Happy that Hades 2 and Silksong got something, but I'd be curious to learn their (edit: as in TGA) distinction between award categories i.e. action vs action adventure
action is more combat focused than exploration focused I assume. You can't really lose your way in Hades 2 so it doesn't qualify as adventure, Silksong however, you've got multiple path to the same place, you can lose yourself, uncover secret areas, etc... Exploration is probably the key difference.
No, action game means you move the character you play manually. Things like attack, jump etc.
A turn based RPG is an example of a non action game.
I would also argue that Silksong is about exploration first and foremost. It is a Metroidvania after all which is a genre about exploring a non linear map, "search action" they call it sometimes.
Hades is a roguelite. They can be everything from action to turn based card game.
And they are about playing the same levels over and over and dying a lot, because they're very hard tuned on purpose. getting a little further each time (hopefully xP).
So no roguelikes/lites are not considered adventure games.
I think that looking at the games that were nominated kinda explains it. Action games are the very offense focused, tona of cool sick moves and enemies, kill everything kind of games, while action adventure seems to be closer to "adventure game with a lot of action"
Action-Adventure has long been the realm of Zelda, Metroid etc. The distinction to me is basically, if you take away the action, is it now like a point and click adventure game with puzzles stuff? It’s action-adventure. If there’s nothing left it’s action.
Generally speaking action adventure is designed to exclude RPG elements, as nearly all rpgs have adventure elements to them. Likewise Action games have their distinction to exclude adventure elements.
Action - Progress in the game requires skill, dexterity, and/or timing of some kind
Adventure - Progress in the game requires exploring and visiting certain areas of the map until others become unlocked (typically through inventory or story event).
RPG - Progress in the game is dictated by statistics and choices (aka planning) during level ups more than skillfull play in the moment
Practically every game boils down to these three broad mechanics.
Didn't they say they'd be too busy to attend? Don't remember the reason why but I'm pretty sure they said something about being too busy to attend the event
Congrats on the Game of the Year nomination. Are you guys going to LA?
William Pellen: Maybe not. We’re pretty busy.
So if you win, you’ll have to record a video message or something, because you won’t be able to take the stage.
Ari Gibson: This year I think we’re safe. I think Expedition 33 — it’s exceptional and broadly palatable. Whereas we’re on that knife’s edge, where it appeals to some and infuriates others.
the stated reason for not going was "We're pretty busy"
Even they know E33 is a "broadly palatable" game. Meaning more ppl will like it coz it's easy as heck. Silksong is for those who have endurance and perseverance.
I find this debate about difficulty completely pointless. I don't see anyone complaining about the difficulty of Sekiro, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, etc., which are games that follow the idea of not having a difficulty selector.
I also think Clair Obscure is simply better in almost every aspect.
I don't see anyone complaining about the difficulty of Sekiro, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, etc.
Uhh.... What? Difficulty and the lack of an easy mode in souls games is one of the biggest perennial debates in gaming, second only to debates about "wokeness"
Also, EC33 is a great game. I'm not sure how I feel about the "Debut Indie" category, but I do think it deserved GOTY and I'm happy it got it's flowers
E33 is not better. 1. Straight line exploration. 2. Parry to win. you can infinitely parry and win. No need to use supereffective moves. just parry parry parry. 3. Voice acting is so good no one is seeing the story is mid. It's forcefully trying to make you cry. Did not work on me. 4. realistic graphics is not art style. 5. Music is good. I prefer classical music. But this is a preference not criticism. 6. Irritating characters: Esquie, Monocco and Gestrals. mostly.
That's your opinion too that E33 is the best. It's not. and that's coming from someone who loves jrpg. I live for jrpgs. and yet Silksong has exceeded expectations as a sequel and the best release this year. maybe it's not for you. you sound like someone who will give up and run at the first sight of difficulty.
These industry award things promote celebrate quality and popularity. They might seem a little foo foo, but they strengthen the culture of a thing, and improves the whole industry.
Team Cherry is kind of in a struck by lightning lucky position. They just do exactly what they want and are set for life without needing to take part in any of the real life culture building that's just required of most people.
It's also why they got away with playing dead for 2 years instead of communicating with their fanbase.
Good for them, I guess, but their total absence from any of the politics and pr and everything else wouldn't be sustainable if everybody did it.
you are looking at it wrong the reason there was little to no communication is because team cherry isn't the social type i suspect award ceremonies in general don't appeal to them they do their thing make their game and work on it in the shadows and i think the majority of the community accepted that especially with how small the team is communication would only limit their creativity. atleast thats how i see it.
I agree. I don't think they really care about attending. It's a hassle at the very least to travel to the US right now, and also even more of a head ache all the way from Australia.
Isn't it only an honorary title that doesn't mean anything at all anyway? It's not like any of the games nominated need more publicity, they already peaked when they came out.
The meaning of any award is subjective. Being recognized for your craft by your peers, not by your customers, feels amazing; not to mention that accolades help fund raising for future games.
I mean, are they your peers? A lot of the panel is publications not studios. Funding is definetely on the money tho... uh, which team cherry actually don't care about either at least.
Yes and no. It's not black and white. Some fans are peers; some publishers have no clue how games are made. But given that it's the defacto industry awards, I would say the awards do means something different to the devs than the fans
They released regular development updates for several years before going radio silent. That last little bit of radio silence is what I was referring to.
Team Cherry is in fucking Adelaide, Australia, any employee attending the game awards is basically taking themself away from their family and out of commission at work for a week or more between flight time and jetlag.
I mean it was reported that TGA only pay for 2 tickets to the event so they would've had to cost the travel, stay and the missing tickets to waste 4 hours on an event they knew they were not winning anything in so I get their reason for not attending.
Plenty of other indie studios do this, Indie devs will disappear for years at a time, because they know we'll wait, and we know they will deliver. Not every game can have yearly updates on how things are going, and it's quite normal for indie devs to just do the work instead of worrying about PR.
Which they were right about. And honestly, what if they weren't, and you were a judge? Would you change your vote based on knowing they weren't attending?
It's just a meaningless term at this point. The description says "outside the usual publisher system", despite the fact that when you hear "indie game" you think "small team with low budget" not "multimillion dollar project by giant dev team".
If you go by the publisher definition then BG3 is an indie game...
Every game on the indie list other than ball x pit was a multimillion dollar project by a small-smallish sized team assisted by 100s of outsourced devs.
Don’t believe me? Look at the credits for the games. Every team may have had a small main group but they all got help from outsourcing to a large degree
Nobody knows for sure, depending on each person, some would say that as long as you don't have any external publisher then you count as an Indie, which would make Pokemon games indie by that definition.
Some by budget, but that would delete even Silksong from that list.
Others by quantity, but as other people have pointed out, E33 has around 30 people as the core team and a lot of subcontracted companies that do QA and testing.
Because of how vague it is, it's free of interpretation, if someone says it's indie and someone says it isn't both are correct and incorrect.
Too much metacommentary to pinpoint the exact intention behind it, honestly
To me it read as "we all originally assumed you'd win every category solely because of the impossible hype train Silksong came riding in on. But hey look, there actually are some things everyone agreed you slayed at"
It was kinda funny how he said that as if they didn’t blast through 4 different award announcements without so much as a pause on multiple occasions between the slew of game trailers that was this awards show lol they even announced best indie during the pre-show.
Yea, especially considering that later the “100% voted by players” award was won by some random game that no one has heard of, I can see them trying to make it sound like it’s not rigged early on
Edit: To people saying “They have a huge playerbase” they have by far the smallest playerbase out of every game in the category. I did check
As a genshin player, we usually get a mail in game about how the game got selected and some rewards about it, it didnt happen this year so I assume alot of us just skipped.
The majority of their players are Chinese, playing on mobile, so if ur using steam numbers, thats just a small minority of their playerbase.
Using steam numbers for these sorts of games is useless, its only the small global playerbase that uses it, the actual majority of the playerbase is mostly on mobile, or the Chinese client.
Where did you get your numbers from? If it's from Steam that number is not accurate as Wuthering Waves has both it's own launcher which most players on PC use and a mobile app which even more of the player base plays on. Wuthering Waves has by far the most active players on the list minus Genshin.
I think the worst part about this year is the fact that Expedition 33 was in the indie game category. I think thats extremely unfair since they are an AA studio with 30+ people working on it, compared to something like silksong that only had 3 people work on it. Its like putting a featherweight against middleweight. Its just not fair. Vote me down all you want. Its true. I'm glad people like it but yall glaze every single thing about it. Great game. But not an indie. Silksong should have won indie imo. (Hades 2 was great as well)
It's simply not an indie game in any capacity. Giant budget and giant dev team. Blue Prince was one guy. Silksong was 3 people. This time next year they're gonna nominate call of duty for best indie game.
I love Silksong, and its true that team cherry has 3 people, but I think the budgets are more or less equal having in mind how much Hollow Knight sold, no?
The entire game is based on a historical Italian art technique called Chiaroscuro. And given that they translated it perfectly into a video game? Its deserved.
This shit is so dumb man, play the game there is a ton of amazing inspired art and design. Unironically I think the counter jerk against realistic art styles actually makes people just see high polygon counts and immediately assume it’s slop
you are right. The art of our universe is so good. maybe there is a universe out there with art style of Van Gogh paintings or Silksong style universe. But no matter what we have the best art style in our universe. Hence E33 has better art direction than any other game this year.
From what I hear it’s got pretty amazing graphics and a nice story, but average at best gameplay for it’s genre. But I haven’t even watched anything more than just short clips.
I'd say the gameplay is pretty unique for the genre; the parry system hasn't really been done in a turn based RPG before (some might argue for good reason; it does have a massive influence on the rest of the game's design), and each character that you get has distinct gameplay, much moreso than the generic "mage gets magic spells, warrior hits hard, cleric has healing and buff spells" that you see in your typical generic jRPG.
You can dislike the game, but it's absolutely doing something new in the genre.
Throwing an edit in here before I get 500 replies saying "um akchually" — the perfect parry in E33 is different from the active block of Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, or Sea of Stars. Having a mechanism for completely avoiding all damage has serious ramifications on the encounter design. Whether those ramifications are beneficial or detrimental, it still has a huge effect on the game design, large enough to say it's not the same as an active block.
Yes, and Super Mario RPG did it a few years before. I threw in an edit to elaborate on what I mean, but the perfect parry completely blocking damage has major ramifications across the entire combat system, to the point that it really does stand out.
paper mario has a superguard which completely negates damage and occasionally provides damage back depending on the attack
granted, it is pretty difficult to pull off, usually being a few frames at most - i haven't played e33 yet but i'd assume their parry system is a bit more loose to account for that being a more core mechanic compared to what's in pm
I actually think the game would have been better without it.
Like, there was no reason to build into anything other than pure offense unless you were trying to be gimmicky. It took away the “Strategy” element of the game entirely once you were good enough at it.
I don't think Paper Mario has the perfect parry, blocking all damage system, but the Mario & Luigi games have such a feature, where you can parry your enemies attack, taking no damage yourself and even having the ability to counterattack. I believe it's been around since Superstar Saga, so around 2002~2003 on the GBA. Though, the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games are really outstanding in the rpg field, as they were able to make turn based combat more engaging and entertaining, innovating on mechanics and having strong and deep stories. From what I've seen, E33 reminds me of final fantasy graphics and Paper Mario with the companion system.
You know what, fair enough. I never played the M&L games, even though I've been interested in them since they carried on the legacy of SMRPG better than the Paper Mario games, but I never got to play them.
Actually there’s a turn based rpg game with a parry system already that came out last year and won some awards called “sea of stars”. It’s slightly different but a turn based rpg parry system nonetheless with timing the parries yourself. So there is little it does that it wholly unique but people will claim otherwise because they want to hype it up which if fair enuf but personally I can’t fathom how it wins in art direction or music when it ultimately looks about like any other unreal engine 3d rpg game and at most reaches the creativity in designs of games like Elden ring or similar titles. Music is much more subjective but I personally think silksong takes that as well.
I’m not gonna be crazy and say it’s an industry plant cause no shit it’s just another game, but it’s absolutely been hyped beyond its station and while it’s an excellent game I think it’s been overblown how ground breaking it is, and ultimately it will win any award it’s in because the voting committee has decided to do so. It would be very different results if it was all public voting I think
I disagree; while it's not a massively revolutionary change, I think the decision to make parries and blocks completely negate damage has informed all aspects of combat design far moreso than the active blocks on Sea of Stars or Super Mario RPG.
I also disagree that E33 is just another Unreal game for art design. You can pull any screenshot from E33 and immediately know what game it is from the art direction. Whether it's better than Hades 2 or Skong is debatable, but I wouldn't undersell the art direction on E33. I'd say the same about the music, personally for me E33's soundtrack is phenomenal, one of the very few video game soundtracks I could listen to as an album. But as you said, that's entirely subjective.
Fair points, and yeah it’s entirely subjective. Personally I feel different about the art but I listen to skong music on Spotify constantly too so to each their own. But for the sea of stars thing I brought it up and acknowledged it’s not entirely the same thing, but as someone who’s 100%’d that game it’s a fundamental necessity to beat the games harder content and even easier content, to master the parry system. And you get certain buffs and bonuses sometimes if parry successfully.
My main issue was with people acting like this is a revolutionary never before conceptualized system and game when that’s not true. It’s a phenomenal game and one of the best of the last few years but I’d say that about hades 2 and silksong too so yeah.
But at the end of the day oh well ig, I’m most devastated I won’t get my 1600 primos for genshin😞
I can’t judge the game as I haven’t played it, but i just don’t see whats so special about it tbh. The gameplay looks boring and the character designs aside from the white monkey man thing look pretty mid, but that’s just me. I just pray to god silksong wins because I fucking love it. Both games are amazing(atleast I hear expedition 33 is) and I hate that the game awards puts these games together, mainly because it only serves to divide the gaming community.
I'm convinced E33 fans are illiterate... E33 had extremelly shitty narrative. It had a pretty good story, don't get me wrong, but if you actually read what it said in the goty page under the best narrative, you're voting for the game with the best storytelling, not the game that had your favourite story. E33's whole story was given to us pre-chewed through cutscenes, which is objectively the most banal way of doing it. There is 0 enviromental storytelling, you don't ever get to see your choices impacting the enviorment throughout the story and all the areas are simply "lore islands" ie. their existence don't affect their surroundings and the lore at all. For example in Silksong (since we're in HK subreddit) every area affects it's surroundings. You can see them affecting each other in small ways. In E33 however you randomaly have a snowy peak covered in ice that doesn't affect it's surroundings at all. It just sits there. Everything in E33 is simply made to look pretty to the player without any depth.
In E33 however you randomaly have a snowy peak covered in ice that doesn't affect it's surroundings at all. It just sits there. Everything in E33 is simply made to look pretty to the player without any depth.
It's a canvas.... The world it's literally a canvas... You find this out only later, your whole complaint works against you. "This area makes no sense and doesn't affect it's surroundings at all", this is fine to think while you play the game, it makes you wonder what the hell "the fracture" was to have caused things like this, but near the ending you find out it wasn't that, the world is wacky because it was painted by a young boy.
I could go on, like saying that there are many more details in the world like Nevrons eating mountains, nobody points it out explicitly but you later can figure it out, or that the storytelling actually manages to hide the big twists without having to lie to the player and making it so that in retrospect a lot of stuff were shown to the player without us realizing
Silksong deserved so much more. Just so happened to come out the one year a game could beat it. I hope they don’t care too much about these accolades and just know they have an amazing catalog of games with Hollow Knight and Silksong
Eh, I disagree with this. This year's GotY was honestly pretty weak as far as nominees go. I knew E33 would win but it wasn't a truly innovative genre or medium defining game the way something like Baldur's Gate 3 or Elden Ring were.
Well, yeah E33 it's not innovative, but Baldur's gate is Divinity:OS 2 with a D&D skin, and to be fair Elden Ring doesn't do anything new neither.
Those are all fantastic games, but being innovative or defining a genre is not what these awards are looking for. It more like a 'this is the game/games that defined THIS year'.
BG3 is Divinity: OS with the most freedom of player choice of a CRPG ever made and if you disagree with this you're frankly delusional.
Elden Ring similarly took what had to that point a very structured and fairly linear genre of games and expanded it to being probably the freest and most open world action RPG/soulslike made to that point.
They also define and represent their genres far better as being up to that point largely the pinnacle of their genres. Still are really. Another example of one such game being probably Red Dead Redemption 2.
I get you are bitter it beat your favorites but come on now. There is no reason to downplay just how amazing it is. Through i would like to hear what game you think have better writing. Personally i think its best written game since Witcher 3
The lesson to get from this is: instead of making dozens of good soundtracks, hire a talented person to make you 3 dope songs, then reuse those 3 songs from the prelude till the ending over and over again but every time put a small sound filter so that the music illiterate people don't notice that they've been listening to the same song for the past 40 hours on repeat.
The lesson to learn is that if you want to win all the awards at the game awards, make one popular game and you'll just get everything, even fucking voice acting.
Yeah, as much as I like Jennifer English she was NOT the best voice acting perfomance of this year. And E33 getting 3 out of the 5 nominations while KCD2 got none? I don't call competitions rigged just because my favourite didn't win, but come on... Both Hans and Henry had much better voice acting than anyone in E33. Just because one has a dramatic/tragic tone while the other has a comedic doesn't, or rather shouldn't, mean that one of them deserves 3 nominations while the other gets none.
reuse those 3 songs from the prelude till the ending over and over again but every time put a small sound filter
At least half of those soundtracks are the same. For example, show me the difference between Maelle and Alicia. They literally reposted the exact same song and changed the name of it. In Silksong they reuse some soundtracks too. For example Moss Mother and Pinstress have the same soundtrack. But the difference is they didn't reposted it and pretend they have 8 hours of original music. They simply posted it as "Strive". And unlike Alicia, you only listen to this song twice; once at the very start of the game and once again at Act 3. The same goes for Bell Beast and Bell Eater. You don't listen to Bell Beast soundtrack 10 times during one Act like you do with Alicia. During Act 1 in E33 90% time you long rest you listen to Alicia for at least 5 minutes because the cutscene involves Maelle and they made only one soundtrack for their main character. Imagine if every single time Hornet spoke in Skong they played her theme from HK.
I'm not against the same music being used for the same character. It's actually very cool if it's done in moderation like only during their important moments once every 10 hours of playtime or something. I'm talking against saying "The game has 8 hours of soundtracks" and it's just the same few songs reposted over and over again. And on top of it all, I don't think Alicia and Maelle even have any differences between them. It legit sounds like the exact same soundtrack, note for note. They just copy pasted it and reposted it, not even put an audio filter on it. What's the point of posting the same song multiple times when it's the same exact audio?
Come on now no need to be bitter because it beat your favorite. Both fantastic games with amazing soundtracks. Hell E33 spend like 10 weeks topping classical music charts when it came out and Une vie à t'aimer is just an all timer.
I'm not saying E33 had bad music. But objectively speaking it didn't have *many* good music, just a few bangers; while Silksong didn't really have any bangers of the same caliber of E33's best musics but instead almost every soundtrack was good. That's like comparing two chefs, where one of them prepared a good soup, amazing main dish, great sides and desserts etc. while the other made an amazing soup but then for some reason decided to re-serve the same soup as main and side dish as well, then finally finish with an original pretty mediocre dessert.
Silksong barely had any bad music while E33 barely had any distinct music. It's highs were higher but also lows were lower and it tried to hide that fact by reusing assets. No matter how good you design something, when you put it in front of the player every 3 seconds, it gets annoying after a while.
As much as I loved Silksong's soundtrack, I thought Hades 2 was even better. Very little comes close to Olympus Aflame, the 45 second sax section in a certain encounter would beat entire games' soundtracks on its own. Can't comment on E:33 yet though.
What? Lorien Testard killed this year. What he made wasn't just the best soundtrack of the year, but a very strong contender for best soundtrack in history, of any medium.
I say this as someone who loves Silksong's music, and thinks Silksong is overall the best game this year.
crazy glazing when keichi okabe has yet to keel over and die. So long as that man is able to release tracks for yoko taro games, he'll still be the goat
Robbed implies one was far ahead of the other nominees, but the Ex33 ost by Testard is also exceptional. Could’ve gone either way. Or to Darren Korb for that matter.
Hands down Silksong have a fantastic soundtrack and would have won nearly any year. But Expedition 33 is just and all timer. Try listening to Une vie à t'aimer. Might be the best video song ever made.
Happy that Hades 2 and Silksong got something, but I'd be curious to learn their (edit: as in TGA) distinction between award categories i.e. action vs action adventure
action is more combat focused than exploration focused I assume. You can't really lose your way in Hades 2 so it doesn't qualify as adventure, Silksong however, you've got multiple path to the same place, you can lose yourself, uncover secret areas, etc... Exploration is probably the key difference.
No, action game means you move the character you play manually. Things like attack, jump etc.
A turn based RPG is an example of a non action game.
I would also argue that Silksong is about exploration first and foremost. It is a Metroidvania after all which is a genre about exploring a non linear map, "search action" they call it sometimes.
Hades is a roguelite. They can be everything from action to turn based card game. And they are about playing the same levels over and over and dying a lot, because they're very hard tuned on purpose. getting a little further each time (hopefully xP).
So no roguelikes/lites are not considered adventure games.
I think that looking at the games that were nominated kinda explains it. Action games are the very offense focused, tona of cool sick moves and enemies, kill everything kind of games, while action adventure seems to be closer to "adventure game with a lot of action"
Action-Adventure has long been the realm of Zelda, Metroid etc. The distinction to me is basically, if you take away the action, is it now like a point and click adventure game with puzzles stuff? It’s action-adventure. If there’s nothing left it’s action.
Generally speaking action adventure is designed to exclude RPG elements, as nearly all rpgs have adventure elements to them. Likewise Action games have their distinction to exclude adventure elements.
Action - Progress in the game requires skill, dexterity, and/or timing of some kind
Adventure - Progress in the game requires exploring and visiting certain areas of the map until others become unlocked (typically through inventory or story event).
RPG - Progress in the game is dictated by statistics and choices (aka planning) during level ups more than skillfull play in the moment
Practically every game boils down to these three broad mechanics.
lol the “see you guys did win something” i felt like that was a little comment towards the people claiming it’s rigged.
Think it was moreso their justification for not attending the show: they didn't think they won anything and probably told Geoff ahead of time🤷🏿♂️
Their recent interview hinted at this i think
Didn't they say they'd be too busy to attend? Don't remember the reason why but I'm pretty sure they said something about being too busy to attend the event
they said E33 gonna win so they dont bother attending
the quote from the interview:
the stated reason for not going was "We're pretty busy"
They know they made a divisive game, and are happy with it. Unfathomably based
Even they know E33 is a "broadly palatable" game. Meaning more ppl will like it coz it's easy as heck. Silksong is for those who have endurance and perseverance.
They targeted silksong gamers. Silksong gamers.
You can like one without putting down the other lol
LOL.
I find this debate about difficulty completely pointless. I don't see anyone complaining about the difficulty of Sekiro, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, etc., which are games that follow the idea of not having a difficulty selector.
I also think Clair Obscure is simply better in almost every aspect.
Uhh.... What? Difficulty and the lack of an easy mode in souls games is one of the biggest perennial debates in gaming, second only to debates about "wokeness"
Also, EC33 is a great game. I'm not sure how I feel about the "Debut Indie" category, but I do think it deserved GOTY and I'm happy it got it's flowers
E33 is not better. 1. Straight line exploration. 2. Parry to win. you can infinitely parry and win. No need to use supereffective moves. just parry parry parry. 3. Voice acting is so good no one is seeing the story is mid. It's forcefully trying to make you cry. Did not work on me. 4. realistic graphics is not art style. 5. Music is good. I prefer classical music. But this is a preference not criticism. 6. Irritating characters: Esquie, Monocco and Gestrals. mostly.
Okay, that's your opinion, it's just not a game for you. But it is, in fact, the best game of the year.
That's your opinion too that E33 is the best. It's not. and that's coming from someone who loves jrpg. I live for jrpgs. and yet Silksong has exceeded expectations as a sequel and the best release this year. maybe it's not for you. you sound like someone who will give up and run at the first sight of difficulty.
Thats your opinion, unlike my opinion, which is fact.
Saying it’s the best game of the year cause of a random awards show who is obviously paid is really funny to me.
Which is kindof.... I don't know. Not cool.
These industry award things
promotecelebrate quality and popularity. They might seem a little foo foo, but they strengthen the culture of a thing, and improves the whole industry.Team Cherry is kind of in a struck by lightning lucky position. They just do exactly what they want and are set for life without needing to take part in any of the real life culture building that's just required of most people.
It's also why they got away with playing dead for 2 years instead of communicating with their fanbase.
Good for them, I guess, but their total absence from any of the politics and pr and everything else wouldn't be sustainable if everybody did it.
you are looking at it wrong the reason there was little to no communication is because team cherry isn't the social type i suspect award ceremonies in general don't appeal to them they do their thing make their game and work on it in the shadows and i think the majority of the community accepted that especially with how small the team is communication would only limit their creativity. atleast thats how i see it.
I agree. I don't think they really care about attending. It's a hassle at the very least to travel to the US right now, and also even more of a head ache all the way from Australia.
You know what? Fair fuckin' dinkim, can't argue with that.
It's an event put on by a large company to run advertising. Team Cherry, and any other dev team, has zero obligations to attend.
Isn't it only an honorary title that doesn't mean anything at all anyway? It's not like any of the games nominated need more publicity, they already peaked when they came out.
The meaning of any award is subjective. Being recognized for your craft by your peers, not by your customers, feels amazing; not to mention that accolades help fund raising for future games.
I mean, are they your peers? A lot of the panel is publications not studios. Funding is definetely on the money tho... uh, which team cherry actually don't care about either at least.
Yes and no. It's not black and white. Some fans are peers; some publishers have no clue how games are made. But given that it's the defacto industry awards, I would say the awards do means something different to the devs than the fans
Sort of but GOTY award significantly boosts sales of that game. It’s why most companies release a GOTY edition.
For sure!
….
2 years?
….
Someone get this man a pillow and tell him what year it is
3 years, a short 5 second teaser and another 2 years maybe.
Yeah wasn't it like 7 since the initial Silksong announcement?
They released regular development updates for several years before going radio silent. That last little bit of radio silence is what I was referring to.
Team Cherry is in fucking Adelaide, Australia, any employee attending the game awards is basically taking themself away from their family and out of commission at work for a week or more between flight time and jetlag.
I mean it was reported that TGA only pay for 2 tickets to the event so they would've had to cost the travel, stay and the missing tickets to waste 4 hours on an event they knew they were not winning anything in so I get their reason for not attending.
Plenty of other indie studios do this, Indie devs will disappear for years at a time, because they know we'll wait, and we know they will deliver. Not every game can have yearly updates on how things are going, and it's quite normal for indie devs to just do the work instead of worrying about PR.
That was the reason, but they also said they didn't think they were going to win because of clair obscur.
Which they were right about. And honestly, what if they weren't, and you were a judge? Would you change your vote based on knowing they weren't attending?
I don’t think they are that fussed. I’m sure, by any metric that matters to them, they’ve already won
I really don't think people should take that remark too seriously. Many Australians are unwilling to travel to the US right now due to current events.
Also, this stuff doesn't matter at all. The game awards are like the Oscars, it's not about the art it's a popularity contest
yeah going to the US is just not a good idea. Especially with the new 5 year social media thing.
I mean TC specifically doesnt have much to worry about their social media history being checked, as it is almost completely blank.
Everything else is still shit though.
Why are the VGA's being held in a third world country in the first place?
Yes. this
It was towards team cherry who said they expect clair obscur was gonna win everything. Part of why they didnt show
Turned out to be extremely accurate, it even managed to win the indie awards despite not being an indie game.
What qualifies an indie game? I'm curious as well
It's just a meaningless term at this point. The description says "outside the usual publisher system", despite the fact that when you hear "indie game" you think "small team with low budget" not "multimillion dollar project by giant dev team".
If you go by the publisher definition then BG3 is an indie game...
Every game on the indie list other than ball x pit was a multimillion dollar project by a small-smallish sized team assisted by 100s of outsourced devs.
Don’t believe me? Look at the credits for the games. Every team may have had a small main group but they all got help from outsourcing to a large degree
Nobody knows for sure, depending on each person, some would say that as long as you don't have any external publisher then you count as an Indie, which would make Pokemon games indie by that definition.
Some by budget, but that would delete even Silksong from that list.
Others by quantity, but as other people have pointed out, E33 has around 30 people as the core team and a lot of subcontracted companies that do QA and testing.
Because of how vague it is, it's free of interpretation, if someone says it's indie and someone says it isn't both are correct and incorrect.
https://imgur.com/a/WEbun4j
Too much metacommentary to pinpoint the exact intention behind it, honestly
To me it read as "we all originally assumed you'd win every category solely because of the impossible hype train Silksong came riding in on. But hey look, there actually are some things everyone agreed you slayed at"
It was kinda funny how he said that as if they didn’t blast through 4 different award announcements without so much as a pause on multiple occasions between the slew of game trailers that was this awards show lol they even announced best indie during the pre-show.
Yea, especially considering that later the “100% voted by players” award was won by some random game that no one has heard of, I can see them trying to make it sound like it’s not rigged early on
Edit: To people saying “They have a huge playerbase” they have by far the smallest playerbase out of every game in the category. I did check
Nah Wuthering Waves is a gatcha game. It has an absolute legion of devoted gooners willing to give it infinite votes.
If we want to say “It’s a gacha game so makes sense” genshin impact was on the list and it’s a much bigger gacha game.
As a genshin player, we usually get a mail in game about how the game got selected and some rewards about it, it didnt happen this year so I assume alot of us just skipped.
wuthering waves is a slop game but dont try to act like that shit doesnt have a massive playerbase
I looked into the player base before making my comment.
It has half the active player bases of Silksong, and has by far the lowest active playerbase out of all the games on the list
they give players free in game stuff for voting
That makes more sense
It also has 10m+ downloads on the play store. Steam is the smallest user base.
This is completely ignoring the chinese market that does not download the game from the play store.
Half the active player base.. On STEAM maybe.
You really think Steam is the primary market for gacha games?
The majority of their players are Chinese, playing on mobile, so if ur using steam numbers, thats just a small minority of their playerbase.
Using steam numbers for these sorts of games is useless, its only the small global playerbase that uses it, the actual majority of the playerbase is mostly on mobile, or the Chinese client.
Steam is not the only source to play WuWa. They are on Epic as well as have their own launcher for PC besides being on Xbox and mobile as well
Where did you get your numbers from? If it's from Steam that number is not accurate as Wuthering Waves has both it's own launcher which most players on PC use and a mobile app which even more of the player base plays on. Wuthering Waves has by far the most active players on the list minus Genshin.
Wuthering waves vote was botted because if it wins players choice then everyone in-game gets like some new reward, same thing with genshin
As it should
So fcking glad this wasnt a silkpost. 🥳
Great! Deserved!
Indeed
Well I guess they get 3 wins most likely, since I didn’t expect that
I think the worst part about this year is the fact that Expedition 33 was in the indie game category. I think thats extremely unfair since they are an AA studio with 30+ people working on it, compared to something like silksong that only had 3 people work on it. Its like putting a featherweight against middleweight. Its just not fair. Vote me down all you want. Its true. I'm glad people like it but yall glaze every single thing about it. Great game. But not an indie. Silksong should have won indie imo. (Hades 2 was great as well)
It's simply not an indie game in any capacity. Giant budget and giant dev team. Blue Prince was one guy. Silksong was 3 people. This time next year they're gonna nominate call of duty for best indie game.
I love Silksong, and its true that team cherry has 3 people, but I think the budgets are more or less equal having in mind how much Hollow Knight sold, no?
We know the budget of the original game, because it was funded on kickstarter, and silksong's scale isn't significantly different.
For reference, expedition 33 has 240x that budget, and more than 10x the number of people working on it.
True. Best Indie Debut was just insane. The other nominees were robbed.
Yeah like I haven't played blue prince but ive heard so many good things about it.
hardly a competition lmao
now for game of the year
We both know who's winning it bud
Its Industry Plant 33
It’s only people who never played the game who say shit like this
Brother,E33 winning Best Art Direction is insane,at this point It isnt about "me not playing The game",its Just pointing shit out
The entire game is based on a historical Italian art technique called Chiaroscuro. And given that they translated it perfectly into a video game? Its deserved.
sorry ironically I didnt see the art in E33. It was just UE5 rendered graphics.
Even though its art direction is fucking amazing? Once again just shit talking without having played the game
realistic graphics is NOT artstyle.
It still has amazing artstyle though??
Someone finally put it into words
Art Direction is when the game looks like a cartoon, the more cartoon it is the more it has art direction
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you did not play the game
This shit is so dumb man, play the game there is a ton of amazing inspired art and design. Unironically I think the counter jerk against realistic art styles actually makes people just see high polygon counts and immediately assume it’s slop
You two don't know fucking anything about art direction
maybe if you comment "industry plant 33" one more time it'll be true, just once more I promise
Seriously. I didnt know realistic graphics was an art style.
That's how art styles work.....
you are right. The art of our universe is so good. maybe there is a universe out there with art style of Van Gogh paintings or Silksong style universe. But no matter what we have the best art style in our universe. Hence E33 has better art direction than any other game this year.
realism is an art style dipshit
realism is realism. there is no art shiteeater.
I playrd both E33 and Silksong. Silksong is leagues better than E33. In every term. Even in music.
i find hollow knight and silksong to be visually fine. but not that impressive
I already see humans irl I do not want to see realistic graphics in my games.
Dogshit take i fear
From my pov saying E33 is better than Silksong is even worse than dogshite. You are in love with the voice acting not the game. Let that sink in.
Lol
From what I hear it’s got pretty amazing graphics and a nice story, but average at best gameplay for it’s genre. But I haven’t even watched anything more than just short clips.
I'd say the gameplay is pretty unique for the genre; the parry system hasn't really been done in a turn based RPG before (some might argue for good reason; it does have a massive influence on the rest of the game's design), and each character that you get has distinct gameplay, much moreso than the generic "mage gets magic spells, warrior hits hard, cleric has healing and buff spells" that you see in your typical generic jRPG.
You can dislike the game, but it's absolutely doing something new in the genre.
Throwing an edit in here before I get 500 replies saying "um akchually" — the perfect parry in E33 is different from the active block of Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, or Sea of Stars. Having a mechanism for completely avoiding all damage has serious ramifications on the encounter design. Whether those ramifications are beneficial or detrimental, it still has a huge effect on the game design, large enough to say it's not the same as an active block.
Paper mario did timed RPG mechanics 25 years ago.
Yes, and Super Mario RPG did it a few years before. I threw in an edit to elaborate on what I mean, but the perfect parry completely blocking damage has major ramifications across the entire combat system, to the point that it really does stand out.
paper mario has a superguard which completely negates damage and occasionally provides damage back depending on the attack
granted, it is pretty difficult to pull off, usually being a few frames at most - i haven't played e33 yet but i'd assume their parry system is a bit more loose to account for that being a more core mechanic compared to what's in pm
I actually think the game would have been better without it.
Like, there was no reason to build into anything other than pure offense unless you were trying to be gimmicky. It took away the “Strategy” element of the game entirely once you were good enough at it.
Yeah, the system being different doesn't necessarily mean the system is without flaws. And the way they did flying enemies was a huge miss as well.
I'm not here to glaze E33, but I think it does deserve recognition for trying something different.
I don't think Paper Mario has the perfect parry, blocking all damage system, but the Mario & Luigi games have such a feature, where you can parry your enemies attack, taking no damage yourself and even having the ability to counterattack. I believe it's been around since Superstar Saga, so around 2002~2003 on the GBA. Though, the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games are really outstanding in the rpg field, as they were able to make turn based combat more engaging and entertaining, innovating on mechanics and having strong and deep stories. From what I've seen, E33 reminds me of final fantasy graphics and Paper Mario with the companion system.
You know what, fair enough. I never played the M&L games, even though I've been interested in them since they carried on the legacy of SMRPG better than the Paper Mario games, but I never got to play them.
Actually there’s a turn based rpg game with a parry system already that came out last year and won some awards called “sea of stars”. It’s slightly different but a turn based rpg parry system nonetheless with timing the parries yourself. So there is little it does that it wholly unique but people will claim otherwise because they want to hype it up which if fair enuf but personally I can’t fathom how it wins in art direction or music when it ultimately looks about like any other unreal engine 3d rpg game and at most reaches the creativity in designs of games like Elden ring or similar titles. Music is much more subjective but I personally think silksong takes that as well.
I’m not gonna be crazy and say it’s an industry plant cause no shit it’s just another game, but it’s absolutely been hyped beyond its station and while it’s an excellent game I think it’s been overblown how ground breaking it is, and ultimately it will win any award it’s in because the voting committee has decided to do so. It would be very different results if it was all public voting I think
I disagree; while it's not a massively revolutionary change, I think the decision to make parries and blocks completely negate damage has informed all aspects of combat design far moreso than the active blocks on Sea of Stars or Super Mario RPG.
I also disagree that E33 is just another Unreal game for art design. You can pull any screenshot from E33 and immediately know what game it is from the art direction. Whether it's better than Hades 2 or Skong is debatable, but I wouldn't undersell the art direction on E33. I'd say the same about the music, personally for me E33's soundtrack is phenomenal, one of the very few video game soundtracks I could listen to as an album. But as you said, that's entirely subjective.
Fair points, and yeah it’s entirely subjective. Personally I feel different about the art but I listen to skong music on Spotify constantly too so to each their own. But for the sea of stars thing I brought it up and acknowledged it’s not entirely the same thing, but as someone who’s 100%’d that game it’s a fundamental necessity to beat the games harder content and even easier content, to master the parry system. And you get certain buffs and bonuses sometimes if parry successfully.
My main issue was with people acting like this is a revolutionary never before conceptualized system and game when that’s not true. It’s a phenomenal game and one of the best of the last few years but I’d say that about hades 2 and silksong too so yeah.
But at the end of the day oh well ig, I’m most devastated I won’t get my 1600 primos for genshin😞
E33 has good music but nothing beats the classical music of Silksong.
Brother..... Many of the maRioPGs allow you to avoid all damage with good timing.
That parry in the turn based completely makes using moves redundant. You can just parry forever and win the fight. No need for strategies.
That’s good! Maybe it does deserve it after all. I just prefaced with “from what I hear.”
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They meant the platypus
I played E33 and loved it. Silksong is probably my personal GOTY, but E33 is THE game of the year.
I've played it.
It's an industry plant.
Overhyped as fuck
🤣
E33 winning best RPG when KCD2 literally was in the nominations is insane. KCD2 was robbed ngl. It fully deserved that award.
Seeing that they win so much I don't even want to play it
They hating but you right
You seem salty
I can’t judge the game as I haven’t played it, but i just don’t see whats so special about it tbh. The gameplay looks boring and the character designs aside from the white monkey man thing look pretty mid, but that’s just me. I just pray to god silksong wins because I fucking love it. Both games are amazing(atleast I hear expedition 33 is) and I hate that the game awards puts these games together, mainly because it only serves to divide the gaming community.
You’ll never see what’s special about it unless you play it. It won narrative for a reason.
I'm convinced E33 fans are illiterate... E33 had extremelly shitty narrative. It had a pretty good story, don't get me wrong, but if you actually read what it said in the goty page under the best narrative, you're voting for the game with the best storytelling, not the game that had your favourite story. E33's whole story was given to us pre-chewed through cutscenes, which is objectively the most banal way of doing it. There is 0 enviromental storytelling, you don't ever get to see your choices impacting the enviorment throughout the story and all the areas are simply "lore islands" ie. their existence don't affect their surroundings and the lore at all. For example in Silksong (since we're in HK subreddit) every area affects it's surroundings. You can see them affecting each other in small ways. In E33 however you randomaly have a snowy peak covered in ice that doesn't affect it's surroundings at all. It just sits there. Everything in E33 is simply made to look pretty to the player without any depth.
It's a canvas.... The world it's literally a canvas... You find this out only later, your whole complaint works against you. "This area makes no sense and doesn't affect it's surroundings at all", this is fine to think while you play the game, it makes you wonder what the hell "the fracture" was to have caused things like this, but near the ending you find out it wasn't that, the world is wacky because it was painted by a young boy.
I could go on, like saying that there are many more details in the world like Nevrons eating mountains, nobody points it out explicitly but you later can figure it out, or that the storytelling actually manages to hide the big twists without having to lie to the player and making it so that in retrospect a lot of stuff were shown to the player without us realizing
Saltsong
Indiana jones is better than
Silksong deserved so much more. Just so happened to come out the one year a game could beat it. I hope they don’t care too much about these accolades and just know they have an amazing catalog of games with Hollow Knight and Silksong
I mean as much money as they made, the dudes who made it are rich af. Do not think they give a single fuck about an award.
Kinda funny as I hopped on to update my e33 I was thinking about how silksong shut everything down for a good few hours. That’s gotta feel good
Yup. Shutting down steam is insane. And to think Team Cherry is only a few people, there is way less people to split all that money with too.
Eh, I disagree with this. This year's GotY was honestly pretty weak as far as nominees go. I knew E33 would win but it wasn't a truly innovative genre or medium defining game the way something like Baldur's Gate 3 or Elden Ring were.
Well, yeah E33 it's not innovative, but Baldur's gate is Divinity:OS 2 with a D&D skin, and to be fair Elden Ring doesn't do anything new neither. Those are all fantastic games, but being innovative or defining a genre is not what these awards are looking for. It more like a 'this is the game/games that defined THIS year'.
BG3 is Divinity: OS with the most freedom of player choice of a CRPG ever made and if you disagree with this you're frankly delusional.
Elden Ring similarly took what had to that point a very structured and fairly linear genre of games and expanded it to being probably the freest and most open world action RPG/soulslike made to that point.
They also define and represent their genres far better as being up to that point largely the pinnacle of their genres. Still are really. Another example of one such game being probably Red Dead Redemption 2.
Yet E33 have a better story than both of those. And its probably gonna be the golden standard for video game stories from now on.
It's not even the golden standard for video game writing right now.
I get you are bitter it beat your favorites but come on now. There is no reason to downplay just how amazing it is. Through i would like to hear what game you think have better writing. Personally i think its best written game since Witcher 3
It definitely deserved best soundtrack as well. Christopher Larkin was robbed.
my thoughts too. the score for cogwork dancers was phenomenal. Larkin has made some of the best music for videogames out there
The lesson to get from this is: instead of making dozens of good soundtracks, hire a talented person to make you 3 dope songs, then reuse those 3 songs from the prelude till the ending over and over again but every time put a small sound filter so that the music illiterate people don't notice that they've been listening to the same song for the past 40 hours on repeat.
The lesson to learn is that if you want to win all the awards at the game awards, make one popular game and you'll just get everything, even fucking voice acting.
Yeah, as much as I like Jennifer English she was NOT the best voice acting perfomance of this year. And E33 getting 3 out of the 5 nominations while KCD2 got none? I don't call competitions rigged just because my favourite didn't win, but come on... Both Hans and Henry had much better voice acting than anyone in E33. Just because one has a dramatic/tragic tone while the other has a comedic doesn't, or rather shouldn't, mean that one of them deserves 3 nominations while the other gets none.
My man. It's ok to be bummed that your favorite game didn't win, but that's just a horrible take.
Come now, that's not exactly genuine. Expedition 33's soundtrack is over 8 hours long, that's not just 3 good songs on repeat.
At least half of those soundtracks are the same. For example, show me the difference between Maelle and Alicia. They literally reposted the exact same song and changed the name of it. In Silksong they reuse some soundtracks too. For example Moss Mother and Pinstress have the same soundtrack. But the difference is they didn't reposted it and pretend they have 8 hours of original music. They simply posted it as "Strive". And unlike Alicia, you only listen to this song twice; once at the very start of the game and once again at Act 3. The same goes for Bell Beast and Bell Eater. You don't listen to Bell Beast soundtrack 10 times during one Act like you do with Alicia. During Act 1 in E33 90% time you long rest you listen to Alicia for at least 5 minutes because the cutscene involves Maelle and they made only one soundtrack for their main character. Imagine if every single time Hornet spoke in Skong they played her theme from HK.
Maelle and Alicia is the same person. Maybe this is why the music is the same, just gessing.
Miiight want to spoiler tag this one
I'm not against the same music being used for the same character. It's actually very cool if it's done in moderation like only during their important moments once every 10 hours of playtime or something. I'm talking against saying "The game has 8 hours of soundtracks" and it's just the same few songs reposted over and over again. And on top of it all, I don't think Alicia and Maelle even have any differences between them. It legit sounds like the exact same soundtrack, note for note. They just copy pasted it and reposted it, not even put an audio filter on it. What's the point of posting the same song multiple times when it's the same exact audio?
Idk but there's like 3 or 4 songs that are recognizable since a lot of the osts are almost the same lol
Come on now no need to be bitter because it beat your favorite. Both fantastic games with amazing soundtracks. Hell E33 spend like 10 weeks topping classical music charts when it came out and Une vie à t'aimer is just an all timer.
I'm not saying E33 had bad music. But objectively speaking it didn't have *many* good music, just a few bangers; while Silksong didn't really have any bangers of the same caliber of E33's best musics but instead almost every soundtrack was good. That's like comparing two chefs, where one of them prepared a good soup, amazing main dish, great sides and desserts etc. while the other made an amazing soup but then for some reason decided to re-serve the same soup as main and side dish as well, then finally finish with an original pretty mediocre dessert.
Silksong barely had any bad music while E33 barely had any distinct music. It's highs were higher but also lows were lower and it tried to hide that fact by reusing assets. No matter how good you design something, when you put it in front of the player every 3 seconds, it gets annoying after a while.
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As much as I loved Silksong's soundtrack, I thought Hades 2 was even better. Very little comes close to Olympus Aflame, the 45 second sax section in a certain encounter would beat entire games' soundtracks on its own. Can't comment on E:33 yet though.
against lorien? definitely not that soundtrack is crazy good.
What? Lorien Testard killed this year. What he made wasn't just the best soundtrack of the year, but a very strong contender for best soundtrack in history, of any medium.
I say this as someone who loves Silksong's music, and thinks Silksong is overall the best game this year.
“but a very strong contender for best soundtrack in history, of any medium”
Ok I loved the soundtrack too but good grief man.
This is delusional.
Insane borderline delusional glaze man.
crazy glazing when keichi okabe has yet to keel over and die. So long as that man is able to release tracks for yoko taro games, he'll still be the goat
Best soundtrack throughout history?! Nah bruh. That is a little far-fetched tbh
Delusional
Robbed implies one was far ahead of the other nominees, but the Ex33 ost by Testard is also exceptional. Could’ve gone either way. Or to Darren Korb for that matter.
Naw. It was a two horse race between Hades 2 and E33. I personally would have probably gone for the former but E33 winning is understandable.
Hands down Silksong have a fantastic soundtrack and would have won nearly any year. But Expedition 33 is just and all timer. Try listening to Une vie à t'aimer. Might be the best video song ever made.
I'm glad they won something, but if anything they should have won best score. Really disappointed with that.
Something something, my instincts lied or something
FINALLY
I'm a ride-or-die Exp 33 stan and I've never touched Hollow Knight or Silksong and I know in my heart y'all should have gotten more
Still hoping it wins more, but I’m willing to give the win to E33
Atleast we got something
At least we got something but i'm still mad it never win Art Direction
Should have been Indiana jones
This was fucking bullshit, silksong DESERVED game of the year award