The Game Awards 2023 thread

[Dr. Cheesesteak]

The Game Awards nominations were revealed today. Some objective blunders (as usual) by Mr Keighly and his committee:

- Dave the Diver is not an indie game.
- FF16 is not an RPG.
- "Ongoing" needs a better definition if an offline game like Cyberpunk 2077 is included. Yes, I'm aware of 2.0 and the expansion. But is that like "ongoing support" or just the usual additional new content model? Have other continuously supported offline games like Dead Cells been nominated before? The closest thing is No Man's Sky, but that still had MP.

My own personal gripes:

- Best Art Direction (and also Best Direction...?) and best Music/Score once again laughably limited to AAA games. Laika, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Sea of Stars, Blasphemous 2, Cassette Beasts, etc all deserve at least acknowledgement. The AAA bias in TGA is just insufferable at times.
- Should non-GOTY categories be expanded to over 5 nominees, like GOTY has the past 2 years? Is GOTY now always going to be 6? Cuz it seems like it could've easily been 8 or 9 or even 10 nominees this year, if we're discussing just "worthy of a nomination" games, since we all know not all nominees have a legit shot anyway.
- Piggybacking from the above point, in a year-by-year basis, RPG should be split into 2 categories - real-time and turn-based. This fixes the problem of FF16 (and Lies of P for some people) being in the RPG category and snubbing more "deserving RPGs". This year could easily fill 5 games of both (FF16, Lies of P, Starfield, D4, Hogwarts for real-time. Octopath 2, Sea of Stars, BG3, Cassette Beasts, Miasma Chronicles or even Chained Echoes since it was released too late for the 2022 awards, etc for turn-based). But that'd require too much thinking and knowledge of indie games from Keighly and his committee.
- Piggybacking off the Chained Echoes shout out above, the release time window for these awards is stupid. I get Keighly wants to do the ceremony in December for some reason, but...it just makes it look stupid and too much like movie awards to have some overlapping year window for nominees. Video game awards from traditional publications have never done that, except for Keighly's. This has also changed game release patterns, imo. Anyone remember when big titles were released in December for the holiday season? Yeah, not anymore. I think AAA publishers make a conscious effort to release before December just for TGA nominations.

Anyway, your thoughts?

 

[Meg]

The RPG genre has become so all encompassing to the point it means nothing. Sure, every genre has variety, but to a point. Take racing games for example; Dirt Rally, Redout, and Mario Kart are all vastly different, but all share the common ground of driving on a track with the objective of being the fastest.

Compare that to FFXVI, Dark Souls, Diablo, and Mass Effect. Four games that are so different, calling them all RPGs tells you absolutely nothing.

I think the problem is the evolving definition of what people think an RPG is. The Act Man summed up the old school definition the best: “warrior, necromancer, sorcerer. Gee, I wonder what ROLE I should PLAY in this GAME?” (Paraphrasing but you get the point.)

The original idea was more so about the role each character played in combat, but over the years we’ve seen an explosion of games that let you create your own character and influence the story. I think this led to a change in what people define “role-playing” to even mean. Instead of “combat role” it’s now “story role.”

So I disagree with wanting to divide RPGs between action and turn based combat because I don’t think that’s where the true divide is between different types of RPGs.

For example, the Tales series has action combat but the story and characters are locked in. The role you play is in which character you want to focus on: the fighter, the mage, the healer, etc. So in that sense the Tales games have more in common with traditional turn-based RPGs than something like Skyrim or Mass Effect, where the world, story, and characters revolve around the player’s actions.

That said, it doesn’t matter how you slice it, FFXVI is not an RPG. Don’t get me wrong, I like it so far, but this is a straight action game. If it wasn’t Final Fantasy, no one would be calling it an RPG.

Although, people don’t typically associate epic, lengthy stories with action games. Whereas we all expect that sort of thing from RPGs. I think that’s the one point in FFXVI’s favor for justifying its inclusion into the RPG genre. Buuuut it’s not much.

 

[Gasoline Tank]

Was Resident Evil 4 one of the nominees?

Ironically, as a person who is not a massive RE4 fan since the 2005 version dissolved the series into mediocre action, I think it's the second best remake Capcom has produced after the 2002 remake. I was very surprised to see Wesker appeared in person, as compared to when he did it on Ada's communicator. The game was a solid effort.

Sure, it still had cut content. But all in all, it didn't hinder the enjoyment. Although there seemed to be more puzzles, which I just did not enjoy. Even the original game only had about four across the various scenarios. This time there were many in a trot.

Granted, I think Capcom handled it way more carefully due to the fact it's, well... RE4. Had it been half-baked, that wouldn't bode too good, as RE4 is a fan favourite that I feel has always been polarising in a Marmite kind of fashion.