The Game Awards nominations were announced yesterday. For GOTY, it’s pretty much agreed that it’s going to be Elden Ring (FromSoft) or God of War Ragnarok (Sony Santa Monica Studios). The later only came out last week, just making it under the wire for when games have to be released to be considered for that year’s awards. Which I’m sure was on purpose.
I’ve been freaking out over this to Ian, and every time, he tells me to CTFD. “Minna. Come on.” That’s usually all he messages, but I can hear the “Don’t be ridiculous!” underneath it. He is reasonable when he points out that GOWR is an exclusive and of limited appeal, anyway.
But. And let me remind you. This happened in 2018 with the first game. Same limitations and it was still accorded GOTY. Ian argued that there was not another clear front runner that year, though Red Dead Redemption 2 came out that year. Still. RDR2 did not have the hype that Elden Ring did. It has sold 46 million copies worldwide, though. RDR2, I mean. Elden Ring has sold 17.5 million copies in less than a year. That’s fucking amazing for them.
Normally, I don’t care about these awards at all. I was pleasantly surprised that Sekiro won in 2019, but I wasn’t expecting it to. And, if I’m going to be painfully honest, it’s my least-favorite of the From games even while I admit the brilliance, so I wasn’t plumping for it. Hell, I don’t stan for games in general. I love From games, yes, but I understand why other people would not like them.
First of all, no game is for everyone. That’s just a fact. Even a game as universally beloved as, say, the Zelda series, may not be for everyone–especially since they only exist on very few platforms. *cough* bullshit exclusivity *cough cough*.
Minecraft (Mojang Studios) has sold nearly 300.000.000 copies. It’s the highest-selling video game of all time. That’s a hell of a lot of copies, but there are nearly 8 billion people in the world. Even if you assume that all those copies sold are independent sales (not), that’s still 1/26th of the world population if my calculator math is correct. That’s a ton of copies, don’t get me wrong, but there are still way more people not playing Minecraft than those who are.
In addition, award ceremonies are shite. They are already biased towards certain developers, mostly AAA. Then, only certain people are allowed to vote on the awards, and I can guarantee they aren’t your everyday people. Like, I cannot vote on them. It’s people in the industry, which makes sense on one hand (they are the ones who follow the industry), but it’s also a way to keep things striated.
It was a given for most of the year that Elden Ring would win GOTY. I always had it in the back of my mind that Ragnarok might sneak out a win because rightly or wrongly, people tend to remember the last thing that impresses them. In this case, Elden Ring was released at the end of February, which was nine months ago. Ragnarok was released last week, which was last week.
People have been gushing over Ragnarok. GUSHING. Full disclosure: I have not played the first game, even though it came to the PC. While intellectually I know that I should try it, I just….don’t want to. It is not appealing to me except for how hot Kratos is and the use of the Leviathan Axe.
In the sequel, apparently, there is a companion who shouts out all. the. time. In combat, they say things like, “Oh, that hit hard!” and such. When you’re trying to figure out a puzzle, apparently, this companion shouts out the answer immediately. It’s much like Aloy in Forbidden West. Apparently, she did the same thing and this is very endemic in Sony games. Yes, this game was developed by Guerilla Games, but it was published by Sony. When Elden Ring came out, a developer for Guerilla Games heavily criticized ER for the quest design. Other devs criticized the game for other reasons, valid to a certain extent.
One from Ubisoft criticized the UI and said that it made a mockery of his life (essentially). From’s UI is not great. The one in Elden Ring, however, is miles better than their other games and didn’t actively make me tear my hair out. Another criticized the PC performance, which, fair. It sucked on launch. The one about quest design, however…I read somewhere but I can’t find it in a cursory search that the Guerrilla Games dev said that From needed to make sure players knew where to go. It’s interesting to note that Ubisoft and GG are Western devs and FromSoft is, of course, Japanese.
There was another Western dev who criticized Japanese game developers and it wasn’t pretty. There was some racism involved and a shocking lack of realization that the Western way of thinking wasn’t the only possible way to think. Here’s the thing, too. I’m glad that people liked Forbidden West and enjoyed it. If people like the AssCreed games, more power to them! So why is it such a problem when a game that is outside the box succeeds as well? I HATE all the markers in a typical open world game. As much as I liked The Witcher 3, looking at crowded map gave made me nearly break out in hives. It was so overwhelming to see so many things to do. Same when I played AssCreed Syndicate. I was having difficulty with the choked-up map, and when a new area opened up (and was filled with the same quests), I closed out the game and never touched it again.
I love that in Elden Ring, you don’t know what’s going to hit you until you’re there. You can get chased through an area by cloaked snake-like monsters who breathe out Death Blight (Lesser Wormfaces, they are called, apparently) and skedaddle into a cave that has who knows what. The first time through Elden Ring was a wild ride, and it would have been greatly diminished if I had known exactly what was coming each step of the way. In fact, part of my diminishing interest in finishing my fourth playthrough is that I’ve wrung out just about every inch of content I could have from the game. Roughly four hundred hours poured into it, and I would be shocked if there was a big surprise I hadn’t uncovered. I’m sure there are minor things I haven’t seen, but I really deeply explored every crevice of the game. I would be stoked to find there was something I missed, but I’m not expecting it.
Look. I’m sure GOWR is a great game. I say that with as little snark as possible. Just because it’s not for me, doesn’t mean it’s not good. I wish it all the best. But, come on. Apparently, it’s sold more copies than Elden Ring on launch day. But it’s still an exclusive that not everyone can play. Technically, I could buy it for the PS4, but I don’t really have any desire to do so.
In the end, Ian is right. It doesn’t matter if Elden Ring wins GOTY or not. It’s just that I almost didn’t live to see another FromSoft game. And, they did not have the accolades I thought they should have for their previous game. Yes, they were appreciated in the industry, but they were still considered very niche. With this game, they bust out on the scene and made a splash. It was the new hotness, and everyone wanted in on it. It got all the acclaim and while it may not be their best or most innovative game, it presented a completely different open world game than we’d seen before. It will be a gold standard for that genre from now on forward, and that’s no small thing.
Ian has talked me down. I still want Elden Ring to win, but I’m back to not caring. I loved the game and it was incredible to have another Miyazaki world to explore for hundreds of hours. Nothing can take that away from me, not even an end of the year awards snub.