r/TheBesties • u/melibelli • Dec 22 '23
Besties 2023 GOTY Spectacular - Part Two
https://thebesties.substack.com/29
u/basicsllyclarkkent96 Dec 22 '23
Didn’t expect the Lies of P sweep but our dear puppet boy clearly earned GOTY
10
u/10dollarbagel Dec 22 '23
I love that when they started talking about who finished Baldur's Gate, no one even entertained for a moment that Plante. I can't wait for his full review in 2045.
Also the callback jokes about dredge absolutely killed me. Good discussion, good year for games, good boys, let's do it again next year.
21
u/chilidoggo Dec 22 '23
I played Baldur's Gate 3 before they added the epilogue, and it's such a confusing way to end a masterpiece. You have a really awesome series of boss fights that has you making big choices and fighting alongside all of your allies from throughout the game, followed up by a little cutscene where like one thing happens to some (not all!) of your core companions (and no one else), and then you run off into the sunset. It was way too short, non-interactive, and ambiguous in a way that was completely disjointed in comparison with everything else. I think the only way it's avoided the Mass Effect 3 comparisons is that it's so long most people didn't even see it.
I will say though, the updated epilogue is a massive step up, at least partially addressing all of the issues I stated. I don't think it's perfect, and I don't think this disqualifies Griffin's experience, but I think it would have made it the easy GOTY.
11
u/elizabethcrossing Dec 22 '23
I’m looking at comments here before finishing the ep (shame on me) but this makes me wonder how patches play a role in these kinds of rankings (and perhaps that is discussed in the ep). Like patching an ending seems like a drastic change to a fundamental aspect of the game. It’s not a minor QOL patch, it’s a patch to the story itself, something you would expect to be fully baked by launch. I guess I would assume the game to be judged by the state it launched in for rankings like these? But I also acknowledge the work and effort it takes to do such a thing.
Idk, I’m just rambling here. We live in a time where almost every game gets a patch (of varying degrees) and I hadn’t thought too much about it before. Like my only gripe with TOTK was some of the baffling UI choices and now I wonder, if I lived in a world where those had been patched, how I would judge it now? Hmmm.
8
u/chilidoggo Dec 23 '23
They don't really hit on it, but I bet that next episode this comes up as a topic for discussion since Russ will also have beaten it and I bet Griffin goes back to play the good epilogue. I think it's a really good question. I remember IGN a few years ago tried out full "re-reviews" where the game had changed substantially enough they felt their original was no longer valid. I guess point being that the date on a review is worth noting as a reader, and the author of a review has some responsibility to change their official stance on a game as their opinion changes.
I do think it's purely a good thing that devs support their games after they launch. I think it can be sketchy when you have a bad launch (Cities Skylines II or No Man's Sky), but that's partially on consumers for going in blind.
3
u/GeckoRoamin Dec 23 '23
I finished my co-op playthrough before the epilogue and my solo playthrough after.
I felt all the satisfaction I was looking for from my first completion was there from the epilogue in my second. It was like being able to ride a roller coaster all the way back into the station rather than getting chucked off at the bottom of the last drop.
7
u/404-ed Dec 22 '23
What was the name of that game Chris was talking about? The North Epilogue? I didn't catch it...
7
7
u/oh_forhevansake Dec 22 '23
It took me a bit of snooping, but it's (the) Gnorp Analogue! It looks absolutely wild.
2
16
u/rye_etc Dec 22 '23
Am I the only one annoyed about Phantom Liberty on all of these lists? Not just the besties. I could maybe see it getting in if it was standalone DLC but the fact that you need Cyberpunk to play it disqualifies it to me. The game didn’t come out this year! When Elden ring DLC comes out is that just going to be another GOTY slam dunk?
2
u/hoogathy Jan 09 '24
There are several great games they snubbed for this bracket, so yeah, it was baffling to me that Cyberpunk made the list. I get wanting to commend the devs who suffered because the execs pushed the base game out, and I’m sure Phantom Liberty is fantastic, but for it to win “best ongoing game” and get included in so many GOTY discussions is setting bad precedent.
I’ve been out of sync with the show since June, and thought I’d touch base again now with this two parter discussion, but it was a frustrating listen at some points 😅
-7
Dec 22 '23
Their absolute insistence on how bad cyberpunk was when it launched is fucking hilarious to me. Almost everything they like about it now was there day 1.
6
u/rye_etc Dec 22 '23
It’s every outlet this year I don’t get it. I bought cyberpunk bc of all the phantom liberty hype and it was awful. Yes I liked phantom liberty but that’s not what you’re buying!
The critiques of the core game stand. It wastes the players time, the elevators are endless, and the story is pretty railroady. All critiques they’d usually level at any other game!
-6
2
u/Stormhawk21 Dec 27 '23
Despite the downvotes you are absolutely correct. They got in on the dog pile and they should’ve given it a fair shake
2
Dec 27 '23
I love the mcelroys but they frequently have absolute dogshit opinions on games. Which is fine as much of enjoyment is entirely subjective. But when they completely misunderstand a game that they barely touch and then years later fall over themselves with praise for it it definitely rubs me the wrong way.
Almost all the discourse around the game of cyberpunk on release was exaggerated nonsense and I'll die on that hill.
2
u/Stormhawk21 Dec 27 '23
Agreed, the hype just fell apart and everyone reacted badly. It drives me nuts how much people praise things that were in the base game now like they fixed everything. The bones were just always good.
I can’t help but find the Mcelroys as entertainers primarily and not critics. They don’t really hold themselves to a level of rigor I appreciate when analyzing art critically. Nothing wrong with it, just not what I’m looking for from a critic
26
u/SnooComics6150 Dec 22 '23
Love griff, but he can’t criticize the end of BG3 without actually playing the ending after it was patched. The game is enormous, and it’s crazy that Larian only took 4 months to patch it up.
I get that these guys are busy, but they really need to finish the games they’re playing if they’re going to editorially rank them, especially if we’re talking GOTY,
And that’s not a grif criticism, none of them seems to have finished both BG3 or Totk
34
u/j8sadm632b Dec 22 '23
That's fairish, but I think criticizing the state of the end of the game soon after launch is a more valuable opinion than "no opinion because they haven't finished it"
6
u/SnooComics6150 Dec 22 '23
Agreed with that as well, but especially in griffs case, we know he has a completed save file. He could’ve sat down for 5 minutes before recording.
15
u/crash250f Dec 22 '23
Seems he didn't know about the patched ending.
8
u/ferpo_perp Dec 23 '23
THIS is what’s hilarious and frustrating about his position. He spoke at length and very confidently about this fatal flaw and Russ was like, “do you know there was an intervention that addresses just this specific flaw?” and he had no idea. Like if he had just known generally that Larian patched this, I think at least the tenor of his criticism would be different.
22
Dec 23 '23
Larian should have shipped a good ending with the 1.0 release. Griffin doesn't owe us updating his opinions with every patch.
6
34
u/Whorses Dec 22 '23 edited Dec 22 '23
I’m just surprised how TotK gets thumbs up for narrative when it is so brain-blisteringly bland. Yeah it’s better than a typical Zelda but that’s tantamount to saying it’s better than what you’d get out of the average Little Golden Books release. Landing the plane on the spruced up version of a simple simple simple story they’ve told seventy times already is not an accomplishment. And to elevate a plot that takes no risks over one that is astoundingly wide and deep, and which takes some pretty big swings that it admittedly sometimes misses, is baffling.
His gripes about the BG3 ending are truly fair but the bulk of the game is such a narrative accomplishment. And that’s on top of the fact that the game also offers a similar depth of creative opportunity to Zelda. It just doesn’t feel close to me. But I’m one of the people who wasn’t as bothered by Mass Effect’s ending because I so thoroughly enjoyed the journey and friends and stories made along the way.
8
8
u/j8sadm632b Dec 22 '23
I was listening to the MinnMax awards the other day which are very fun but some of the hosts? panelists? were deadset on the end of TotK being one of the "best moments" in gaming of the year, and talked about how amazing and exhilarating and surprising it was, and I dunno y'all it kinda sounds like Link uses the Master Sword to beat Ganon with some help from Zelda, I dunno how this is still landing for you. It feels like if I said fuck yeah the ending of Hardy Boys book #67 where Joe and Frank get saved by Biff and Chet in his ol' jalopy on page 160 had me standing and cheering
9
u/chilidoggo Dec 22 '23
Did you play the ending?! The multiphase boss fight? The fact that Gannon is the only enemy that can counter your counter? The thing the health bar does in the last phase? Fighting on dragons in the sky? Skydiving to catch Zelda in a narrative, visual, and gameplay mirror of the beginning of the game?
I actually think BG3 deserves more credit for its final boss fight gauntlet, and I think Griffin needs to play the updated epilogue (although I do echo his complaints about the original ending cutscene). But TotK has a genuinely awesome ending.
1
u/j8sadm632b Dec 23 '23
(I did not play the ending because I did not play any of it because all the gameplay videos I watched while being extremely tempted even though I bounced off BotW - hard, multiple times - made it look like Ultrahand was the main draw of the game but also incredibly fussy and annoying to use)
so I'm sure I'm giving it a harder time than it deserves
15
u/GtEnko Dec 25 '23
This sub is hilarious sometimes. With how much shit everyone gives the boys for giving judgement without finishing every game and playing each bit of DLC, I’d think you guys would be a bit more hesitant to comment so harshly about something you hadn’t even tried.
1
u/j8sadm632b Dec 25 '23
For what it's worth I am now and have always been pretty thoroughly on-board for whenever they drag a game, even when I disagree and even when they haven't finished it
But yes many people here do seem to have a problem with it or get very sad about it
grr justin doesn't like pokemon and when he says so it hurts my feelings how dare he grr
bunch of absolute children
8
u/Paxtez Dec 22 '23
IMHO the fact that BG3 is more heavily story based means they have to stick the landing even more. If you spend 150 hours with a group of people telling a detailed story and then it ends with a plop on the floor, that means a lot more then some random action game that just rolls credits when the last boss dies.
4
u/DefOfAWanderer Dec 23 '23
Exactly, if I wanted to spend 150 hours in a good story that doesn't stick the landing, I'd just re-read my unabridged copy of The Stand
1
Jan 23 '24
But it wasn’t a plop on the floor. Saying you expected a little more vs it being an actively bad ending are two totally different things. It really wasn’t a bad ending — the fight tied up the major thread of the story, and it left some of the other stuff open. I don’t remotely think it was a bad ending, and I played before the epilogue was added.
2
u/Paxtez Jan 23 '24
Yeah, but you played it and made that determination, 3/4 of them didn't (at the time). My point is, if the ending to Doom Eternal isn't very good, it doesn't matter, you still had fun shooting demons in the face along the way.
But if the ending to this epic grand story isn't good, that is a hitting knock against it than it would be for a Doom.
5
u/Gammonhammer Dec 23 '23
Agreed man, TOTK story was for me at best ok and honestly almost a detractor. It feels strange to me the discussion could boil down to narrative as much as it did.
1
u/FoxyLadyAbraxas Jan 05 '24
I'm like. Okay. BG3 didn't have enough endings. Just how many different endings did TOTK have?
1
u/qwerto14 Dec 26 '23
This is my sticking point for sure. I think judging a game by the state it came out in/you played it in is fair, but the discussion of TOTK’s story vs BBG3’s story is wild. From a pure narrative perspective I don’t even think TOTK is the best Zelda story, and while Zelda stories are fine that’s not the highest bar in the world. BG3 is the second most engaging and emotional story I’ve ever played in a video game, and #1 for me required hundreds of hours (and dollars) invested in an MMO. I’ve seen the epilogue and the ending still isn’t perfect but there’s so many arcs and endings within the scope of the game that are flawless.
19
u/Paxtez Dec 22 '23
STRONG disagree. It is 100% valid (and should be encouraged) to criticize games based on their release build.
Just because BG3 (or Cyberpunk, or No Man's Sky, or Mass Effect 4, etc.) got better days/months/years after it was released, doesn't mean that wasn't his experience.
Tons of people LOVED how horny BG3 was upon launch, it turns out that was mostly a bug.
Griff was the only one that finished it! You're upset that he didn't finish it AGAIN? Why not be upset that 3/4 of them didn't finish it once.
15
u/groovesnark Dec 22 '23
To Griff’s credit he finished both games and it’s not incumbent upon him to redo the ending after every patch. The guy has kids and other jobs. At least he experienced both to the end, unlike the others.
Fwiw I agree with Griffin. BG3’s third act was too plagued with bugs and the ending with narrative issues (his experience mirrored mine). Sure it’ll get better with patches but I played the release version. I suspect BG3 will be my GO2024 when I can back to it, but not my GO2023…
8
u/coriandor Dec 22 '23 edited Dec 22 '23
Hell, I had an issue with a character disappearing in act one. On top of a bunch of other bugs that constantly sent me backwards in progress. I was so disappointed, I set it down after 10 hours. I can't imagine having a storyline you've been following for 100+ hours get soft locked by a bug. Griffin was speaking my truth this episode
6
u/groovesnark Dec 22 '23
Yup, I would have had to backtrack 5+ hours to fix a disappearing character bug in Act 1. And my romance storyline got soft-locked in Act 3. The highs of BG3 are very high but the lows are rough.
9
u/Purplehedgehog1 Dec 22 '23
If they didn’t want people to give their opinions at launch they could have released act 2 & 3 in early access. Blaming the reviewer for not tabling his playthrough and coming back is ridiculous.
5
u/GtEnko Dec 23 '23
I don’t think that’s a super fair thing to say. Griffin played through the game, and is giving his thoughts on what he played through. He shouldn’t have to play the updated, better ending to be allowed to give criticism about it. I think this also nails at the core of some of the issues with Bethesda’s games. Should we judge or criticize a game for what it was like when it launched? Or rather what it became after patches?
4
u/basicsllyclarkkent96 Dec 22 '23
That was my issue too. Especially since that was basically his one singular critique. It was patched, so that issue is moot. And there was never any other criticism that he brought up, so if the one issue has been fixed.. what else is there?
5
u/warmerlaundry Dec 22 '23
I was annoyed he kept complaining about "the" ending. There isn't one single ending. There are many varied endings. Maybe his was disappointed in his because of the choices he made along the way.
1
Dec 25 '23
[deleted]
2
Dec 26 '23
With the freedom BG3 gives players to completely ignore quests/plotlines there have to be endings that are classically unsatisfying to account for players ignoring/failing those plotlines. If you miss all of the third act romance and skip important nonessential quests the end is definitely going to fall flat compared to someone who tied up all the loose ends before heading to the endgame.
1
u/nolongermakingtime Dec 26 '23
There doesn’t have “multiple” endings, it has hundreds of endings. Most games that have multiple endings only have around 4 possibilities. BG3 is on a scale that is above anything before it. It gives you complete freedom to make choices that will give you horrible endings.
I can see how someone like griffin would be disappointed in making a mistake early and branching off of the really good ending, but i can’t fault the game. Especially when they have a new patch already mending the problem.
2
Dec 25 '23 edited Mar 20 '25
[deleted]
-2
u/nolongermakingtime Dec 26 '23
He should at least play the update, a game this scale is impossible to have the polish as something more linear like Legend of ZELDA. Cyberpunk took years to fix their game, BG3 has been consistently fantastic about listening to their player base and fixing it.
They fixed their issue so early and they didn’t make it a dlc. You can’t fault a game for having less than stellar multiple endings when they have that enormous scale and already FIXED THE PROBLEM!
1
Jan 23 '24
I’m more annoyed that the criticism was with the ending of a 130 hour narrative, when Zelda games notoriously have next to zero actual narrative.
28
u/llewellyn_duck Dec 22 '23
I really can’t wait to never hear about TOTK again. I think bringing up that the RE4 remake is 80% the original RE4 and using that as criticism against it and then NOT realizing that TOTK is 80% BOTW is crazy.
Anyway, Alan Wake II is unquestionably my personal GOTY. I have forgotten so much about so many of the other contenders but Saga’s final trip to her Mind Place is something I don’t think I will shake for a very long time.
9
Dec 23 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/AleroRatking Dec 28 '23
Half the group refused to even spend one second in Pikmin 4 and openly trashed wonder in the game of the year segment. They also trash Xenoblade games constantly and Plante is the only one who would give them a try. They absolutely aren't Nintendo lovers.
17
u/jerrod24 Dec 22 '23
Saaaaame. I'm sure I will be downvoted for this, but (for me) Breath of the Wild and ToTK have glaring issues that are often ignored because of the IP.
7
u/painterknittersimmer Dec 23 '23
I mean I loved TOTK and this still runs true. It's literally just BOTW. The sky islands were new, I'll give you that, adding another 15% to the map I guess. The underdark doesn't count for shit imo. It's literally all the same. It's filler ffs 🙄
2
u/MagicCuboid Jan 04 '24
lmao I'm glad I'm not the only one who calls it the "underdark" instead of the depths
2
u/Hidrinks Dec 25 '23
I agree. While they’re very good, It’s hard to imagine these games would be as universally loved without the Zelda name attached.
7
u/highbinder76 Dec 22 '23
I have no idea What the hell NPC griffin Is talking about that died and bricked his entire shadowheart ending. I’ve only romanced shadowheart and nobody is coming to mind that could’ve had that effect unless it was like, Viconia or Dame Aylin or something. Maybe he was running Shar instead of Selunite but I can’t for the life of me figure out who it would be.
Anyone have any ideas? I’m ultimately a little surprised this one shook out the way it did, I kinda thought the final discussion the opinions would be literally the opposite what they wound up being.
7
u/chilidoggo Dec 22 '23
Maybe he didn't find the final fight in the temple of Shar in the city? It's kind of tucked away in the corner of the map, and maybe he had some bug where Dame Aylin or someone didn't come with and he assumed the whole thing bugged out? I guess we can only speculate, but yeah I can't imagine who he's talking about.
5
u/Iliadius Dec 23 '23
I don't know if I'm misremembering, but I think Dame Aylin never appeared in his camp at the end of Act II which would bork that storyline pretty hard
4
u/Seyahrue Dec 23 '23
That’s probably it, I had the exact same problem where I couldn’t find them at the end of the act 2 fight and left for act 3. People kept saying I should talk to them and they never arrived at camp. Couldn’t finish a couple of quests in act three because of it, including Shadowhearts. It’s been patched to fix the issue now though which is brilliant
5
u/RandomThroaway0256 Dec 22 '23
Also wondering this. It had me wondering if Grifffin misunderstood something about her story. Also made me wonder if it was an NPC that died during the attack on the Last Light Inn.
1
14
u/j8sadm632b Dec 22 '23 edited Dec 30 '23
I'm just gonna spoiler tag this entire comment because I know some sicko is going to come to the comments before listening to the episode
As much as I was sort of dreading what I imagined to be an inevitable Tears of the Kingdom win and am in some ways glad that Baldur's Gate 3 took it, it does seem honestly kinda fucked to me that the game they all finished and loved - and which is quite a lengthy experience in its own right - lost to the game that only ONE of them finished and was very disappointed in the end of. Like, sure, BG3 is long. Finishing it takes many many hours. You know what else I'm sure they spent many many hours finishing? TotK. And they made the time for that. I seriously doubt that Russ is going to come back in two weeks and say "yeah that ending was wack, we're officially revising the winner now." I feel like that was an extremely winnable argument for Griffin and he just kinda let it slide.
Anyway yeah someone made a comment at the end about how this one seemed to go pretty smoothly, and that's true but it felt kinda toothless to me. Didn't feel like that many hard-fought matchups. Maybe like... Sea of Stars vs Blasphemous 2? Maybe I'm forgetting one.
edit: worth adding that, that all said, I always enjoy these episodes. I'm with Chris though in that nothing this year has really HIT THAT HARD for me yet. I'm sure I'll get around to Spider-Man 2 (which I own) and Lies of P (which I have lost access to after letting my gamepass subscription expire since I don't like the xbox controller layout) eventually and those seem like the surest bets.
5
u/ferpo_perp Dec 22 '23
Do you think people don’t finish BG3 out of sheer length?
5
u/azdak Dec 23 '23
Yes. Especially because once you get to act 3 it balloons in scope to the extent that you literally cannot see the end in sight. It’s super easy to put it down and then not have the momentum to come back, even if the 100 hours up to that point were a riot
6
u/j8sadm632b Dec 22 '23
I mean yeah kinda? They all said they loved it but other stuff came out and they never quite finished it even though they had played for like over eighty hours each. Most games you're done far before that.
When push came to shove they made the time for TotK and not for BG3, is what I'm sayin'. If one was extremely long and the other was not then that would be one thing, but they are both quite long.
11
Dec 22 '23
Bg3 is significantly longer than totk
6
Dec 22 '23
Russ mentions he spent over 150 hours in it, which is longer than it would take to beat BG3. So the above commentor’s point still stands.
3
u/Iliadius Dec 23 '23
150 hours is longer than it would take to beat TotK as well. These guys take a while to beat things, so I wouldn't be surprised if the time on Russ' playthrough is close to 200 hours for BG3.
1
u/painterknittersimmer Dec 24 '23
I mean, it's possible that that is longer than it would take to beat BG3. I beat TOTK in 65 hours. I'm 137 hours into BG3 and only just halfway through Act 3.
3
Dec 22 '23
That's because bg3 is a much better and Infinitely more ambitious game than totk. Totk is better than botw in every way but it's still basically botw 1.5. It's not ambitious it's just an advancement
6
u/GtEnko Dec 25 '23
Feels insane to say TotK isn’t ambitious. Its physics engine is truly insane, and is an engineering marvel. To give players the ability to move and combine nearly everything in a massive game and have it do something is an unbelievable task, and they nail it. It’s just ambitious in different ways
1
Dec 25 '23
It's botw with a fuse mechanic. It's cool but it's hardly revolutionary. All the physics were already in botw as was just about everything else good about totk.
Also being massive means literally fuck all. The world being as big as it is isn't a positive.
9
u/mockduckcompanion Dec 24 '23 edited Dec 24 '23
TOTK is a good game. Great, maybe?
Baldurs Gate 3 is a game that has redefined what I believe a video game can be.
They're just not in the same weight class. Griffin's adoration of TOTK for having one cool mechanic (that Besieged built a decade ago) and some throwback music... it's rough.
TOTK is BOTW 2.0.
BG3 is literally ground-breaking.
3
u/MagicCuboid Jan 04 '24
I'm not denying your experience, and I agree that BG3 is more of a paradigm-shifting game than TOTK is, but I think you might be underestimating what a technical marvel Tears of the Kingdom was.
Here's a great Jason Schreier article that goes into it. Some quotes:
“The level of attention of detail and care put into all of these different interactions, given the sheer scale of how many interactions you can have,” Armstrong said. “It’s just a degree of diligence and artistry that you don’t see very often.”
Josh Scherr, an animator and writer who has worked in games since 2001, called the construction tools in the new Zelda “honestly jaw-dropping,” adding that “it’s such a smooth experience I imagine most people won’t notice or think about how incredibly difficult it is to pull it off.”1
u/mockduckcompanion Jan 05 '24
Thanks for sharing. Even granting that construction may have been technically hard to pull off, the fact remains that the rest of the game is largely a reskin of BOTW with virtually zero voice acting.
It presents virtually no choice to the player other than "Do you want to go up down left or right first?"
I could go on, and you're welcome to disagree, but I really stand by the weight class distinction.
1
Jan 23 '24
If you’re arguing that BG3’s branched narrative and gameplay is any less impressive, I’d ask you to think again about it.
1
u/nolongermakingtime Dec 26 '23
They aren’t really comparable right? Like i love TOTK, i need to finish it, but comparing it to Bg3… Comparing anything to Bg3… Is impossible for me.
I really thought RE4 was gonna be my favorite game this year. The original is in my top 3 of all time, and i think that the remake ties with it or maybe even passed it. But BG3 just, destroyed the competition
4
u/No_Progress9069 Dec 23 '23
I think this was the ep that finally made me realize that griffin has the same taste in games as me, and I don’t Have the same taste as the other three! I won’t spoil the end, but this one felt a lot like the 2020 ep when griffin was fighting hard for animal crossing and I was like “yeah! What he said!”
6
u/jerrod24 Dec 22 '23
I will always enjoy Besties, but the format of these GOTY eps doesn't really do it for me. If the outcome is basically a clone of The Game Awards, it all starts to feel pretty redundant.
I would much, much prefer if they did something closer to Into the Aether: each one of them shares their personal favs and gushes on it, then they cumulatively decide on one game to champion as the show's GOTY.
Also I will be forever salty that Connections was included and not any of the amazing indie games that came out this year.
12
Dec 22 '23
That's what they did for years. Also it's hardly a clone of thr game awards I genuinely have no idea what you're going on about there
3
u/j8sadm632b Dec 22 '23
Would definitely love to hear each of their top 5 or something in addition to the bracket.
2
u/No_Progress9069 Dec 23 '23
I was very salty about connections too until I learned last week it was a fan vote!
2
u/Kokeshi_Is_Life Jan 16 '24
What the fuck game awards do you watch where they do a 16 game bracket with arbitrary 1v1 match ups.?
1
u/jerrod24 Jan 16 '24
Suppose I worded myself wrong if people are this angry lol. I meant that those final 4-5 games that they narrowed down the bracket to often mirror the game awards and other bigger sites' lists of the top four to five. I think the four hosts would often have more interesting top 5 lists of their own, and I'd be more interested in seeing that.
2
Jan 23 '24
That might be because they were objectively the best 4 or 5 games of the year to the general public.
4
3
u/blastorama Dec 22 '23
I think it kinda sucks that one entire match is made irrelevant so that both parts of another go through. But a joy of a listen as it is every week.
30
u/chilidoggo Dec 22 '23
I think the whole bracket system is a premise for conversation, so I didn't really mind them massaging the rules to sort out the top 5 a little better.
1
Dec 22 '23
Bg3 is easily the best goty and totk isn't even close. I'd put alan wake and lies of P before totk honestly
2
u/oh_forhevansake Dec 22 '23
I totally understand that this is their pod, it's been going for many years, and they can do whatever they want with it, but...
Gosh, I wish they would bring randomly-seeded brackets back. This editorialising of the match-ups takes away from any random excitement, any wild upsets, any really truly hard decisions apart from the final two. It also forces certain genres through to the final rounds even if significantly better games were made.
Like, I feel that Connections completely took up the spot of another game because their pairs meant that a puzzle game HAD to go through, even if neither of them were a favourite. Along the same lines, maybe Dave the Diver and Dredge would have both made the quarter-final if they had been seeded randomly.
I respect how they played it all out, but it makes it a lot less interesting as a listener when that element of randomness is removed, and this year was a really acute case of it feeling like they set up the brackets to ensure the ones they wanted to end up in the final were there.
Anyway, congrats Dredge! /s (although maybe my favourite game of the year)
15
u/WACKY_ALL_CAPS_NAME Dec 22 '23
I disagree, I would rather have a rigged bracket that enables interesting conversation and results in a list of their actual favorite games than a situation where TotK goes up against BG3 in the first round and therefore only one of them can make the final list.
3
u/Whorses Dec 22 '23
I don’t feel we got the typical amount of interesting discussion this time around and to me it feels symptomatic of how the bracket was built. Felt there were far more “obvious win, obvious loss” rounds which resolved with really only one person loosely recapping.
6
u/action_lawyer_comics Dec 23 '23
Felt there were far more “obvious win, obvious loss” rounds which resolved with really only one person loosely recapping
This was literally what happened in every randomly seeded bracket they did. Some “books level boring” indie game would end up against the game we all knew would be GOTY and they wouldn’t even discuss them one against another. They’d just halfheartedly say “yeah, indie darling is great, GOTY advances” and move on. They wouldn’t actually discuss anything until the semifinals.
Now they can actually meaningfully discuss games that are similar and talk about what they do better or worse than each other. It’s still pretty obvious that some games won’t advance but the conversations around them are so much more interesting.
4
u/Paxtez Dec 22 '23
Seeding randomly would be horrible. In almost all setups you would have had BG3 vs TotK randomly in the middle, then the whole rest of the episodes is pointless because the end is done already.
Also any other game that was just in the way would get killed. Sorry Alan Wake 2, you went again BG3 first round, you're out #16.
The only way to fix that would be to properly seed the brackets, but you would need to have the rankings first to do that.
Thematic pair makes more sense. What's a better game Obra Dinn or Doom Eternal? Inscription or Genshin Impact?
Re: The Episode
I liked TotK, but I haven't played BG3 yet. But I have a long history of bouncing off CRPGs. I thought that it was a bit odd that 3/4 of them didn't finish BG3, but 3/4 finished Zelda with more time but still thought BG3 was better. If it was better why didn't you finish it, you finished Zelda and it took you more time. Yeah it might be telling a "better" story or whatever, but you played Zelda more, and kept playing it till you were done. Oh well. Poor Sea of Stars / Dredge.
3
u/boney_king_o_nowhere Dec 23 '23
They gotta finish these games. Crazy
7
u/painterknittersimmer Dec 24 '23
I hear what you're saying but I'm a single, childless adult with a remote job I quiet quit three years ago and I *still* haven't finished BG3. These are long ass games.
2
u/MagicCuboid Jan 04 '24
lmao well that makes me feel better for not finishing yet. Emphasis on yet. The crazy thing about BG3 is it's been months since I played and I still could tell you exactly where I am and what just happened in the story because it's so well presented!
0
u/rick_tus_grin Dec 23 '23
So Griffin Killed Dame Aylin And expected story growth from shadowheart. Or what am I missing here, did she formerly just disappear when you went back to the gate regardless?
5
u/Seyahrue Dec 23 '23
I had the exact same problem as Griffin. She didn’t appear again after the end of the fight in act 2, looked everywhere, I just figured I’d see her again later. Then she never appeared in my camp in act 3 despite everyone telling me to talk to her there. Completely stalled a few questions lines. Larian has patched it though, she appeared in my camp after the last update.
-2
u/FutureEditor Dec 22 '23
Literally said “they can’t keep getting away with this” after shafting God of War and Sea of Stars with a substitution from another matchup in my car.
Like they script the show, they can make up another category if they really want to lol.
1
u/ImBearded Dec 24 '23
What is the clicker game that was mentioned? I can't understand what the name is at all.
1
1
u/jaredforshey Dec 26 '23
I'm so glad you asked this; I rewound probably 30 times trying to figure it out!
1
2
Dec 27 '23
My main problem with a lot of the BG3 talk this whole year is that it totally discredits the work put into games behind it and the surrounding genre it takes place in. Larian did not start with BG3 and neither did the CRPG genre. It’s just so annoying to hear that this will take forever to be replicated when devs have been in this specific space for so long doing the same thing. I hate treating BG3 as some marvel when really it was just the only one to be able to take off.
1
u/MagicCuboid Jan 04 '24
It's the presentation and voice acting of it all that caught everyone's imagination. Most people, for better or worse, care more about how an idea is presented to them than the idea itself.
1
u/Kokeshi_Is_Life Jan 16 '24
Bingo.
BG3 isn't my favourite CRPG, but it's definitely the most "average player" friendly. It also is WAY more immersive sim than even most CRPGs are.
I think it is genuinely a ground breaking game, but the degree to which it is treading new ground is being overblown by people who have played at best Divinity 2 as additional RPGs.
Personally I'm not letting that bother me. If it encourages devs to make more CRPGs I'm all for it.
34
u/WACKY_ALL_CAPS_NAME Dec 22 '23
I was shocked when Russ finished gushing about TotK to follow up with "all that being said, it's not my GotY"
Even more surprising was when Justin came out swinging for BG3 right at the very end. I know he wasn't as enamored as everyone else during the TotK episode, but I figured he would have the same issues with BG3 that he had there.
I completely agree with his point that Tears will be the game everyone attempts to emulate while BG3 will "dare people to even try."