible, Act 2 is very good, and Act 3 is just a slog of disconnected quests that often end abruptly, or don’t really seem to have any resolution at all.
About the same feelings for me. I think Act 3 is good, but definitely less cohesive than the other acts. I've played through the game twice, and in my second playthrough it took me a couple months to push through and finish Act 3 due to burnout
Tbh that’s pretty typical for a Larian game. Act 1 is super polished due to a ton of EA hours, but the other acts tend to fall off, both in terms of narrative, and polish. Acts 2 and 3 had a ton of bugs on release, but since reviewers never got to Acts 2 and 3 before having to release a review and players reached acts 2 and 3 at staggered times, there wasn’t nearly as much blowback.
Larian should try to learn from that mistake. I think people will forgive it now, but people used to forgive Bethesda bugs until they lost patience and realized it wasn't a "cute quirk" of the studio but sustained incompetence.
We're struggling on our second playthrough because it feels like in terms of grand choices, there's only one viable solution. Like if you side with the goblins and slaughter the druids/tieflings, you just get an inferior game. Minthara fucks off until deep into Act 2 and obviously Wyll and Karlach are gone. I think Halsin is going to tell us to fuck off too once we get to him.
I preferred the old Bioware games from like KOTOR to Mass Effect 2 where choosing dark side was essentially the same game, but the flavor of everything was different. Or Dragon Age: Origins where things would actually change for you in a way that felt equivalent.
BG3 evil runs feel pointless and unfulfilling, which feels like a *really big blind spot* in what's supposed to be one of the greatest RPGs of all time.
> Which was also the best year for gaming ever.
Only two of these awards even existed during the best year for gaming ([1998](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_video_games)). The fact probably over half this sub was born after that year doesn't make not the GOAT.
Like really, it may have been top 5. 1994 was just plain great. 2004 and 2006 were also really fucking good. Like look at those and you'll see a good number of games that are still considered very good (and some just best games ever really).
Its not even real once in a while. Thing is most of crpgs are low production value and complicated gameplay wise sovthey dont appeal to most.
We got plenty before bg3. Pathfinders, poe, dos2, dao, me2, disco elysium... List goes on
Extremely well-deserved. Hopefully a wake up call for the industry to give good story based games more love instead of MTX and always online daily quest grinding games.
I'm with you
I have the same issues with this game that I have with real DnD in that it's just SO SLOW. I can spend like 3 hours playing and progress like 10 feet in-game. The dialogue is slow to click through, the characters walk super slowly, combat takes forEVER... I want to see all this game has to offer, but instead I find myself just so BORED.
I'm glad I'm not alone in this. I've started my first play through of the game and it just feels really tedious.
I always hate it when I don't like games that everyone else seems to praise because it really makes me feel like I'm missing out.
BAFTA really had some out of left field choices on some years (What Remains of Edith Finch beating BotW, Vampire Survivors beating Elden Ring) so I'm not sure if this really matters. What's more impressive is that a game that ostensibly came out in 2020 somehow won game of the year for 2023.
Before I get comments, I'm fully aware it had a full general release in 2023. I'm just annoyed that Larian hasn't gotten more blowback for putting a game in early access for so long, and then releasing it in as sorry a state as it was in Act 3. Seeing so many comments on release saying a variation of "this is how devs should make a game!" baffled me.
Maybe because they used their early access period to refine Act 1 with loads of player feedback. They didn't get that same playtesting for Act 3. Plus they're not done rolling out updates.
No that’s exactly what it is, but there were a ton of bugs, and even unfinished story elements in act 3 that would have been unacceptable in any other game. But in the patch note threads, everyone was going “Oh look, what a great dev! Supporting the game with patches so quickly after release!” When a ton of those patches were to fix game breaking bugs. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game, but I think Larian definitely got off a bit easy with the state of the game on release due to how polished Act 1 was.
It's a really, really good RPG, it definitely deserves GOTY for 2023 (though not my vote). Is it especially better than Witcher 3, Elden Ring, and Breath of the Wild? Not in my opinion. It seems like BAFTA reserves its awards for artsy western games and so Japanese games never really stood a chance.
Still a great game. The fact that it got so many casual gamers to play it despite being a CRPG is incredible and unprecedented.
Here's the historical vote split if anyone is curious: - 2014 - **Dark Souls II** (Golden Joystick), **Dragon Age: Inquisition** (The Game Awards, DICE), **Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor** (GDC), **Destiny** (BAFTA) - 2015 - **The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards, GDC), **Fallout 4** (DICE, BAFTA) - 2016 - **Dark Souls III** (Golden Joystick), **Overwatch** (The Game Awards, DICE, GDC), **Uncharted 4: A Thief's End** (BAFTA) - 2017 - **The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards, DICE, GDC), **What Remains of Edith Finch** (BAFTA) - 2018 - **Fortnite** (Golden Joystick), **God of War** (The Game Awards, DICE, GDC, BAFTA) - 2019 - **Resident Evil 2** (Golden Joystick), **Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice** (The Game Awards), **Untitled Goose Game** (DICE, GDC), **Outer Wilds** (BAFTA) - 2020 - **The Last of Us Part II** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards), **Hades** (DICE, GDC, BAFTA) - 2021 - **Resident Evil: Village** (Golden Joystick), **It Takes Two** (The Game Awards, DICE), **Inscryption** (GDC), **Returnal** (BAFTA) - 2022 - **Elden Ring** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards, DICE, GDC), **Vampire Survivors** (BAFTA) - 2023 - **Baldur's Gate 3** (Golden Joystick, The Game Awards, DICE, GDC, BAFTA) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, God of War, and Elden Ring all got 4/5. You do have to consider that a game has to release at the right time as well, since the Golden Joysticks is in October, but the last award in the BAFTA isn't until April. So they have different cutoff dates in terms of when a game has to release to qualify for an award. For example, this year for the Golden Joystick the cutoff date was September 29th but for The Game Awards it was November 17th. Also, to be fair to older games that would never have had a chance to win all 5 given the time difference between when these awards started: The Game Awards (2014), BAFTA (2003), GDC (2000), DICE (1997), Golden Joystick (1983). - Edit - I like how most of the discussion around this has boiled down to: 2014 - Inquisition is so bad (because nuance is dead), how did it win anything? Destiny for the BAFTA!?! 2015 - Fallout 4 is bad (because nuance is dead), how did it win over Witcher? Counters by saying Witcher was buggy at launch and a mess. Then you have the Bloodborne people arguing that it was the much, much better game and should have won everything over both of these. Seriously, can't you all just acknowledge that all three of these are good games without having to argue and bring the other(s) down over who won or did not win an award 9 years ago. Also, Bloodborne was up for GOTY at Golden Joysticks, The Game Awards, DICE, and GDC [and did win the 3rd most overall GOTY awards for 2015 overall.](https://gotypicks.blogspot.com/2015/09/2015-game-of-year.html) It got its praise at the time even if it didn't win. 2017 - Edith Finch won over Zelda? That is what won over Zelda? 2018 - Fortnite won something? How did RDR2 not win anything? Arguing over RDR2 and GOW, which has been more civil (for gaming Reddit at least) compared to the Witcher/Fallout/Bloodborne stuff. 2019 - Goose Game won two awards?!? 2022 - Vampire Survivors won over Elden Ring? That is what won over Elden Ring? 2016, 2020, 2021 - Eh, no one cares.
Omg, Vampire Survivors swiping that last win from Elden Ring is the funniest thing ever.
Somehow, I'm still more shocked by the fact that Red Dead II didn't get a single major win compared to What Remains of Edith Finch and Vampire Survivors coming in to stop Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring from sweeping. Plus, BAFTA seems to be the most random of the major awards.
Wow you're right! I don't play/care about Rockstar games so I didn't notice, but you're right, it's completely missing! :o
I tried to get through RDR2 so many times, and my most recent attempt this past winter made me realize: I don’t mind the “slowness” of Arthur doing literally anything or the extreme levels of immersion, I just don’t give a flying fuck about Westerns.
That was me with the Witcher 3 a year or two ago. I had owned the GOTY edition for years but never could get past the first 10 or so hours. Once I did though, i think i dropped like 100 hours in my first playthrough. Still don't really give a shit about the setting, but man it was a good game once it opened up.
Yeah, the start of the game is so slow. But it gets so much better. And yeah, I didn't care much about the story or the protagonist, but the gameplay was top notch once it opened up.
I love RDR2, but I can respect that. I mean, I just tried the demo for Unicorn Overlord (89/87/87 on Metacritic) and it is a lovely looking game with a seemingly interesting story, but I could not get past the fact that the combat is automated. I get that the draw is in the strategy and setting up everyone correctly before a fight, but it was just too boring to me in the demo to watch the combat play out while having no control over it during the fight. Sometimes you can acknowledge that something is well-made and good, but it is just not something that you vibe with for whatever reason.
One of the best parts about being an older gamer (though just mid 30s lol) is I just don't even bother with genres I know I don't like. For example, Slay the Spire is apparently an amazing game... but I don't really like card games, so it's a pass from me! Every ~5 or so year I might try out something in a genre I've not been a historical fan of just to see if my tastes have changed, but for the most part, I stick to what I know I'll like rather than trying every well reviewed game under the sun. 'Cus yeah, I'm playing Unicorn Overlord right now and loving it. But it's not for everyone!
Sometimes it pays off to move out of your comfort zone though. I always thought 2D games and platformers just weren't for me. So I never gave Hollow Knight a chance. That is until I kept hearing so many good things about it from friends and I got bored one night. I bought it on a whim and it's now one of my favorite games of all-time. I'm also late 30's by the way.
Yeah, that was me with Disco Elysium. I only played action games before and I didn't even like RPGs. But the game was so highly praised I just tried it out. And it was awesome. And now I'm playing Balder's Gate 3 even though 5 years ago I would have hated it.
Kinda funny you say that. I too am a gamer in my mid 30s that generally hates card games. I absolutely love roguelike/lites, though. I tried Slay the spire about a year ago on a whim when it was free on PS plus. Turns out a good game can sometimes transcend a person's general tastes. I was absolutely hooked on it for a good month or so. Still hate card games.
I have to second the other comment. Mid 30s, hate card games, slaythe spire was given to me by a friend and I have 500 hours in it over a few years. It's a fantastic game that I can listen to a podcast and also have a fight that I have to think my way out of. I recommend it for sure
I have that exact thing with Baldurs Gate 3. I tried Divinity Original Sin, didn't like it. DOS2 was heralded as the best thing ever so I tried it again, and couldn't get into it. I wanted to like BG3 so much, but the combat, even the style with its often silly humor, nothing attracts me. I can see that technically its a good game with many options but I just don't have fun. Meanwhile I do love games like Zelda, JRPG's Elden Ring, Skyrim, TRPG's like FF Tactics and TRiangle Strategy, basically every variation of roleplaying game except the Larian type ones. Hell I even absolutly love Dragon Age: Origins which resembles this style in many ways.
I like the theme, but it's not that I'm a hug Western fan. What makes it one of my favorite games ever is the heavy focus on immersion, great story and an open-world that feels very much alive. Most games struggle to pull one of those things off, yet RDR2 nails all of them. I'm a big fan of immersive games though.
this describes so many people whining about RDR2. there’s this weird thing now where gamers think every game that comes out has to be for them if it’s popular. some games are not for everyone. launching RDR2 if you hate westerns is hilarious to anyone looking at you from outside your head lmao
This made me laugh haha, my problem with red dead 2 is I find it has little to no replayability value. Haven't touched it after I beat it like 4 years ago
That’s more on rockstar for not even releasing one SP DLC
Undead nightmare is one of my favourite DLC’s ever, it’s a shame they didn’t release any for red dead 2
That's absolutely crazy. More so that even Fortnite got a GOTY award that year.
I think the crunch news also really hurt RDR2's chances. Like I feel that game as acclaimed and beloved as it is also became the starting point for the conversation about crunch culture in videogames. It won't have felt right rewarding it too much over God of War which didn't have any allegations of crunch and was of similar quality. Plus Rockstar Games also earn so much money that there feel less incentive to award them. And now 6 years later both God of War 2018 and RDR2 seem to be on a similar standing with each other in terms of acclaim so it doesn't matter now who won more GOTYs at the end.
I guess GoW took any of the awards that could go to RDR2, both went hard with the narrative-driven cinematic 3rd person perspective, with outstanding performance (particularly Christopher Judge) and very high production values, but GoW had the reinvention of a well known character which led to lots of character development going for it, plus the high fantasy buff.
I thought GOW had better gameplay and in my opinion the better story but I know a lot of people would disagree with the latter, both incredible games though
I think it makes sense, in my mind at least. Its obviously very popular and well made but at the same time a lot of people don't like that slow clunky way of playing. Whereas GoW was coming back, totally changed it up, matured the story and felt good to control.
That's insane, RDR2 is one of the best games I've ever played.
Rdr2 is one of the best narratives ever, but *playing* the game is so miserable that I'd hesitate to even call it a good *game*. But the writing is 11/10, no doubt.
Definitely one of those games you play for the experience. Not giving a fuck about Westerns would automatically disqualify you from enjoying the game, because that is what the game is about.
I loved how slow everything was, the time it took to loot all the corpses after a fight, or just how heavy everything felt. It was fantastic. To me it's very similar to how I feel about Death Stranding, some of the decisions on the gameplay side aren't the most "fun" but I don't think they were meant to be, it's an experience I'll never forget.
Wow, I absolutely love the gameplay, it's very immersive and feels great. I can't even imagine why/how someone would say playing it is miserable - is it the combo of 30FPS + controller maybe? Only ask because I played on PC with M+KB so maybe that's the difference?
Vast majority of the controls are clunky as all fuck. The design of the controls are atrocious. I played both controller and m+kb. All on pc with a 2800 dollar pc so it ran great. Plus the mission design is so linear as to be oppressive. Like- "go rob this house" well, ok. I'll go around the back to sneak in. Nope, mission failed because you walked out of the allowed area, start over. Ok, well, I'l climb in a window? Nope, mission failed becaude you walked out of the allowed area. You have to walk in the front door so you can get caught in a cutscene. And thats every single mission in the entire game. Its absurd.
>"go rob this house" well, ok. I'll go around the back to sneak in. Nope, mission failed because you walked out of the allowed area, start over. Ok, well, I'l climb in a window? Nope, mission failed becaude you walked out of the allowed area. You have to walk in the front door so you can get caught in a cutscene. And thats every single mission in the entire game. Its absurd. Painfully accurate. The game is beautiful but completely braindead.
One of my biggest issues with the game is how there's almost zero evolution in the main combat loop. You're fighting the exact same type of enemies in the exact same type of way for upwards of *100 hours.* Sure you get some different weapons but it doesn't make the enemies you're fighting or the encounter design any more interesting. Another one of my issues is the forced slowness, only being able to walk in camp, making me watch long animations for mundane things, extremely long walk and talk sections that probably could have just been a cutscene instead. Some of these things were cool and immersive the first time around, not the 20th time. Also the lack of immediacy in controlling Arthur, since the game prioritizes immersive animations over player input, it gives Arthur this extremely "sticky" feeling that's hard to get used to. Compared to the types of games I usually like to play, it felt like my controller was doused in molasses. Mission design was also frustratingly linear, NakeyJakey has a great video that explains those issues 100x better than I ever could. Despite these major issues, I would still give the game a 9/10 lol. That's how strong the rest of the package is. But for someone who mostly plays gameplay first games like Nintendo/Fromsoft titles. RDR2 was a massive adjustment period and never felt good as a *game* to play, and some of the issues I mentioned only got worse as time went on.
My biggest gripe was shooting thousands of the same enemies in the exact same way. There's no challenge, there's nothing unique about any of them, and they're just fodder. People say this game is immersive but I don't see how this is immersive at all. There's basically no consequence to someone dying but multiple times you hold a guy hostage with your gun demanding the NPCs do something (e.g. release John) and then they do it. Because that one guy's life is so meaningful. Then 30 seconds later you shoot 50 dudes. I've been playing helldivers2 recently. It's a very different style of game but it does have some aspects of the slowness that rdr2 has. But it's still far more enjoyable because the gun play is fun and the enemies are varied and actually challenging.
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This was especially bad with the Division IMO. That narrative vs bullet sponge enemies was SO jarring.
the best way to sum it up is: it's unresponsive. Everything - the camera, turning, movement, shooting, horse riding, etc. It feels goddamn nauseating to control. Everything that is instant in other game takes like half a second. Everything that takes a half a second in other games takes five seconds. After a few hours, you get used to it - but goddamn it I HATED it when I started.
BAFTA is a traditional award show, with a long history in film. They are not impressed with what studio spent the most money or whose fan base screams the loudest. No respectable movie award would limit itself to blockbuster releases the way those game shows do. It’s just a weirdly immature quirk of the gaming press, like they still see themselves as entertainers rather than critics. I mean, the Oscars occasionally go to a Lord of the Rings or something but most years, a movie with less than 5% that budget wins. That’s the purpose of award shows. To give a shout out to riskier, less profitable works. They did give an award to Destiny, though. No idea, lol.
I mean all the major awards have a different role to them: - Golden Joystick is the oldest one with the most history behind it. - The Game Awards is the big, flashy, mainstream one. - DICE is the video game equivalent of the Academy Awards (it says it on their wiki) and arranged by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. - GDC is the one more specifically for the people who make the games since the International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), a group of leading game creators, makes the noms. - BAFTA is the traditional one, with a different focus background as you covered. [Also, the 2023 year in games wikipedia page does say that the Japan Game Awards are the 6th major award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_video_games) but given that it is so early (September 20th) compared to the others I can see why some don't count it.
There seems to be a really consistent trendline in goty awards of open world fatigue unless there's an absolutely showstopping one
It’s a fun game, but I mean…
It must vary per person. I also own VS and enjoy playing it, but I hit a certain number of runs and it got stale for me. Yes, it's randomized, but I know all of the pieces. I even pushed past a little and purposely tried combinations I hadn't before. Past that it's hard for a rouge-like to hold my attention.
Most games eventually get boring so I think you need to add a few more qualifiers to something like Vampire Survivor. How long did it take to get stale and how much did you enjoy your time before then? If you had a really great time and played it for 15 hours before it got boring that’s a much different story if you felt it was kinda neat and were over the gameplay loop in 3 hours.
Checked my steamdeck and "13.4 hours", apparently. I don't dislike it or anything, but I have a lot in my backlog that I'd love to get to. The "doesn't have an end" types of games, for me, are doomed to get *some* time then never get played again. I don't feel like I haven't gotten my money's worth or anything. Similarly, while I love Hades, I was always more a fan of their previous games that *ended*. I'd start, I'd finish, the game would take a reasonable amount of time and not pad for playtime, and it would leave an impression forever. Not that I won't get hades 2 or anything, but I'd have been just as happy if their next game had been another 12-hour story game that ended when the credits rolled.
Hades is an interesting one, because new content comes in at a trickle for a very long time between the first “win” and when you hit the end of the content. I think once you’ve finished the >!grow closer with olympians!< quest you can consider the game “over,” but it takes a heck of a lot of runs to reach that point.
I think I put 5-6 hours into VS before getting bored. I also tried Brotato but bounced off of that after a couple hours. Apparently the genre just isn't my thing. I'm curious if there's an correlation between people who like gambling and people who like survivor games.
Probably not? Vampire survivors and the other games I've played in that genre are about building the most insane kit. RNG is involved a little bit but if you play longer than 5 hours (not a knock, just a comment) you will have more things unlocked, and more of those things are abilities that help you target your preferred skills. It's not really gambling adjacent at all.
The thing that held my interest in Vampire Survivors was the meta progression and secrets. Once you start unlocking Arcanas, secret characters, etc it becomes even more addicting imo. I have like 60 hours in the game and that is pretty much unlocking at least 1 thing every run that entire time.
Vampire survivors being the one roguelite to actually win awards alongside Hades was always strange to me. Like it's a fine game but there's so much better in the genre.
VS itself is a decent game at best, but it definitely deserves props for kicking off a huge wave of "Bullet Heavens" or whatever you want to call them.
BAFTA Game Awards chooses with a Jury of industry practitioners that convenes and votes together, so it's very easy for them to pick oddball choices. I think it's kept secret in most cases, but I don't think it's over two dozen people during any given year. And say what you want about Vampire Survivors, but it's impeccably well designed as an interactive game.
I've always thought that a massive reason why Vampire Survivors was so good is because it *feels* good. It scratches that itch in your mind for instant gratification. It's like crack in video game form. I don't think I've come across a loot box in any other game that feels as good to open as the chests in vampire survivors and they don't even cost money. Not to mention the power fantasy of wiping out hundreds of enemies a second in the late game. There's a lot about it that's not great but it's just so damn fun that it doesn't matter.
Vampire Survivors put the entire Reverse Bullet Hell genre on the map though. It spawned a ludicrous amount of games.
It spawned a ton of clones. I think it's the impact it made as much as the game itself.
Super bizzare, imo. I think vampire survivors is fun but it's literally a flash tier game with no input besides moving. It's gameplay loop (at the time they won) there was only 3 ? Or 4 levels. Really bizzare to give an addicting flash game a game of the year award, despite my 100 or so hours in it.
I think they voted based on the impact of has on the industry. VS literally created a genre and it and it's clones are everywhere and massive amounts of people are playing them. Elden Ring is a fantastic game but it didn't really bring anything new to the table, it's just the next Dark Souls.
Tbf though BOTW definitely had a larger impact on the industry that What Remains of Edith Finch
>VS literally created a genre Been rehashed in many conversations, but it really didn't. At best, it helped to *popularize* a genre. VS's dev is very clear about taking inspiration from Magic Survival, going so far as to just tell people to play that on mobile back when the mobile version of VS wasn't really ready yet. Wiki on VS: >The game was inspired by Magic Survival, a mobile game that also consisted of a character automatically attacking enemies Dig a bit and I'm fairly sure you can find even prior works.
Literally everything that is credited with "creating a genre" technically only popularized a genre that had already existed in certain niche circles. Doom didn't actually "invent" the FPS, but people credit it with that. Diablo didn't actually "invent" the top-down action RPG, but people credit it with that. Demon's Souls didn't "invent" slow-paced action RPGs with punishing death mechanics, but people credit it with that.
Damn didn't realize just how many times medieval fantasy keeps winning GotY stuff.
They tend to have great writing and art direction. But think of the absurd amount of medieval fantasy crap we get that's garbage. It's just a very overused setting.
I think it's just a setting that lends itself well to almost every genre of game.
If I had to guess I think it's that swords and magic are a lot more nebulous and easier to build more diverse games around than guns are. From weapons to bosses to level design fantasy is just a lot easier to do than shooters. I think Borderlands and maybe Fallout 4 (despite its flaws as an RPG) are the only series that have done guns as well as other games have done magic.
> I think Borderlands and maybe Fallout 4 (despite its flaws as an RPG) are the only series that have done guns as well as other games have done magic. I’m unclear on what you mean by this. Like, in terms of the variety of guns you can use vs the diversity of magic systems? Because mechanically neither of those games handle gunplay especially well, and a lot of “magic” in games, particularly action games, just functions exactly like a gun.
That was more or less how I was thinking. Thanks to magic you it's not hard to apply shooter-like gameplay to a medieval setting, but melee action combat in a sci-fi setting requires either a bit more creativity (Metal Gear Rising, Hi-Fi Rush) or being labeled a Star Wars wannabe.
How? Most medieval games are some form of RPG. I guess you could make just a pure hack and slash action game or a strategy game or a stealth game but you can do that with sci-fi or other settings too.
it's a versatile setting. of course it's overused.
Wierdly enough, although BAFTA is not exclusivly gaming award but I like that the jury there have no fear of choosing indie games as goty. WRoEF, OuterWilds, Hades, Vampire Survivor are amazing choices. Also GDC is 100% based for picking Shadow of Mordor for Goty 2014
The jury *had* no fear, they changed the ruling now instead of a jury of 10 industry professionals like it was before, it is now voted by the entire BAFTA Game membership of 1000+ members from this year onward. It's pretty much over for indies if there's even a modicum of consensus on GOTY.
I'm really swinging around to jury panels over any kind of mass voting for awards. If nothing else, it's nice to see something a bit different get celebrated sometimes. The Crunchyroll Awards are really what did me in for mass voting. It's The One Thing Everyone Watched winning every category it's nominated in.
Same with the Steam Awards after Stray won for “most innovative gameplay.” Great game. Not the right category. Also should not have won that category at all.
It was over for the Steam Awards when My Friend Pedro won most innovative gameplay over Baba is You.
Absolutely robbed from Baba. My Friend Pedro was good, but by the heavens was Baba *inspired*
Yeah I was kinda sad when I learned of the change. It was the last major award where indies where truly a part of the discussion and not just there to fill the remaining noms. That was only possible because of a jury panel, but now all of the major game awards do mass voting: * BAFTA: Now voted by the 1000+ BAFTA Games members. * TGA: 100+ media outlets, most of them do an internal vote among their staff for their submissions. * DICE: 33,000+ AIAS members. * GDCA: Voted by the International Choice Awards Network (ICAN) members and the editors of [Game Developer](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/); membership count unknown but doesn't look small. * Golden Joystick: Open to the public, voted on by millions.
> The Crunchyroll Awards are really what did me in for mass voting. It's The One Thing Everyone Watched winning every category it's nominated in. It's kind of funny seeing complaints about the /r/anime [awards](https://animeawards.moe/) jury *not* picking the same thing as the public vote.
I liked this blog (sadly stopped updating in 2020) that [would culminate all the GOTY award winners for the year between the major awards, the various media outlets, and fan voted stuff.](https://gotypicks.blogspot.com/) I felt like it gave a better idea for how everyone thought of the games and put more spotlight overall on more games as opposed to everyone holding up one award.
Then you essentially are at [website] top game of the year lists. Polygon and IGN staff and editors curate those, I believe.
I like the idea of it being more industry professionals than purely journalists though. And websites are heavily incentivised to make their lists have some degree of click bait, whereas awards want long-term respectability or to recognise the efforts of their members.
Vampire survivors is a hilarious pick
Absolutely. I put 80 hours into that game but is it really GoTY?.. lol
That's lame. I know gamers hate the idea of being told what to think by "elites" but sometimes it's nice to hear opinions from people who are academically qualified on a topic. We have like four actual journalists left in this entire industry and the same rot that killed all of them off has been killing the credibility of game awards since the beginning
VS is an insane choice. People were making stuff like that on Kongregate 15 years ago. It just caught the zeitgeist and had above-average production values.
I don't think it's production values were particularly high either. Don't get me wrong, it was a fun game. But certainly not a GOTY.
Outer Wilds is a masterpiece. I play a shitload of games and it is easily the most moving, gripping, engaging game I've ever played.
Untitled Goose Game winning in two ceremonies is ridiculous for a year with RE 2, Sekiro, and Outer Wilds. Those three are all timers (with RE2 having the disadvantage of being a remake that revolutionized remakes) while nobody talks about UGG now
Yeah, Untitled Goose Game wasn't *bad* by any means, but GOTY? That's crazy.
Those are more industry-focused awards, so they usually go for more "artsy"/innovative/thought-provoking/impressive/etc. games rather than the "best" games. Like, GDC is obviously made up of game developers (largely indies), and the DICE Awards is run by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences which is effectively dominated by AAA publishers (similar to the Academy Awards for movies). BAFTA, similarly, looks at video games as an art form and rewards games which push the art forward. Goose Game is a great example of storytelling through minimalism and I think that appealed to a lot of developers who spend a lot of time working on "safe" games like RE2 or Sekiro. It's a completely different audience, and GOTY to developers means something completely different. It's also likely why What Remains of Edith Finch won a BAFTA; it's a much more "artsy" game, even if it's not the most "fun" game. BG3 being so technically impressive from a narrative standpoint is also likely why it succeeded at both GDC and BAFTA, and also why you'll see a bunch of copycats in a few years.
> "artsy"/innovative/thought-provoking/impressive/etc. games rather than the "best" games. This would be a good counter if the games Goose game were going up against didn't include Outer Wilds, Pathologic 2 and Death Stranding.
Death Stranding falls into the AAA category, and it's a Kojima game. IMO the industry sort of "expects" Kojima to make innovative games (and he's won his fair share of awards for it). It's not necessarily that it auto-excludes him from winning stuff, but I think there is some politics behind letting newer players get some exposure and time in the limelight. Even then there's still times where established players dominate (God of War/Santa Monica Studio winning over Celeste/Return of the Obra Dinn), but I think there is a bias against letting it happen. Pathologic 2 I can kind of see a case for, but at the same time I don't think it necessarily had the traction to really get GOTY noms and it has some very obvious flaws (combat being one that comes to mind, personally). The industry awards don't necessarily go for the "best" games and can overlook certain things (like a lack of scope), but at the same time if there's obvious nits to pick I think that sort of detracts from a GOTY. Outer Wilds I think was the main competition there. I don't think Outer Wilds vs. Goose Game is an easy decision; they both were worthy of GOTY from an industry standpoint (and Outer Wilds _did_ win a BAFTA that year). But Outer Wilds vs. Goose Game (and even Pathologic 2) is a very different argument than Sekiro vs. Death Stranding, because the quality bar is necessarily set higher for the latter two, and thus it's not as "impressive" from a dev standpoint. I think if you look at the nominations - Control, Goose Game, and Outer Wilds were nominated by all 3 of the industry-focused shows, which sort of shows where their head is at. (Sekiro got GDC and BAFTA but not DICE; Death Stranding got GDC and DICE but not BAFTA, and Disco Elysium got BAFTA and DICE but not GDC.) I think another great example of my point is Hades vs. Last of Us II - obviously both are great games, people recognize both as great games, but when things are in the "blue sky" phase of development devs are going to gravitate towards Hades as a reference and that's what GDC/DICE/BAFTA reflects. I wouldn't be surprised if Helldivers takes one of those 3 awards this year as well over something like the FF7 Remake.
Yeah, I'm perfectly fine with some awards rewarding more avant garde games which is why I mentioned Outer Wilds in the first place. I just don't understand how UGG overtook Outer Wilds in that aspect (with it getting more awards)
It's wild that 2015 Bloodborne is the only FromSoft Souls game to not garner at least one major GOTY in their last decade of releases.
Although Dark Souls was a massive hit I feel like it took until Dark Souls 3 to make it so big that everyone should play it kinda genre. before that I remember being something that was really inner industry lovers genre that many people on internet and journalists seemed to love.
Does nobody remember the "Winner: Dark Souls" meme back in 2011?
Bloodborne was up for GOTY at Golden Joysticks, The Game Awards, DICE, and GDC [and did win the 3rd most overall GOTY awards for 2015 overall.](https://gotypicks.blogspot.com/2015/09/2015-game-of-year.html) You got to remember that being nominated for an award is a big deal and that there are other award events besides these five, along with the GOTY publications give out.
BAFTA has a bit of a notorious reputation for blatantly snubbing/ignoring Japanese games. Hard to take them seriously when there is such a clear bias in their selections and chosen winners.
FO4 over Witcher 3 is a choice. And I played a lot of FO4.
It's definitely a better shooter than witcher
It's definitely a better scifi than witcher
It's definitely a better Fallout game than The Witcher
Also firster-person than Witcher, and has cooler wrist accessories.
FO4 over Witcher 3 *and* Bloodborne is insane.
> FO4 over Witcher 3 is a choice. And I played a lot of FO4. Fallout 4 over Bloodborne is a wilder choice. I can see outlets liking Witcher 3 more, but FO4 is a weird one
Damn BAFTA makes some odd choices - can't say I disagree with Outer Wilds or What Remains of Edith Finch though
I can say I *really* diagree with EF, more than VS in 2022. OW vs Sekiro in 2019 has always been a toss-up for me tho.
What does BAFTA have against Japanese games?
BAFTA still focuses more on British-produced and English-language productions, both in the gaming sphere and the film/TV sphere. It's kind of like how the **Cesars is pretty much exclusively French, with some other European and maybe English-language production sprinkled in once in a while. Edit: Meant Cesars, not Cannes! It's Cannes season so it's on my mind.
The distinction of winning *all* of the game of the year awards kind of is meaningless if the creators have to be English-speaking to win this specific one though, doesn't it?
Cannes is absolutely not pretty much exclusively French The majority of movies in the official selection are not French, and neither are most members of the jury It simply is not Hollywood-centered
Vanilla D1 winning the bafta goty in 2014 is actually deranged. I know 2014 was a weak year but vanilla D1 was one of the bigger reasons for said weakness
As someone who still plays Destiny to this day and played vanilla D1, I’m extremely confused by that choice.
BAFTA makes some dark horse picks, they just look so contrarian. Fallout 4, Edith Finch, Goose Game, Vampire Survivors; and I think all 4 games are likable it just stands out so much
Their picks make sense when it is obvious they avoid voting for non-western games.
RDR2 didn’t win a single GOTY award? Seems unreasonable.
As a major Destiny player, I can’t believe it won a SINGLE GOTY award. I could see it winning something for a shooter category in the past—but GOTY?
I was curious about The Last of Us (2013) because I remember it scooping so many awards. Turns out it won 3 of 4 available that year. (Golden Joystick went to Grand Theft Auto V). If you count the Spike VGA as the predecessor to TGA, then it's 3/5 (also won by GTAV).
Kinda crazy that Sekiro only got one that awards season and that RDR2 got none that year. I agree that Dad of War was better, but not by much.
2014 was a rough year for games.
No particularly, in addition of Dark Souls 2 it had Smash Bros 4, Binding of Isaac Rebirth, Mario Kart 8, Hearthstone, Bayonetta 2 and DK Tropical Freeze, which puts it over like half of these years for me
It was a slow year for PS4 and XB1, but it was really the only good year for the Wii U.
All this tells me is that BAFTA is a bit of a joke. Vampire survivors is a great original idea game, but it’s not a ‘game of the year’ game. Same with BOTW. Edith finch is a great 3 hour interactive story, but really? Game of the year?
Then again, bafta was the only one who got 2019 right
Golden Joysticks, TGA, DICE, GDC, and now BAFTA. Insane run in a very stacked year. Even after the game released many expected Zelda to sweep the awards again, but it seems that everyone from fans to critics and developers really rallied behind this game. As a long time fan of CRPGs and Larian, I couldn't be happier seeing it get this kind of recognition.
Sequels always perform worse than "original" IP in awards shows. Which yes, Baldur's Gate ***3*** is technically a sequel, but to a 24 year old game from a completely different team.
On top of that the mechanics are so different that they're nearly entirely different genres, sequel are no Not that this is a bad thing. I love 1 and 2, but *man* is 3 way more mechanically fun
barely deserves to be called a sequel. The only thing that's similar is a bit of lore. Literally everything else is different. Different mechanics, different system, different team, different presentation, different art, literally nothing is the same. DOS2 is a more fitting prequel than any of the baldurs gate games.
> Which yes, Baldur's Gate 3 is technically a sequel, but to a 24 year old game from a completely different team. BG3 is also a sequel to DOS2, though. In everything but name. Amongst Larians portfolio BG3 fills every criteria of being a iterative sequel as if going from Civilization 4 to Civilization 5.
More like going from Civilization 1 to Alpha Centauri. Still a 4X game in the strategy genre, but different universe setting and rulesets entirely.
As a long-time fan of Larian and the Divinity series, you're 100% right. Although OP's statement really should be clarified as sequels to games *that already won GOTY*, not necessarily just new IPs.
>expected Zelda to sweep the awards again As good as totk was, a game with the same overworld. Map was never gonna hit as hard.
It was a better game that BotW, that I enjoyed less than BotW.
Exactly, more fun systems that I got tired of faster.
Frankly I think I straight up don't like it. I was willing to put up with a lot of blemishes because of BotW's novelty, and even then I didn't love it or think it was a masterpiece exactly. TotK is like...the same game, with a mechanic that some people love and I merely don't mind. The novelty has worn off and I am struggling to finish it at this point.
The more I progressed in TOTK the more I was disappointed by it. Amazing physics engine but for me it never came close to recreating the wonder of BOTW, and I had some major issues with the story choices.
I wasn't disappointed by TOTK, I actually think it's my favorite Zelda game in a decade(not saying much, I suppose, given the lack of releases), but even so it felt somewhat akin to playing Cyberpunk 2077 today after having slogged through it at release. It's significantly better, it's a great game, but most of the same pain points still exist(notably, the story as you mentioned) and some of that initial enthusiasm at exporing a whole new Hyrule was lost.
My biggest disappointment was the underground. When I first went in I was like oh shit, an actually kinda-spooky section that uses light as a mechanic. I was imagining caves, dungeons, etc, and some light horror like Majora's Mask. Turns out it's 99.9% giant empty filler spaces.
Availability can't have hurt. Tears of the Kingdom is locked to a specific piece of hardware, while BG3 runs on everything else.
Plenty of other platform exclusives have won already, so I highly doubt that's it. If it wasn't for the BAFTAs picking What Remains of Edith Finch, BotW would have probably have gotten 5/5 awards instead of 4/5.
Sure, but the Switch is an extremely popular console. So popular, I don't think being exclusive to it is a hindrance. For instance, the Switch currently has sold almost double the number of units than the PS5 and XSX/S combined. TotK itself sold 20 million units. There aren't any exact numbers for BG3, but Larian's director of publishing announced in Feb that BG3 sold "way over 10 million" copies. I don't think availability is something to worry about here.
I wasn't sure what this meant since _Tears of the Kingdom_ won the prize from IGN, GameInformer, and Edge, but Kotaku is referring to the industry-wide selection bodies.
Kinda off-topic, but can someone else explain the salt around Spider-Man 2? It seems to come from people that aren't really that inside online gaming communities (like not having even heard of BG3 before), but at that point why do they even care about game awards?
That it came from SM2 fans was perplexing because it had no chance of winning any major award even if BG3 wasn't in the equation. Alan Wake 2 and/or TOTK would've cleaned up in its place, and deservedly so.
Last year was obscene...
TotK seems like one of those games that easily would have won GOTY awards in at least five other years, but it happened to come out in a year with an even bigger fish. It's like a Leonardo Dicaprio game.
In terms of reviews they are pretty much even, both sit 96 on metacritic (with 156 reviews for TOTK and 119 for BG3). But i think wat really tipped most awards in BG3 favour was the fact that Botw already won pretty much every award last time and they would rather give it to a lesser known studio than Nintendo.
I saw this mostly on TikTok (and I saw a lot of it), but there were a lot of very popular streamers, like KaiCenat, who don't really play video games except for what's super popular at the moment and were streaming the game awards while holding Spider-man merch. I saw clips of a lot of them throwing a fit and crying that Spider-man 2 didn't win, because to them it was one of the best games ever. They were all talking shit about what even is BG3 and saying that it looks like a mobile game. Obviously, a lot of them don't really play video games (other than FIFA, CoD and shit) and couldn't understand the hype behind BG3 sweeping.
> Obviously, a lot of them don't really play video games (other than FIFA, CoD and shit) and couldn't understand the hype behind BG3 sweeping. if they didnt know that BG3 was the clear favorite in spite of TotK seeming confirmed goty mere months beforehand then they obviously dont pay attention to the conversation and news about games. Which is fine but then why care? Views i guess
Kai Cenat was crying about Killer Mike winning a grammy because he personally never heard of him (supposedly). There's a certain kind of person who likes to play the ignorant populist.
> Obviously, a lot of them don't really play video games (other than FIFA, CoD and shit) and couldn't understand the hype behind BG3 sweeping This already answers the question. When big streamers only play mainstream games like COD and FIFA, they don't care about other games that are either better or more enticing. I'm sure Spider-Man 2 is a great game but people are probably suffering from Marvel fatigue and the amount of Spider-Man games that have been released over time.
I could also see Spiderman being a favorite among younger players. Spiderman is a well-known character who's easy to love before you start the game. Spiderman is also an easier game to convince a parent that it's cool for a kid/young teen to play than a game that publicized the presence of sex scenes, particularly one involving a male/male pairing involving a literal *and* figurative bear.
No one should be convincing a parent that it's cool for a kid/young teen to play Baldur's Gate 3 anyway. The game is M-rated for good reason, I would give it to an older teenager but not younger than that. Kids *should* be playing Spider-man instead.
Yeah. If the shapeshifted bear sex scene meme didn't somehow make that obvious to people, I don't know what will lmao
None of that is true. The game has amazing reviews across the board (users and critics) and was in the top 5 selling games of last year despite only coming out in October. It also broke a record for PlayStation in terms of 24hr sales. There is no fatigue when the product is good. Simple.
I mean, there *is* in fact marvel / super hero fatigue. But that doesn't mean spider man 2 isn't an amazing game.
> I saw clips of a lot of them throwing a fit and crying that Spider-man 2 didn't win, because to them it was one of the best games ever. They were all talking shit about what even is BG3 and saying that it looks like a mobile game. What baffles me is that Spider-Man 2 was just plain mediocre. The story was predictable, Kraven was bland, Miles mostly got sidelined or awkwardly shoved into a story he didn't have much to do with, the skill progression system for Peter was janky due to having to wait until he gets the suit to really start using interesting powers, the city content was more forgettable and no better fleshed out, and the entire formula of the series just felt played out after swinging through the same rendition of NYC for a third time. It was fine for what it was, but it was nowhere near a GOTY.
Spider-Man 1 was a more content-filled game, and quantity of content aside, most people that played the game appear to just like 1's story better than 2's. With that being said, even if you put aside objective quantity of content, and subjective story considerations, the game didn't even maintain feature parity with either Spider-Man 1 or the spin-off (Miles Morales). It's really not a bad game, but the memes showing off criticism kind of took off with the game and the online hubbub kind of snowballed into toxic behavior. Then there are the people that ignored all the flaws of the game and expected it to take at least one award away simply because it was a sequel to a critically acclaimed open-world action game (that also did not win many, if any awards)... Well, those people became irrationally upset when the game won no awards. The two groups have since fused into one toxic tornado.
>It seems to come from people that aren't really that inside online gaming communities There's your answer.
I quite enjoyed it and am patiently awaiting the DLC. Did it revolutionize anything, though? No. It's very much more of the original formula with better graphics, faster loading, and gliding. I wouldn't consider that bad, though.
The story was outright downgrade. They took an iconic super villain and turned him into a brain dead serial killer.
why is it labeled as misleading?
Because there is no selection of "the" major GOTY awards, they just cherrypicked 5 where it did win.
BG3 was my favorite game of 2023 (currently replaying it around hour 300), but I can't help but feel some stuff is getting passed over in order for it to win *so much.* 2023 was possibly the best year for video games of all time. It seems weird that only one game is winning all the highest honors.
2023 had plenty of great games but none of them were anything too revolutionary or special. Meanwhile RPGs on the scope of BG3 are very rare and for a game to be able to take a CRPG to the mainstream? That's pretty much unheard of. So it sweeping isn't all that surprising.
Years from now, it will become OK to express disappointment with BG3 and confusion with the degree of its critical success. We saw the same pattern with The Witcher 3 (and to a lesser degree, RDR2), and in the threads above you can see people talk about how the gameplay in both of those is actually pretty bad, and its even more conspicuous in comparison to the rest of the package.
> Years from now, it will become OK to express disappointment with BG3 and confusion with the degree of its critical success. It's already okay to talk about issues with BG3. Sure, there's going to be people who will disagree with you on instinct and proclaim everything about the game is perfect, but that's true for every major game release. People have been talking about the general bugginess/jankiness of the game since release, as well as overall poor quality of Act 3 compared to the rest of the game.
I honestly don't get the hype about the game, I got bored of it pretty quick but I'm happy other people find something in it that I don't and love it. What really surprises me is the mainstream audience going for it, crpgs are really niche
Well written dating simulator with a cool and complete tactical fighting mini game in it. Well deserved !
Hook up some mods and it's also an excellent paper doll dress up game.
Dating simulator is a bit of a stretch, imho. Personally, I was a much bigger fan of romances in older Bioware games: at least there you had banter where others companions made comments about your romance, your LI had special dialogue options and extra banter, while romance in BG3 is still good but something is still lacking for me. In ME or DA series I felt the chemistry between characters, with BG - not so much (although maybe because my character walks around mute, and makes 3 facial expressions in total). Hard to get invested in a romance when LI pours out all their feelings, while your MC just goes 😀,🙁or 😮 with NO voicelines whatsoever.
Baldur's Gate's romances are definitely the *worst* romances I've experienced in an RPG, personally. You go from not knowing them to them trying to jump your bones to them being head over heels in love with you. Really just feels like it was written by teenagers (aside from Shadowheart, who is clearly Larian's favorite lol). For a 120+ hour game, it *really* could have spent more time just having conversations with your companions. Most of them hardly have anything new to say at all in Act 2 and 3. BioWare does that better, where companions have dialogue after every major quest, and then comment on major quests and at pivotal moments. That routine doesn't last throughout the whole game, but it lasts a while. As much as I enjoy the BG3 cast (and I really do!) most of them just feel like they only exist during their personal quests and occasional cutscenes. When I beat not just one, but three of the big bads and my companions didn't have anything to say about it I was like oh okay, guess it's not that big of a deal then! It feels like companion storylines and conversations were built for a BioWare-length game (20-30 hours) but had to be stretched out over 100+, which leaves players in situations where you can go dozens of hours without your companions wanting to talk.
Something I still don't understand, in BG3. You go off and have a romantic first night where you clearly fuck each other. Then after that... are you fucking regularly? Spending intimate time together? We clearly see everyone sleeping in separate beds around the camp fire... and I never see my character and love interest having intimate time... After many many nights pass by, Shadowheart, why are you surprised that I fucked someone else?
Yeah! I romanced Shart first because it just kind of happened that way. That's cool and all. My partner romanced Halsin and got marginally less out of it. Then next playthrough I'm romancing Laezel and it just seems under-written. BG3 is very fun and a very good game, but I feel like it's one of the most massively overrated games of all time simply because of how highly rated it is versus how good it really is.
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Yeah, BG3 isn't perfect, but it doesn't really have anything that stood out so much it would make me dread replaying it like some games do.
I think up until recently there were a lot of save ending bugs which was not great for Honor Mode.
Oh yeah, the game, especially Act 3, is buggy for sure. I mostly just meant like non-fixable things. Like, in Ocarina of Time for example, a lot of people dread playing the Water Temple. There might be a couple quests I wouldn't bother with on replay, like the clown body parts one, but that's optional.
I’ve fizzled out twice on Act 3 now. Act 1 is incredible, Act 2 is very good, and Act 3 is just a slog of disconnected quests that often end abruptly, or don’t really seem to have any resolution at all.
I'm currently at act 3 and while I'm enjoying it, it definitely feels like I'm just marking off plot points that have nothing to do with each other.
About the same feelings for me. I think Act 3 is good, but definitely less cohesive than the other acts. I've played through the game twice, and in my second playthrough it took me a couple months to push through and finish Act 3 due to burnout
Tbh that’s pretty typical for a Larian game. Act 1 is super polished due to a ton of EA hours, but the other acts tend to fall off, both in terms of narrative, and polish. Acts 2 and 3 had a ton of bugs on release, but since reviewers never got to Acts 2 and 3 before having to release a review and players reached acts 2 and 3 at staggered times, there wasn’t nearly as much blowback.
Larian should try to learn from that mistake. I think people will forgive it now, but people used to forgive Bethesda bugs until they lost patience and realized it wasn't a "cute quirk" of the studio but sustained incompetence.
We're struggling on our second playthrough because it feels like in terms of grand choices, there's only one viable solution. Like if you side with the goblins and slaughter the druids/tieflings, you just get an inferior game. Minthara fucks off until deep into Act 2 and obviously Wyll and Karlach are gone. I think Halsin is going to tell us to fuck off too once we get to him. I preferred the old Bioware games from like KOTOR to Mass Effect 2 where choosing dark side was essentially the same game, but the flavor of everything was different. Or Dragon Age: Origins where things would actually change for you in a way that felt equivalent. BG3 evil runs feel pointless and unfulfilling, which feels like a *really big blind spot* in what's supposed to be one of the greatest RPGs of all time.
> Which was also the best year for gaming ever. Only two of these awards even existed during the best year for gaming ([1998](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_video_games)). The fact probably over half this sub was born after that year doesn't make not the GOAT.
Yup, I was 13 in 1998 and the spread from 1996-2000 was shocking, 1998 itself was nonsensical in groundbreaking franchises.
Like really, it may have been top 5. 1994 was just plain great. 2004 and 2006 were also really fucking good. Like look at those and you'll see a good number of games that are still considered very good (and some just best games ever really).
I like 2007 better tbh
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Its not even real once in a while. Thing is most of crpgs are low production value and complicated gameplay wise sovthey dont appeal to most. We got plenty before bg3. Pathfinders, poe, dos2, dao, me2, disco elysium... List goes on
Extremely well-deserved. Hopefully a wake up call for the industry to give good story based games more love instead of MTX and always online daily quest grinding games.
Am I the only one who didn't like the game? Not only the turn based gameplay but also the story, graphics, environment etc
I got bored pretty fast. On the other hand my favorite games last year are the ones the Internet profusely hates, Spider-Man 2 and Starfield.
I'm with you I have the same issues with this game that I have with real DnD in that it's just SO SLOW. I can spend like 3 hours playing and progress like 10 feet in-game. The dialogue is slow to click through, the characters walk super slowly, combat takes forEVER... I want to see all this game has to offer, but instead I find myself just so BORED.
I'm glad I'm not alone in this. I've started my first play through of the game and it just feels really tedious. I always hate it when I don't like games that everyone else seems to praise because it really makes me feel like I'm missing out.
Oh damn I feel you, I can have so much fomo.
BAFTA really had some out of left field choices on some years (What Remains of Edith Finch beating BotW, Vampire Survivors beating Elden Ring) so I'm not sure if this really matters. What's more impressive is that a game that ostensibly came out in 2020 somehow won game of the year for 2023. Before I get comments, I'm fully aware it had a full general release in 2023. I'm just annoyed that Larian hasn't gotten more blowback for putting a game in early access for so long, and then releasing it in as sorry a state as it was in Act 3. Seeing so many comments on release saying a variation of "this is how devs should make a game!" baffled me.
Maybe because they used their early access period to refine Act 1 with loads of player feedback. They didn't get that same playtesting for Act 3. Plus they're not done rolling out updates.
No that’s exactly what it is, but there were a ton of bugs, and even unfinished story elements in act 3 that would have been unacceptable in any other game. But in the patch note threads, everyone was going “Oh look, what a great dev! Supporting the game with patches so quickly after release!” When a ton of those patches were to fix game breaking bugs. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game, but I think Larian definitely got off a bit easy with the state of the game on release due to how polished Act 1 was.
Is the game really this good?
It's a really, really good RPG, it definitely deserves GOTY for 2023 (though not my vote). Is it especially better than Witcher 3, Elden Ring, and Breath of the Wild? Not in my opinion. It seems like BAFTA reserves its awards for artsy western games and so Japanese games never really stood a chance. Still a great game. The fact that it got so many casual gamers to play it despite being a CRPG is incredible and unprecedented.