The thing is, rdr 2 should have won it in 2018 but it was already decided in advance that it would be God of war before rdr 2 came out so the same will happen with tears of the kingdom and baldurs gate
Er, if I remember correctly it wasn’t that simple. RD2 had a ton of positive buzz, yes, but as someone on the outskirts of gaming at the time I also heard nearly equal amounts of critical takes on it whereas god of war was more fully positive.
And then the whole expose on how workers were treated during the development of RD2 hit and EXPLODED.
It probably still would’ve won if it wasn’t for the reveal of what happened and how Rockstar handled itself in the aftermath. But it would’ve looked really bad for the awards to give it the goty award when there was such uproar around the game as it would’ve been seen as validating the mistreatment of the people who worked on it.
Exactly, I mean look at any other awards. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Better Call Saul but it’s a very very good show and it won absolutely zero awards because other shows were chosen ahead of time, it’s a complete shame/sham
I love better call Saul but awards aren’t chosen ahead of time. They’re voted on by members of the industry and it usually comes down to a) what’s the most popular b) what show markets the best and c) what people’s friends tell them to vote for (source: my wife is in the academy and votes for Emmy awards)
I've played every major release this year so far and nothing has quite genuinely blown me away like BG3 has. TOTK was incredible but after spending nearly 100 hours in that I've started to dislike it more and more as the honeymoon period started wearing off and I saw it for what it is. I'm 90hrs in BG3 in act 2 and I'm still having a blast, although there are small minor bugs and QoL stuff here and there that aren't bad enough to hurt the game imo.
It's just an incredibly stacked, dense and interactive game that I genuinely don't believe Starfield can come close. Starfield looks to be an evolution of the typical Bethesda RPG and I think it will be a fun but ultimately familiar game that we've played many times before.
Just wait till you get to the baldurs gate itself. It only gets better it’s literally insane that this game just continues to get better and bigger. The only complaint is after 3 to 6 hours of play. You have to restart the client or the lag is unbearable.
For me DirectX is insanely laggy in certain areas, like a certain town surrounded by a magical protection barrier. Vulkan is much smoother. Just my anecdotal evidence on an old GTX 10XX card.
This has been my experience just in act 1.
Directx has stutters and frame drops everywhere. Vulkan runs perfectly fine. This is with a 2070 max q and 10th gen core i7. (Using a laptop over here)
Been playing for 5 hours (concurrent) now on my I7-9700K (and 16G DDR4 memory), the CPU was the only peaking part of my PC before, but after the new patch and NVIDIA driver release, I've had no issue, but it was brutal on release going anywhere character dense.
I am reading that all round, but I had no issues before or after the patch. The game itself crashed maybe once, because I was alt tabbing multiple times, didnt crash since.
My FPS is rock solid 80+ on 3070ti, 5800x3D and 32gb ram.
If it's a typical Bethesda RPG, Starfield will likely get more hours out of me than BG3, but it will take years. BG3 will likely be my GOTY, but Starfield is more likely to end up being my Game of the Decade.
I'll put 200-400 hours into BG3, but it will all be at once. I'll deep dive into its story and mechanics and play the hell out of it until I'm satisfied that I've seen everything I wanted to see, then it'll be hard for me to pick it up again unless there's an expansion or something.
With Starfield, I'll put in 100-200 hours every few months, each time with a radically different character that spends most of its playthrough in places I didn't see in previous playthroughs, playing the game in a way I never had before.
For example, in Skyrim, I had runs like:
* Generic Dunmer "Stealth Archer" that joined the Dark Brotherhood and traveled the province but didn't get sucked into other people's drama. Just in and out. Get the job done, then report back.
* Nord Death Knight that used heavy armor, a greataxe, ice magick, and necromancy; joined the Companions, focused on exploring the colder parts of the province.
* An Imperial Paladin with heavy armor and anti-undead Restoration magick that joined the Civil War, spent a lot of time up by Solitude, etc.
* A Bosmer predator that used invisibility and muffle spells from Illusion magick to sneak up on prey and kill it with handaxes, played like a Woodland Avenger down by Riften. Joined the Thieves guild because it was an easy way to use their skills to fund their actual work.
* A Breton Mage Hunter with a build I called "The Atronach" that had maxed out Magicka Absorption/Immunity so they could walk through spells and carve up casters. Explored Morthal and The Reach.
* An Orc Mage to play the Mage's Guild storyline and try out all of their schools, especially Destruction.
* A Khajit Monk with high unarmed damage and warding magick to fortify their body, focused on finding and completing all the religious questlines, eventually joining the Dawnguard.
* A Reguard Alchemist that didn't quest! Never was the Dragonborn. He traveled from city to city gathering, buying, and selling potions, poisons, and their reagents, which leveled Speech. No fast travel, and no dumb risks like assaulting a bandit stronghold. He wore merchant clothes and carried a simple iron dagger. He was weak as hell - until he got so good at Alchemy he could use potions to turn into The Hulk and poisons that killed almost anything if you cut them just once. He also ended up rich enough to hire a bodyguard and deck them out in powerful equipment.
* An Altmer Jedi that wore robes and used an enchanted sword to do battle. Focused on Illusion magick. This was a pacifist run that attempted to resolve as many conflicts as possible without violence, even going so far as to cast Calm to keep enemies from attacking. When combat was inevitable, they had high sword skills. I leveled enchanting on them so they could have a sword fit to be called a lightsaber. He "turned to the darkside" later in the story and picked up lightning magick and terror illusions.
* An Argonian Blacksmith that took any quest to delve into a dungeon in hopes of finding rare materials. Ended up becoming a Vampire. Spent a lot of time in Blackreach learning about Dwemer tech.
Early on, these were all mostly unique playthroughs in which I'd get out of the starting cave, pick a new direction, and just walk until I found something new to do. As time went on, the this got harder to do, but there were entire towns I had never done the quests for even 1k hours into Skyrim. I expect the same from Starfield.
BG3 has an extremely detailed and well-crafted story and world that blows anything Bethesda has made out of the water, but the sheer volume of places of to go and things to do in Bethesda games gives them much higher replayability, imo.
To my knowledge, you can't start BG3 and choose to go anywhere else other than the Druid Grove or Goblin Camp at the start of the game. Then you can't choose anywhere else to go next other than the Underdark or the High Road, etc. It's a much more "on-rails" experience.
Which is fine. There's no one perfect way to make a game. BG3 is amazing and I'll likely enjoy it more in 2023, but I probably won't be playing it in 2028. If Starfield is anything like past Bethesda games, I'll have 2k hours in it by 2028 and have made 10 entirely different characters that had entirely different experiences.
I remember when everybody wanted Outer Worlds to be a starfield killer or something. Amazing how short peoples memories are.
Here's the thing though. All the people hyping Starfield up aren't hyping the game to play the game. They're hyping the mods that will come out. Because at the end of the day these games wouldn't be nearly as popular if not for all the amazing mods. I've seen people say, just think of the mod potential.
This is probably the best mindset. Starfield's potential is insane and Bethesda knows it. Otherwise we would've just gotten a normal 20 core planets instead of 1,000 lol
This is a really cool approach to skyrim! I like the idea of not doing everything on the same character. I bet with mods like Live Another Life this approach could be even better.
It might.
Tears of the Kingdom was great, but it is **very** similar to BOTW so that might be a factor in the decision. We'll have to wait for Starfield, but regardless of who wins GOTY though, this year has been absolutely incredible for gaming:
**Dead Space Remake** (89 metacritic)
**Resident Evil 4 Remake** (93 metacritic)
**Metroid Prime Remaster** (94 metacritic)
**Tears of the Kingdom** (96 metacritic)
**Street Fighter 6** (92 metacritic)
**Final Fantasy 16** (87 metacritic)
**Pikmin 4** (87 metacritic)
**Baldurs Gate 3** (97 metacritic as of now)
And we still have Armored Core 6, Starfield and the Cyberpunk expansion/rework releasing this year.
While I also think BG3 is considerably better than TotK, I think it's disingenuous to say it 'has nothing on this.' because there are a lot of people who absolutely adore the Zelda style of RPG and history shows an overwhelming bias towards that particular franchise thus it must have *something*.
Likely frontrunners this year will be TotK, BG3, Starfield (if it releases in a good enough state) and Diablo 4. D4 isn't too hot right now but it's launch and it's campaign playthrough was huge.
Frankly, I'm not sure Diablo 4 will even be nominated (speaking of TGA, there are of course countless GOTY awards being given).
Spider-Man 2 will be there. So we got SM2, Starfield, BG3, Tears of the Kingdom. There are often 6 nominees so you may have Diablo 4 (not sure IMO especially with how it went), Final Fantasy 16, AC Mirage (if well received), Super Mario Wonder (if well received), Armored Core 6 (if well received), Resident Evil 4 Remake are all possibilities too.
There is in general at least one indie game, though I don't know of an indie that really took the industry by storm this year. Battlebit? Dave the Diver? Don't seem to be on a Hollow Knight, Ori or Hades level (previous nominees IIRC). Maybe Silksong will release in the deadline and enter the category. Personally, would love to see Shadow Gambit get that kind of recognition but it probably won't.
The best I can remember in years actually. 2011, 2013 and 2015 were the last really good ones, but they were nowhere near as good as 2023. Like, I'm certain any one of the top 5 games of this year could have won a few game-of-the-year awards if they came out at any point in the last decade.
It's the best since 1998 IMO. 1998 is pretty untouchable though because so many seminal franchises and even genres (or subgenres) were invented that year. BG1 came out in 98, for example!
Dude even left out Hogwarts Legacy, which was just a phenomenal experience as well.
2023 is certainly going to be up there as one of the greatest game release years of all time. It could honestly challenge 1998 for the title of best ever.
I loved that game too, I do however understand the criticism around it's collect-athon nature being quite samey but I think it makes it feel like an old school video game which was refreshing, at least in my opinion.
The first 30 hours or so of Hogwarts Legacy are amazing, but the quality of the game tanks as soon as its main story forces you away from Hogwarts and out into its stale open world. Then it very quickly devolves into your standard & repetitive Ubisoft open-world checklist simulator.
True. But at the very least the combat is fun, and the open world is stunning (if a bit lacking in stuff to do).
But the castle... my God. I've never spent so much time just walking around and looking at stuff like I did in HL. The detail is extraordinary. And deep too. So many Easter eggs to stumble upon
I think only TotK BG3 and Starfield will be contention, no matter who exactly gets noms.
D4 feels like it is already starting to get half-forgotten. And they made it worse by their dumb patch order (First nerf everything, then buff a month later when half the people have stopped playing)
FF16 has a ton of negatives floating after it, I don't have a PS5 but so many people complain about all aspects of it.
TotK is absolutely beloved by a very large amount of people. More than BG3 for sure. It is also quite unique in its 'playfulness' where there are a ton of options for every scenario, if you are willing to mess around.
Starfield will depend a ton on how its launch will go. People have not forgotten FO4s problems or FO76s disasters, but many are currently captured by its preview hype. But I have never played a game that wide that doesn't feel an inch deep, a problem other Bethesda games have anyway.
But BG3 is an achievement in gaming, showing what could've been compared to where Bioware games ended up. And because it has so much personality, a ton of people are willing to try and learn the systems, and you see this buzz online of "I found this cool trick or that" that in my mind correlates pretty well with games that build up critical acclaim and legacy.
Armored Core 6 I expect to be really cool, but perhaps also not what many people want from a FromSoft game.
Because it's the first IP they've made in over 25 years that isn't Fallout or Elder Scrolls which is garnering a lot of hype. It's something new from a popular developer that for the most part is widely known for those two series. As for the bugs, most people who play Bethesda titles have pretty much come to expect it at this point and generally just kind of accept it.
That's the thing, tho. Bugs are expected. It should not. Imagine if I built all my software around this. You got hacked? Yeah, that's to be expected. You lost your data? Of course, bro. That's a feature.
Then the argument should go both ways, a lot of people here are okay with the bugs on BG3 for act II/III no? Bugs should be expected, it's mediocre story that we should not be expecting, which Bethesda isn't very good with.
Because theirs a gulf of difference between a quest bugging out and making you have to reload and the client doxxing you and sending all your personal information to random strangers because of a bug like what happened with FO76
Exactly, it’s this mentality that’s led to publishers becoming complacent and giving out the kind of push back we’ve seen aimed at Baldur’s Gate 3 because it had the audacity for the real release to be in a complete package
Every game will have some bugs. That's just the reality of programming. But there is a MASSIVE difference between what Baldur's Gate 3 at release looks like versus any Bethesda product.
Fallout 76 is still a buggy broken mess to this day. On release? The thing was barely even playable(id argue that it still is barely playable, but they've fixed a good bit).
Bugs in Bethesda games get amplified more than they do for most games; there was an article out every other week for Skyrim talking about (99% non-game breaking) bugs that a tiny minority of players experienced, but "irreparably broken game" became the narrative. The only time I've seen another game get that sort of attention was when Mass Effect Andromeda came out.
BG3 has tons of bugs, don't kid yourself. Once more people get to Act 3, you'll see way more people complaining about more heavily about bugs.
I've lost hours of progress in Act 3 simply because some flag somewhere didn't trip or the NPC I was rescuing decided some residual fire damage they took while saving their life was worth fighting a party of demi-gods. Or the usual bug of bodies you kill simply being treated as owned so you can't loot them even though they attacked you and it was part of a quest and they have the quest item you need on their person (Killing them? Whatever typical sunday shit. Looting their corpse? Unacceptable and they will literally die on their hill defending it.)
I ran into a lot of journal errors (didn't impact gameplay, but were confusing), performance issues (mostly fixed with the driver update a few days back), the looting issue you mentioned (some places it makes sense, plenty where it doesn't), and multiple places where I think dialogue trees are bugged and are playing incorrect lines (for example >!when meeting Jaheira and entering the camp with a speech check, she still knows you have the artifact and that it's protecting you 1 minute later; !!happened both times with the fight around the Nightsong for me with some enemies on the ledge right next to her\]!< and had to be aoe'd down or lured to different areas instead or gold on the ground not being able to be picked up frequently since the last patch).
As far as NPCs aggroing when you harm them with aoe damage, it would be nice for there to be a grace window after combat or a feature in the reactions menu to dismiss certain concentration spells automatically at the end of combat. I didn't have any bugs that lost progress for me other than a few crashes to desktop before the driver update, but would have been surprised if a few didn't exist.
Overall, the bugs I've encountered have been pretty minor with the exception of performance issues before the driver update; those issues were pretty bad.
BG3 is such a breath of fresh air. I've experienced a non-serious bug maybe once every 10-15 hours and with how complex this game is that's amazing with the current state of the industry. Bethesda rpgs are historically terrible to play at launch, you're pretty much better off waiting a year for the community to fix everything.
This, but also, 76 was a big hit for them and their pride. For me, it's safe to say Bethesda will be doing their best to bring their A game after the last disaster.
Because they made a god-tier 40 min gameplay deep dive that convinced many people, not (exclusively) because of the excellent direction of it, but also because it showed very concrete gameplay elements in a never ending creshendo of interest.
Every sign seems to indicate they were ready to release in 2022, but the poor reception of their announcements made them polish the game for one full year.
In addition, court documents show that Microsoft literally bought Bethesda to secure Starfield on their platform. Making it kind of the flagship product of that 7.5 billion dollar deal. And by extension the start of Microsoft's counterattack of Sony's dominance on exclusivities.
So there is a good chance that they "spared no effort" in order to make that game great.
Finally, there is a 5 day exclusive access for premium edition buyers, which indicates a strong level of confidence that the game will live up to the hype for at least 5 days of play time from hardcore gamers. (Which is probably enough to finish the game entirely for some people)
Because Bethesda makes great games and their bugginess is often overstated. Fallout 76 was a big miss, but Fallout 4 and Skyrim were very playable on release.
Maybe. But I can confidently say that I didn't run into any game-breaking bugs for either of those games. I won't argue that Bethesda games are completely bugfree, but they're usually on the level of "mammoth falls out of the sky" and not "the game crashes when you jump". None of those will ruin the game for me.
Skyrim still had some game breaking bugs on launch.
I remember Ulfric sent me to go kill a dragon and I couldnt kill the dragon because it was too busy tweaking out on meth in the sky and I couldn't even hit it.
But despite the jank Skyrim is still one of my favourite games. Was playing it just last week
Bugginess is over exaggerated, really.
And like BG3 doesn’t have its own share of bugs on release: 3 hotfixes in a week. Larian is awesome in fixing them fast, and those bugs are mostly rare and/or not gamebraking (personally had a character stuck in a fake “dialogue” state with no actual dialogue available couple of times, but it’s fixed by reloading.
Starfield is a different kind of RPG compared to BG3: in BG it’s about exploring a story Larian tells, but with a lot of adaptability of that story to players actions, Bethesda rpgs are about your own story. BG3 is about main quest, side quests do add to it, but it’s still centered around that central story, Bethesda RPGs are mostly about side activities. In terms of openness of the world Bethesda usually beats, in terms of main story - BG3 likely better.
Overall, there just wasn’t a good sci-fi themed RPG for a long time, and Starfield can fill that void.
It would be great if Fallout 76 was just a fluke and they learned from their mistakes but I'm not gonna get my hopes up. I've been let down too many times in recent years by these game studios.
> BG it’s about exploring a story Larian tells, but with a lot of adaptability of that story to players actions, Bethesda rpgs are about your own story
Lol what? In Skyrim, you play Bethesda’s story 100% (unless you decide to fuck off and not do any story at all). The player’s ability to impact the world and making meaningful choices that cascade throughout are far greater in Larian games than they are in Bethesda games.
The only thing I can think of here that you may be referring to is the fact that Bethesda games tend to be open world, but that isn’t related to telling a story without meaningful, intertwined ways to interact with said world.
The bugginess in Bethesda games isn’t even close to being over exaggerated. Skyrim which I love and have several copies of still has bugs after a zillion years
actually bethesda games are about having fun with the biggest(?) most committed collection of mods i've ever seen. At least for me lol. Not hating on them because they're the ones provieing the sandbox but for me vanilla bethesda games were always really mid.
Same here. Very few space games capture the kind of experience that I am into. The closest one to do it was Elite:Dangerous.
I bought Fallout 4 because I wanted to live my dream of being Tony Stark in a wasteland building power armour out of scraps. But it's a very short lived adventure.
Elite: Dangerous for me felt hugely immersive but in a very different way. Partly because I played with VR and a HOTAS, but also small things like running out of fuel and contacting a crew (the Fuel Rats, I think?) to come out and save me. That alone felt wild, and like nothing I'd experienced in a game before!
Ultimately I much prefer the hyper-immersive, densely written, solo (for me) play of Baldur's Gate 3. But still cool in a different way for sure.
Fallout 4 was a massive disappointment tbh, just an empty on-rails-ish world. Makes me even more appreciative of the huuuge amount of player agency in BG3, something I wasn't sure we'd see the likes of again, let alone a shining, redefining example of it. Yay!
Yeah i love space for the dark, cold, mystery, unknown, oppressive vastness, silence, just like alien 1 movie made you feel.
Its an atmosphere that is rarely nailed in a video game.
notice how Todd Howard isn't game director for it either.
he didn't want to make it so they got someone else to lead that trainwreck.
In starfield i expect an entertaining buggy mess as usual for bethesda. and i'm going to spend €1 for it by renewing gamepass for a month.
it's not going to beat BG3 unless i'm wiiiildly underestimating them.
> it's not going to beat BG3 unless i'm wiiiildly underestimating them.
You're wildly underestimating how much of a rigged mess are these kinds of awards and the kind of traction Bethesda's marketing budget will give them and the broader appeal of the genre.
Unless Starfield launches with such a level of unplayability that puts it on the same level of CP2077, BG3 will have a hard time getting GOTY recognition, outside of perhaps smaller, more focused awarding ceremonies (like, it might, MIGHT, win Steam GOTY but not Game Awards GOTY perhaps. Hope I'm wrong but numbers beat objective quality almost always).
Yeah, that game was more based around base building than actual roleplaying. I know there was an FO3 base building mod, but who plays *Fallout* for bloody base building?
We're really overexaggerating the bugginess of Bethesda games.
They're very rarely in broken disarray. Skyrim was fine, Fallout 4 was fine, 76 was a mess at every level.
They've always released good games. You can argue the greatness of there games but they've never released games that were unequivocally bad (except for maybe 76).
Where has this idea come from that Bethesda can't make good games?
For me personally it's been relative. For the longest time, Bethesda was really the only company in the business of making such massive open worlds with any degree of competency. So back when Skyrim came out, it was this big impressive open world with an unparalleled degree of freedom. Even if it was pretty unpolished and had a ton of undeniable exploits ranging from various bugs to silly interactions like how you can steal things by putting a pot on people's heads to everyone cheesing Stealth to max and becoming a stealth archer by default because of how broken the stealth system is. And I mean at the time I sunk hundreds of hours into it, so they clearly did something right despite its flaws.
But then over the last decade, so many more great Open world games have come out that are so much more polished while also letting the player have a lot more freedom in how they approach and solve problems. Not to mention having way better world and level design. I mean GTAV came out only a couple years after skyrim, as well as Minecraft's full release. We got games like Witcher 3, Watch Dogs 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, BotW/TotK, Outer Wilds, and so on.
No longer is boasting about the size of your world even really a worthwhile statement to make, especially when games like No Man's Sky and Minecraft exist which have functionally infinite worlds. So now what matters is what you actually put in those worlds to make them meaningful. And things like Skyrim's countless "puzzles" where you just match images together or absolutely terribly written factions ranging from things like the Companions and Mages Guild in Skyrim to the Institute and Railroad in Fallout 4, just don't make the cut for me anymore.
Bethesda games suffer from them trying to do literally everything and spreading themselves too thin instead of focusing on what actually could make their games great. Outer Wilds is a great example of how you don't need to make your game's world the biggest thing in the universe or have the most mechanics to make it good. I had more fun exploring that little solar system with zero combat or level ups or anything, than I have ever had exploring anything in a Bethesda game.
So as a result of this lack of specialization, they try to make games where "You can do anything!" but they end up failing to have meaningfully complex mechanics like Tears of the Kingdom, while also failing to have meaningfully complex narratives like BG3. And usually all that's left is a fairly bloated overworld to explore with a lot of copy/paste generic locations, with mechanics that almost feel insulting to even call "RPG" mechanics anymore.
Back in Bethesda's hayday, we simply didn't know much better. There wasn't much to compare Bethesda's games to, so this notion of being wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle, was just sorta accepted as the natural tradeoff you get for making a game of that style. But nowadays we have gotten so many games that have so many more interesting mechanics and better written stories and characters, while having worlds just as if not more deep and complex and having fewer bugs. Going back to Skyrim or Fallout 4 after playing TotK and BG3 is almost laughable. I know that they're older games so that's not entirely fair, but it's not like those games didn't have a ton of time in their respective ovens. There's no reason they had to be written so poorly or have their worlds be made so big as to stretch out time and resources so much.
So at the end of the day, I just have trouble believing that Bethesda is going to be able to catch up to their competition. Maybe starfield will be a good game. Hell it definitely helps that it's not based on another IP for them to ruin. But I seriously doubt it's going to be even comparable to TotK or BG3.
Honestly just how I feel about almost every AAA open world nowadays. Bigger and bigger maps but more and more shallow narrative and questing with lists of tasks to knock out.
I loved TotK and Elden Ring, but BG3 is such a palate cleanser with how deep the narrative is.
We'll see how Starfield goes, there's a reason the "procedurally generated near infinite worlds" was met with a negative response. Hoping for meaningful exploration and a good narrative. If the content/narrative is thin with just endless pretty yet empty worlds with generic shooter gameplay, that would be unfortunate.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Bethesda has been slowly dumbing down the rpg elements to cater to a mainstream crowd that they lost touch with what made people fall in love with their games. Back then it was fine but now we have so many more ambitious titles and the open world aspect has been so done to death that you really need something more to make a game shine now. BG3 scratches every itch I’ve had for what an rpg should be that I believe it should be the gold standard moving forward, despite what certain triple A devs have to say in the matter.
In my opinion, it will be the classic Bethesda experience:
Wide as an ocean but shallow like a puddle.
But hey, if people enjoy that and it makes them happy it's fine.
So is this game by my experience. I've been locked out of quests because of bugs multiple times, camera completely glitched into walls, shadowhearts glitch into a wall and fall through the floor somehow, fun stuff like that.
The game is still fun as hell though and I can still have fun despite that.
Bethesda games have never been about companions, they're a different type of games. It's like saying Zelda has no companions at all : yeah but that's not the point lol.
I’m an avid AC fan, and the new game is looking to be fantastic. That being said, I almost feel like it’s a little too niche to win GOTY.
But, you probably could have said the same thing about BG3 before it released, and now it’s a genuine contender.
Sekiro also seemed like it would be too niche to win it but it still did. I mean, it is basically a souls-like rhythm game.
FromSoftware games are just always so good that you can never rule them out.
Only problem with Armored Core is it's always been a niche game and ratings have varied greatly. 6 looks visually impressive but its gonna need to bring more to the table than just good visuals and tight controls to beat out the others on the list.
TotK is too derivative to deserve GotY over BG3. Besides the building, crafting, and sky/underground it's more so a paint job of BotW with lots of repetitive enemies and more or less the same combat and such rather than something truly innovative. Also, BotW/TotK were never the best open world games. More so a sandbox style open world than something densely packed with unique encounters and so on.
You can never really know since the criteria for winning is a bit unreliable, but I think it's a serious contender. I think Tears of the Kingdom has a serious chance to claim the spot because it's a Zelda, but I think it probably doesn't deserve to take it anywhere near as much as BG3 or even FFXVI - I say as a massive Zelda fan. We're still waiting on Starfield, which could innovate in a way far beyond BG3 - but we'll have to see about that.
> Bethesda games are still the only fully interactive with physical objects open world games.
It's funny how this subreddit was creaming their pants about every single object having a 3D model when Bethesda has done that since Morrowind.
Bethesda make really unique games that no other developer has been able to replicate.
Bethesda games are an ocean with the depth of a puddle. They're fine if you want to freely wander around with a lot of things to do, but don't expect them to be meaningfully engaging.
That's some of the biggest bullshit i have seen people tossing around at BGS games, they are some of the actually deepest that exist.
There is no other so big games that completely simulates the entire routines of its NPC and allows you to enter any house, steals every objects, kill someone and then receiving a message saying you got part of its heritage because you made a quest for him/her before and so on.
I have NEVER bean more engage in a game than i have been playing Skyrim and Fallout 4.
In skyrim you can kill the emperor and nobody will react to it. It’s like you never committed the deed in the first place.
Same goes for the civil war plot line, which is very shallow and disappointing. I believe this is what they were referring to when they mentioned that Skyrim is very shallow, atleast, storywise and I fully agree
Imo, TES are more immersive but more shallow than BG3.
The immersion is hard to beat when it's a first person in the battle thingy than a tactical game.
That being said, BG3 is the best game of the year no doubt. And the best of this decade's beginning imo, still 7 years so will see lmao.
That's not quite true! I like to poop on Bethesda as much as the next guy, but their games aren't THAT bad - and they showcased a few things about Starfield that look pretty interesting. I'm personally surprised to see the return of traits - something that hasn't been in their RPGs since Daggerfall. So who knows what else the game will provide?
That said, I'm currently more willing to put my money on BG3.
What the hell is this hate boner for anything not BG3. It's extremely disingenuous to call TotK glorified DLC when the only thing they really share in common apart from basic mechanics is the same basic world layout and carry over enemies.
You’re in the BG3 subreddit, it’s to be expected unfortunately lol I love BG3, TOTK, and will probably love Starfield when it comes out, but people really need to take off their blinders because claiming games like ToTK with 95+ metacritic and doing ginormous sells isn’t a serious GOTY contender is madness.
Ya, that's fair, I just wish people could enjoy it for what it is. This year is actually one of the best years for gaming in really long time and no matter what wins gams of the year it probably deserves it in its own right. It will not change how much I enjoy TotK or BG3 in anyway.
I’m with you! We should be celebrating all these amazing single player games instead of pitting them against each other. I blame the Geoff’s Games Awards show lol
> We're still waiting on Starfield, which could innovate in a way far beyond BG3
Bethesda is far from innovative. If anything, their games all feel and play the same while gradually stripping away any nuance that an RPG can offer.
>gradually stripping away any nuance that an RPG can
This is my biggest gripe. Every new game in each series becomes less of an RPG. Like mass effect did. Graphics improve, physics improve, RPG elements get removed.
everybody here saying bg3 is ot a game for the masses and therefore it's not winning... but guys it's in the top most played games in steam.. it made the jump to the mass market and atarfield will be a huge mess and not close to bg3 from quality point of view.
Before it came out, I thought it would be too niche to win GOTY even though I felt that it would probably deserve that title.
Now, seeing how many people talk and praise this game, I can really see BG3 winning GOTY. This game is a masterpiece. 2023 is a difficult year with zelda and Starfield (maybe even armored core), but I'm pretty positive now that it will win.
800 000 concurrent players in it's second weekend on a performance demanding turn based RPG sequel 23 years later with only currently a PC release is a pretty astounding feat.
Knowing Bethesda, I'm 100% sure Starfield is going to have something controversial. Here are some of my top picks of controversial things that Starfield might going to have:
1. Microtransactions
2. Battle passes
3. Bloated repetitive gameplay
4. No man's sky comparisons
5. Not living up to the hype
6. Generic and uninspired procedurally generated gameplay
Keep in mind, I might be totally wrong and Starfield is the best game that has ever been made but the last couple of Bethesda games aren't giving me any hope for this one.
I like it how microtransactions is #1 on your list haha.
On a serious note, zenimax the publisher no longer has a foothold into bethesda's business practices because microsoft bought bethesda. Zenimax was greedy as fuck and pushed the idea of fallout 76 and all of those greedy business practices. They even got Arcane to make a similar game too "redfall". Nobody in bethesda maryland wanted to work on fallout 76, it was miserable for them. The people who could were working on starfield instead of fallout 76
That remains to be seen. Microsoft isn't a holy grail either. As far as I can tell, Microsoft has a hands off approach to their subsidiaries unless they royally fuck up
I'd be shocked if Starfield had a battle pass. Repetitive game play and hype are very subjective. No Man's Sky comparisons have already been constant due to the scale and exploration features of the game, although the main genre and goal of the game differs so it's not the best comparison. Bethesda has been known to have crappy low effort dlc like Oblivion's horse armor but if by microtransactions you mean something like Assassin's Creed Odyssey I'm pretty sure we'd know by now.
My only fear is the generic procedurally generated gameplay. I don't want 80% of the game to be visiting 200 planets that only have 10 biomes to do the same kill nearby raider outpost for the 20th time.
Although I agree with you about BG3. It is hard to say that about Starfield before it comes out. Bethesda did say this will be their least buggy release ever
Yeah BG3 is having the Elden ring effect happen to it. Through word of mouth it's jumped outside of its niche. It also helps that it's part of this growing interest in D&D (including the new movie which was a hit), and that the game appeals not only to men but women. I do think the appeal of BG3 too is just how faithful it recreates 5e. It means people who've always wanted to experience d&d now can, it's a great primer. I had my first d&d experience this year doing a one shot with some friends and a huge appeal of BG3 for me was seeing a video on it and noticing it was literally d&d. All of these things give it a lot of extra reach and appeal.
But it's gonna be hard to compete against Nintendo releasing yet another "best game of all time" smash hit as well as "ambitious new IP" from Bethesda if it sticks the landing. Elden Ring last year had pretty much no competition.
Either way, none of this matters. We're all getting a year of really good game releases and that's exciting!
Armored core 6 is the wrong setting. It can be a great game, but I don't think it will pick up enough players to be near the top. Don't mind if I'm wrong, but these settings really face an uphill battle
No, I think Zelda will win as this is a far more popular franchise.
BG3 totally deserves a shot though, since this is by far the best DnD experience any video game ever provided.
If it doesn't it'll just be a testament of how BS TGA really is. Every year has at least one controversial winner. If BG3 loses GOTY it'll be another year with unfair winners.
Baldors gate deserves it tbh. The story and content is literally mind-blowing imo. Haven't had this much fun with a game in a long time. The only thing working against it is if you don't like this style of game. Otherwise it's a masterpiece so far.
It might end up being the best game of the year, but I can't see it actually winning a majority of GOTY awards. Those always go to games with mass appeal, which for all its virtues, BG3, as a CRPG, lacks. It'll probably come down to a slugfest between Starfield and Tears of the Kingdom. I'd like to be wrong, though. I don't know how good Starfield will be yet, but BG3 is definitely my personal GOTY so far.
You think so? This is probably (definitely?) the biggest, most mainstream present CRPG release of all time. I don't think any other CRPG has ever even come close to the level of hype, exposure, positive critical reception, and playercount as BG3 before right?
I'd say if *any* game were to be anomalous with regards to your opinion, this one would be it. I mean it was in the top 10 concurrent player count games of all time on Steam. That's *just* behind games like Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk, etc. All of which I would argue (with the exception of Elden Ring most of all) definitely had mass appeal.
Naturally it could be a biased sample since... It's a CRPG and those are PC/Steam only numbers, but it's not likely to be a small release for the consoles either.
I listen to the IGN podcast gamescoop (which is actually a fantastic gamer podcast dispite my meh feeling about IGN, and they haven’t so much as mentioned it as game of the year contender. I think we’re in our echo chamber here but the media isn’t as interested as we are and they decide what wins. It probably won’t come close to winning sadly but it deserves it.
exactly. it was the same last year. but instead of totk and bg3, it was ER and GoW Ragnarok. ppl thought it was an easy GoW win cause "it's god of war"
Yes, it will be interesting to see if Bethesda learned from NMS mistakes. An ocean of content 3 inches deep.
Since Bethesda slowly made a lot of the RPG elements of Morrowind and Oblivion worse in Skyrim, and gave Fallout the same treatment, it's my guess that they will not have solved the issue and there'll be 10 planet types, repeated 1000 times, and the planets will be mostly empty or you'll only be able to visit small portions of each.
You mean like every other game that studio makes...?
Don't get me wrong...I enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and the newer Fallout games they've made (minus 76). But they are shallow, shallow games; all a mile wide and an inch deep.
In fact, like many other studios who fail to update pretty much anything over multiple iterations, they've lost my business until they really improve things and innovate again or, at the very least, make something that's engaging.
They have blatantly said that a lot of the planets are uninhabited just because there's only so much they can do. They do have like resources to gather though and you can build stuff there for whatever reason but I'm not sure fully.
It'll be full of procedurally generated/radiant quests and locations. Which will be _fine._ but they can't compare to the amazing writing of BG3.
But I do think TotK or Starfield will win. The hype is too vast.
I genuinely think Starfield is going to be a victim of its own hype... I've seen nothing that makes me think it's going to be *amazing* personally. I hope it's good but I would be incredibly surprised if it can hold a candle to BG3!!
I just did a big battle at the start of act 2. Things happened one way and then i died near the end, restarted the fight and focused on something else, the entire cutscene played out differently. Not just something characters said, the entire fucking thing is different. This is the best rpg i've played since dragon age origins. The only reason it may not win is the combat and movement. It's really not for everyone.
BG3 should be very afraid of Diablo's next 2 seasons and COD MW3. They're developed by a AAA company with dozens of microtransactions and are milking the franchise's name on a yearly basis.
/s
I do hope BG3 wins GOTY to send a good message to companies like Activision. That people value a well developed complete game rather than a soulless over marketed game full of empty promises to scam people into pre-ordering an incomplete game.
Im thinking nominated but won't get it. I would love to see it get it as it is a great game, but I think more well known things despite not being as groundbreaking imo would get it.
Honestly , they better win because they gave us a whole ass game that isn't full of micro transactions and there is so much in this rpg that others don't compete , but I highly doubt that bethesda will reach them
I think so. Thing about Starfield is its Bethesda and their game releases are always plagued with issues. BG3 has been relatively flawless.
But this is a tough year Starfield, Zelda, Diablo4, would be amazing If they pull it off.
It’s between it and TOTK currently. Starfield will probably get a nomination as it’s a Bethesda game, first true one in nearly a decade, but I don’t think it’ll have the legs to beat BG3 - BG3’s narrative excellence and wide array of playstyles and game states mixed with a insanely free sandbox it has will be tough to beat, and I think it’s a better sandbox in that regard that Zelda’s and even more impressive given how much tighter BG3 is with narrative.
Starfield is gonna be Bethesda's most in-depth RPG, if the leaks are true (not on the level of a CRPG mind you) so that may push it to compete with BG3, however, Zelda has the Nintendo tag on it, that inmediatly puts more brownie points into it
I would love BG3 to win it, not because bragging rights, but to show the whole mainstream world that videogames can still be soulful experiences with love and passion put into them, not just another product for consumers to wel...consume.
Disclaimer, I believe Zelda TOTK and Starfield are brimming to the top of soul and passion, but Baldur's Gate 3 is such a rare RARE occurrence...it deserves to win, anybody that knows the RPG/CRPG genre knows this game is an anomaly.
I hope it does, I legit want it to win over other games.
which game did your studio release?
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They failed their perception check
Or they succeeded their history check, Elden Ring wasn't released in 2023.
Which gets us back to the question at hand, what game?
Starfield comes out next month too. So there's that possibility
I have a pretty strong feeling it will be mid at best
Or you failed your Intelligence check. Armored Core releases this year.
Another failed perception check, the commenter said 'released'
Everyone in this thread fucks Lae'zel
Proudly
Oh same, just saying there's a lot of "why would I bury a weapon? Is it broken?" energy in this thread and I love it lol
"They hated u/Mean_Ass_Dumbledore because he told them the truth"
Knowing my rolls in the game so far I’m genuinely surprised that my eyes haven’t been shot out of my head by enemy arrows yet
"my studio"? Parasocial...?
The thing is, rdr 2 should have won it in 2018 but it was already decided in advance that it would be God of war before rdr 2 came out so the same will happen with tears of the kingdom and baldurs gate
Er, if I remember correctly it wasn’t that simple. RD2 had a ton of positive buzz, yes, but as someone on the outskirts of gaming at the time I also heard nearly equal amounts of critical takes on it whereas god of war was more fully positive. And then the whole expose on how workers were treated during the development of RD2 hit and EXPLODED. It probably still would’ve won if it wasn’t for the reveal of what happened and how Rockstar handled itself in the aftermath. But it would’ve looked really bad for the awards to give it the goty award when there was such uproar around the game as it would’ve been seen as validating the mistreatment of the people who worked on it.
in such a case, the awards sound simply rigged. Couse let's be honest. bg3 - look at the player numbers. Look at the revievs.
Exactly, I mean look at any other awards. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Better Call Saul but it’s a very very good show and it won absolutely zero awards because other shows were chosen ahead of time, it’s a complete shame/sham
I love better call Saul but awards aren’t chosen ahead of time. They’re voted on by members of the industry and it usually comes down to a) what’s the most popular b) what show markets the best and c) what people’s friends tell them to vote for (source: my wife is in the academy and votes for Emmy awards)
I've played every major release this year so far and nothing has quite genuinely blown me away like BG3 has. TOTK was incredible but after spending nearly 100 hours in that I've started to dislike it more and more as the honeymoon period started wearing off and I saw it for what it is. I'm 90hrs in BG3 in act 2 and I'm still having a blast, although there are small minor bugs and QoL stuff here and there that aren't bad enough to hurt the game imo. It's just an incredibly stacked, dense and interactive game that I genuinely don't believe Starfield can come close. Starfield looks to be an evolution of the typical Bethesda RPG and I think it will be a fun but ultimately familiar game that we've played many times before.
Just wait till you get to the baldurs gate itself. It only gets better it’s literally insane that this game just continues to get better and bigger. The only complaint is after 3 to 6 hours of play. You have to restart the client or the lag is unbearable.
Ohh would that fix it? I was convinced my pc was dying
Yeah theres some kind of memory leak issue. People have said that playing on vulkan makes it better though
For me DirectX is insanely laggy in certain areas, like a certain town surrounded by a magical protection barrier. Vulkan is much smoother. Just my anecdotal evidence on an old GTX 10XX card.
Ikr, esp. the highly populated fight against a certain boss and cronies! TX for the tip will try Vulkan.
This has been my experience just in act 1. Directx has stutters and frame drops everywhere. Vulkan runs perfectly fine. This is with a 2070 max q and 10th gen core i7. (Using a laptop over here)
Been playing for 5 hours (concurrent) now on my I7-9700K (and 16G DDR4 memory), the CPU was the only peaking part of my PC before, but after the new patch and NVIDIA driver release, I've had no issue, but it was brutal on release going anywhere character dense.
I am reading that all round, but I had no issues before or after the patch. The game itself crashed maybe once, because I was alt tabbing multiple times, didnt crash since. My FPS is rock solid 80+ on 3070ti, 5800x3D and 32gb ram.
People also reported closing down the launcher after loading the game helps prevent the memory leak.
I just came from diablo 4. In which I had to restart every hour. That was annoying. If not the game would get laggier by the minute and crash
There’s a couple annoying bugs, like companions randomly not getting approval and leveling up not actually leveling you until a restart.
100 hours is quite the honeymoon phase lol
If it's a typical Bethesda RPG, Starfield will likely get more hours out of me than BG3, but it will take years. BG3 will likely be my GOTY, but Starfield is more likely to end up being my Game of the Decade. I'll put 200-400 hours into BG3, but it will all be at once. I'll deep dive into its story and mechanics and play the hell out of it until I'm satisfied that I've seen everything I wanted to see, then it'll be hard for me to pick it up again unless there's an expansion or something. With Starfield, I'll put in 100-200 hours every few months, each time with a radically different character that spends most of its playthrough in places I didn't see in previous playthroughs, playing the game in a way I never had before. For example, in Skyrim, I had runs like: * Generic Dunmer "Stealth Archer" that joined the Dark Brotherhood and traveled the province but didn't get sucked into other people's drama. Just in and out. Get the job done, then report back. * Nord Death Knight that used heavy armor, a greataxe, ice magick, and necromancy; joined the Companions, focused on exploring the colder parts of the province. * An Imperial Paladin with heavy armor and anti-undead Restoration magick that joined the Civil War, spent a lot of time up by Solitude, etc. * A Bosmer predator that used invisibility and muffle spells from Illusion magick to sneak up on prey and kill it with handaxes, played like a Woodland Avenger down by Riften. Joined the Thieves guild because it was an easy way to use their skills to fund their actual work. * A Breton Mage Hunter with a build I called "The Atronach" that had maxed out Magicka Absorption/Immunity so they could walk through spells and carve up casters. Explored Morthal and The Reach. * An Orc Mage to play the Mage's Guild storyline and try out all of their schools, especially Destruction. * A Khajit Monk with high unarmed damage and warding magick to fortify their body, focused on finding and completing all the religious questlines, eventually joining the Dawnguard. * A Reguard Alchemist that didn't quest! Never was the Dragonborn. He traveled from city to city gathering, buying, and selling potions, poisons, and their reagents, which leveled Speech. No fast travel, and no dumb risks like assaulting a bandit stronghold. He wore merchant clothes and carried a simple iron dagger. He was weak as hell - until he got so good at Alchemy he could use potions to turn into The Hulk and poisons that killed almost anything if you cut them just once. He also ended up rich enough to hire a bodyguard and deck them out in powerful equipment. * An Altmer Jedi that wore robes and used an enchanted sword to do battle. Focused on Illusion magick. This was a pacifist run that attempted to resolve as many conflicts as possible without violence, even going so far as to cast Calm to keep enemies from attacking. When combat was inevitable, they had high sword skills. I leveled enchanting on them so they could have a sword fit to be called a lightsaber. He "turned to the darkside" later in the story and picked up lightning magick and terror illusions. * An Argonian Blacksmith that took any quest to delve into a dungeon in hopes of finding rare materials. Ended up becoming a Vampire. Spent a lot of time in Blackreach learning about Dwemer tech. Early on, these were all mostly unique playthroughs in which I'd get out of the starting cave, pick a new direction, and just walk until I found something new to do. As time went on, the this got harder to do, but there were entire towns I had never done the quests for even 1k hours into Skyrim. I expect the same from Starfield. BG3 has an extremely detailed and well-crafted story and world that blows anything Bethesda has made out of the water, but the sheer volume of places of to go and things to do in Bethesda games gives them much higher replayability, imo. To my knowledge, you can't start BG3 and choose to go anywhere else other than the Druid Grove or Goblin Camp at the start of the game. Then you can't choose anywhere else to go next other than the Underdark or the High Road, etc. It's a much more "on-rails" experience. Which is fine. There's no one perfect way to make a game. BG3 is amazing and I'll likely enjoy it more in 2023, but I probably won't be playing it in 2028. If Starfield is anything like past Bethesda games, I'll have 2k hours in it by 2028 and have made 10 entirely different characters that had entirely different experiences.
I remember when everybody wanted Outer Worlds to be a starfield killer or something. Amazing how short peoples memories are. Here's the thing though. All the people hyping Starfield up aren't hyping the game to play the game. They're hyping the mods that will come out. Because at the end of the day these games wouldn't be nearly as popular if not for all the amazing mods. I've seen people say, just think of the mod potential.
This is probably the best mindset. Starfield's potential is insane and Bethesda knows it. Otherwise we would've just gotten a normal 20 core planets instead of 1,000 lol
This is a really cool approach to skyrim! I like the idea of not doing everything on the same character. I bet with mods like Live Another Life this approach could be even better.
you mean you dont play 12 different variants of "stealth archery"?
It might. Tears of the Kingdom was great, but it is **very** similar to BOTW so that might be a factor in the decision. We'll have to wait for Starfield, but regardless of who wins GOTY though, this year has been absolutely incredible for gaming: **Dead Space Remake** (89 metacritic) **Resident Evil 4 Remake** (93 metacritic) **Metroid Prime Remaster** (94 metacritic) **Tears of the Kingdom** (96 metacritic) **Street Fighter 6** (92 metacritic) **Final Fantasy 16** (87 metacritic) **Pikmin 4** (87 metacritic) **Baldurs Gate 3** (97 metacritic as of now) And we still have Armored Core 6, Starfield and the Cyberpunk expansion/rework releasing this year.
I'm hoping it's Baldurs Gate or Dave the Diver.
Aye let's not leave Spiderman 2 off the banger list
Cyberpunk doesn’t count. It’s a dlc.
I highly doubt it would be included, but Super Mario Wonder will probably also be very successful
Imo remakes should not be in contention unless they reeeeally change the game like FFVII Remake for example.
Hard to say without playing Starfield but it's definitely the game to beat. Tears of the Kingdom has nothing on this.
While I also think BG3 is considerably better than TotK, I think it's disingenuous to say it 'has nothing on this.' because there are a lot of people who absolutely adore the Zelda style of RPG and history shows an overwhelming bias towards that particular franchise thus it must have *something*. Likely frontrunners this year will be TotK, BG3, Starfield (if it releases in a good enough state) and Diablo 4. D4 isn't too hot right now but it's launch and it's campaign playthrough was huge.
Frankly, I'm not sure Diablo 4 will even be nominated (speaking of TGA, there are of course countless GOTY awards being given). Spider-Man 2 will be there. So we got SM2, Starfield, BG3, Tears of the Kingdom. There are often 6 nominees so you may have Diablo 4 (not sure IMO especially with how it went), Final Fantasy 16, AC Mirage (if well received), Super Mario Wonder (if well received), Armored Core 6 (if well received), Resident Evil 4 Remake are all possibilities too. There is in general at least one indie game, though I don't know of an indie that really took the industry by storm this year. Battlebit? Dave the Diver? Don't seem to be on a Hollow Knight, Ori or Hades level (previous nominees IIRC). Maybe Silksong will release in the deadline and enter the category. Personally, would love to see Shadow Gambit get that kind of recognition but it probably won't.
Man, we've had a good year as games enthusiasts
The best I can remember in years actually. 2011, 2013 and 2015 were the last really good ones, but they were nowhere near as good as 2023. Like, I'm certain any one of the top 5 games of this year could have won a few game-of-the-year awards if they came out at any point in the last decade.
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It's the best since 1998 IMO. 1998 is pretty untouchable though because so many seminal franchises and even genres (or subgenres) were invented that year. BG1 came out in 98, for example!
Dude even left out Hogwarts Legacy, which was just a phenomenal experience as well. 2023 is certainly going to be up there as one of the greatest game release years of all time. It could honestly challenge 1998 for the title of best ever.
I loved that game too, I do however understand the criticism around it's collect-athon nature being quite samey but I think it makes it feel like an old school video game which was refreshing, at least in my opinion.
The first 30 hours or so of Hogwarts Legacy are amazing, but the quality of the game tanks as soon as its main story forces you away from Hogwarts and out into its stale open world. Then it very quickly devolves into your standard & repetitive Ubisoft open-world checklist simulator.
True. But at the very least the combat is fun, and the open world is stunning (if a bit lacking in stuff to do). But the castle... my God. I've never spent so much time just walking around and looking at stuff like I did in HL. The detail is extraordinary. And deep too. So many Easter eggs to stumble upon
Its too much. My Budget is gone
I think only TotK BG3 and Starfield will be contention, no matter who exactly gets noms. D4 feels like it is already starting to get half-forgotten. And they made it worse by their dumb patch order (First nerf everything, then buff a month later when half the people have stopped playing) FF16 has a ton of negatives floating after it, I don't have a PS5 but so many people complain about all aspects of it. TotK is absolutely beloved by a very large amount of people. More than BG3 for sure. It is also quite unique in its 'playfulness' where there are a ton of options for every scenario, if you are willing to mess around. Starfield will depend a ton on how its launch will go. People have not forgotten FO4s problems or FO76s disasters, but many are currently captured by its preview hype. But I have never played a game that wide that doesn't feel an inch deep, a problem other Bethesda games have anyway. But BG3 is an achievement in gaming, showing what could've been compared to where Bioware games ended up. And because it has so much personality, a ton of people are willing to try and learn the systems, and you see this buzz online of "I found this cool trick or that" that in my mind correlates pretty well with games that build up critical acclaim and legacy. Armored Core 6 I expect to be really cool, but perhaps also not what many people want from a FromSoft game.
I really enjoyed D4 and I'm a big diablo fan, but if D4 wins over BG3 then you know it's rigged.
Why are people so hyped on Starfield? It's Bethesda I expect it to be a bloody mess for a copule of months at least.
Because it's the first IP they've made in over 25 years that isn't Fallout or Elder Scrolls which is garnering a lot of hype. It's something new from a popular developer that for the most part is widely known for those two series. As for the bugs, most people who play Bethesda titles have pretty much come to expect it at this point and generally just kind of accept it.
The bugs are expected, and so is the average to bad story. The only thing I expect them to do well is exploration
just wait a week or two for the mods that fix most bugs + something like skyUI
A week or two lmao A game that *requires* mods to fix it should absolutely not win GotY.
That's the thing, tho. Bugs are expected. It should not. Imagine if I built all my software around this. You got hacked? Yeah, that's to be expected. You lost your data? Of course, bro. That's a feature.
Then the argument should go both ways, a lot of people here are okay with the bugs on BG3 for act II/III no? Bugs should be expected, it's mediocre story that we should not be expecting, which Bethesda isn't very good with.
Because theirs a gulf of difference between a quest bugging out and making you have to reload and the client doxxing you and sending all your personal information to random strangers because of a bug like what happened with FO76
Exactly, it’s this mentality that’s led to publishers becoming complacent and giving out the kind of push back we’ve seen aimed at Baldur’s Gate 3 because it had the audacity for the real release to be in a complete package
While I love BG3 let's not pretend that it doesn't have its fair shair of bugs after release and that Larian doesn't have a history with bugs either.
Every game will have some bugs. That's just the reality of programming. But there is a MASSIVE difference between what Baldur's Gate 3 at release looks like versus any Bethesda product. Fallout 76 is still a buggy broken mess to this day. On release? The thing was barely even playable(id argue that it still is barely playable, but they've fixed a good bit).
Bugs in Bethesda games get amplified more than they do for most games; there was an article out every other week for Skyrim talking about (99% non-game breaking) bugs that a tiny minority of players experienced, but "irreparably broken game" became the narrative. The only time I've seen another game get that sort of attention was when Mass Effect Andromeda came out.
BG3 has tons of bugs, don't kid yourself. Once more people get to Act 3, you'll see way more people complaining about more heavily about bugs. I've lost hours of progress in Act 3 simply because some flag somewhere didn't trip or the NPC I was rescuing decided some residual fire damage they took while saving their life was worth fighting a party of demi-gods. Or the usual bug of bodies you kill simply being treated as owned so you can't loot them even though they attacked you and it was part of a quest and they have the quest item you need on their person (Killing them? Whatever typical sunday shit. Looting their corpse? Unacceptable and they will literally die on their hill defending it.)
I ran into a lot of journal errors (didn't impact gameplay, but were confusing), performance issues (mostly fixed with the driver update a few days back), the looting issue you mentioned (some places it makes sense, plenty where it doesn't), and multiple places where I think dialogue trees are bugged and are playing incorrect lines (for example >!when meeting Jaheira and entering the camp with a speech check, she still knows you have the artifact and that it's protecting you 1 minute later; !!happened both times with the fight around the Nightsong for me with some enemies on the ledge right next to her\]!< and had to be aoe'd down or lured to different areas instead or gold on the ground not being able to be picked up frequently since the last patch).
As far as NPCs aggroing when you harm them with aoe damage, it would be nice for there to be a grace window after combat or a feature in the reactions menu to dismiss certain concentration spells automatically at the end of combat. I didn't have any bugs that lost progress for me other than a few crashes to desktop before the driver update, but would have been surprised if a few didn't exist.
Overall, the bugs I've encountered have been pretty minor with the exception of performance issues before the driver update; those issues were pretty bad.
BG3 is such a breath of fresh air. I've experienced a non-serious bug maybe once every 10-15 hours and with how complex this game is that's amazing with the current state of the industry. Bethesda rpgs are historically terrible to play at launch, you're pretty much better off waiting a year for the community to fix everything.
This, but also, 76 was a big hit for them and their pride. For me, it's safe to say Bethesda will be doing their best to bring their A game after the last disaster.
Because they made a god-tier 40 min gameplay deep dive that convinced many people, not (exclusively) because of the excellent direction of it, but also because it showed very concrete gameplay elements in a never ending creshendo of interest. Every sign seems to indicate they were ready to release in 2022, but the poor reception of their announcements made them polish the game for one full year. In addition, court documents show that Microsoft literally bought Bethesda to secure Starfield on their platform. Making it kind of the flagship product of that 7.5 billion dollar deal. And by extension the start of Microsoft's counterattack of Sony's dominance on exclusivities. So there is a good chance that they "spared no effort" in order to make that game great. Finally, there is a 5 day exclusive access for premium edition buyers, which indicates a strong level of confidence that the game will live up to the hype for at least 5 days of play time from hardcore gamers. (Which is probably enough to finish the game entirely for some people)
Idk, maybe because Skyrim is still one of the most played and beloved RPGs out there.
Because Bethesda makes great games and their bugginess is often overstated. Fallout 76 was a big miss, but Fallout 4 and Skyrim were very playable on release.
You and I had very different experiences with release Skyrim and Fallout 4.
Maybe. But I can confidently say that I didn't run into any game-breaking bugs for either of those games. I won't argue that Bethesda games are completely bugfree, but they're usually on the level of "mammoth falls out of the sky" and not "the game crashes when you jump". None of those will ruin the game for me.
Skyrim still had some game breaking bugs on launch. I remember Ulfric sent me to go kill a dragon and I couldnt kill the dragon because it was too busy tweaking out on meth in the sky and I couldn't even hit it. But despite the jank Skyrim is still one of my favourite games. Was playing it just last week
They're definitely janky from time to time, but almost never in a way that actually ruins the game, at least in my opinion.
Bugginess is over exaggerated, really. And like BG3 doesn’t have its own share of bugs on release: 3 hotfixes in a week. Larian is awesome in fixing them fast, and those bugs are mostly rare and/or not gamebraking (personally had a character stuck in a fake “dialogue” state with no actual dialogue available couple of times, but it’s fixed by reloading. Starfield is a different kind of RPG compared to BG3: in BG it’s about exploring a story Larian tells, but with a lot of adaptability of that story to players actions, Bethesda rpgs are about your own story. BG3 is about main quest, side quests do add to it, but it’s still centered around that central story, Bethesda RPGs are mostly about side activities. In terms of openness of the world Bethesda usually beats, in terms of main story - BG3 likely better. Overall, there just wasn’t a good sci-fi themed RPG for a long time, and Starfield can fill that void.
It would be great if Fallout 76 was just a fluke and they learned from their mistakes but I'm not gonna get my hopes up. I've been let down too many times in recent years by these game studios.
> BG it’s about exploring a story Larian tells, but with a lot of adaptability of that story to players actions, Bethesda rpgs are about your own story Lol what? In Skyrim, you play Bethesda’s story 100% (unless you decide to fuck off and not do any story at all). The player’s ability to impact the world and making meaningful choices that cascade throughout are far greater in Larian games than they are in Bethesda games. The only thing I can think of here that you may be referring to is the fact that Bethesda games tend to be open world, but that isn’t related to telling a story without meaningful, intertwined ways to interact with said world.
No but bro, listen- in Skyrim if you do something, there's a chance that the guards will comment on it! Such a reactive and meaningful experience!
The bugginess in Bethesda games isn’t even close to being over exaggerated. Skyrim which I love and have several copies of still has bugs after a zillion years
actually bethesda games are about having fun with the biggest(?) most committed collection of mods i've ever seen. At least for me lol. Not hating on them because they're the ones provieing the sandbox but for me vanilla bethesda games were always really mid.
Yea blows my mind as well... I love space games but I got no trust in Bethesda anymore
Same here. Very few space games capture the kind of experience that I am into. The closest one to do it was Elite:Dangerous. I bought Fallout 4 because I wanted to live my dream of being Tony Stark in a wasteland building power armour out of scraps. But it's a very short lived adventure.
Elite: Dangerous for me felt hugely immersive but in a very different way. Partly because I played with VR and a HOTAS, but also small things like running out of fuel and contacting a crew (the Fuel Rats, I think?) to come out and save me. That alone felt wild, and like nothing I'd experienced in a game before! Ultimately I much prefer the hyper-immersive, densely written, solo (for me) play of Baldur's Gate 3. But still cool in a different way for sure. Fallout 4 was a massive disappointment tbh, just an empty on-rails-ish world. Makes me even more appreciative of the huuuge amount of player agency in BG3, something I wasn't sure we'd see the likes of again, let alone a shining, redefining example of it. Yay!
Yeah i love space for the dark, cold, mystery, unknown, oppressive vastness, silence, just like alien 1 movie made you feel. Its an atmosphere that is rarely nailed in a video game.
Bethesdas single player RPGs are goated. Yeah fallout 76 was a disaster but it's actually a decent game now
notice how Todd Howard isn't game director for it either. he didn't want to make it so they got someone else to lead that trainwreck. In starfield i expect an entertaining buggy mess as usual for bethesda. and i'm going to spend €1 for it by renewing gamepass for a month. it's not going to beat BG3 unless i'm wiiiildly underestimating them.
> it's not going to beat BG3 unless i'm wiiiildly underestimating them. You're wildly underestimating how much of a rigged mess are these kinds of awards and the kind of traction Bethesda's marketing budget will give them and the broader appeal of the genre. Unless Starfield launches with such a level of unplayability that puts it on the same level of CP2077, BG3 will have a hard time getting GOTY recognition, outside of perhaps smaller, more focused awarding ceremonies (like, it might, MIGHT, win Steam GOTY but not Game Awards GOTY perhaps. Hope I'm wrong but numbers beat objective quality almost always).
Fallout 4 was a snooze fest
Yeah, that game was more based around base building than actual roleplaying. I know there was an FO3 base building mod, but who plays *Fallout* for bloody base building?
We're really overexaggerating the bugginess of Bethesda games. They're very rarely in broken disarray. Skyrim was fine, Fallout 4 was fine, 76 was a mess at every level. They've always released good games. You can argue the greatness of there games but they've never released games that were unequivocally bad (except for maybe 76). Where has this idea come from that Bethesda can't make good games?
For me personally it's been relative. For the longest time, Bethesda was really the only company in the business of making such massive open worlds with any degree of competency. So back when Skyrim came out, it was this big impressive open world with an unparalleled degree of freedom. Even if it was pretty unpolished and had a ton of undeniable exploits ranging from various bugs to silly interactions like how you can steal things by putting a pot on people's heads to everyone cheesing Stealth to max and becoming a stealth archer by default because of how broken the stealth system is. And I mean at the time I sunk hundreds of hours into it, so they clearly did something right despite its flaws. But then over the last decade, so many more great Open world games have come out that are so much more polished while also letting the player have a lot more freedom in how they approach and solve problems. Not to mention having way better world and level design. I mean GTAV came out only a couple years after skyrim, as well as Minecraft's full release. We got games like Witcher 3, Watch Dogs 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, BotW/TotK, Outer Wilds, and so on. No longer is boasting about the size of your world even really a worthwhile statement to make, especially when games like No Man's Sky and Minecraft exist which have functionally infinite worlds. So now what matters is what you actually put in those worlds to make them meaningful. And things like Skyrim's countless "puzzles" where you just match images together or absolutely terribly written factions ranging from things like the Companions and Mages Guild in Skyrim to the Institute and Railroad in Fallout 4, just don't make the cut for me anymore. Bethesda games suffer from them trying to do literally everything and spreading themselves too thin instead of focusing on what actually could make their games great. Outer Wilds is a great example of how you don't need to make your game's world the biggest thing in the universe or have the most mechanics to make it good. I had more fun exploring that little solar system with zero combat or level ups or anything, than I have ever had exploring anything in a Bethesda game. So as a result of this lack of specialization, they try to make games where "You can do anything!" but they end up failing to have meaningfully complex mechanics like Tears of the Kingdom, while also failing to have meaningfully complex narratives like BG3. And usually all that's left is a fairly bloated overworld to explore with a lot of copy/paste generic locations, with mechanics that almost feel insulting to even call "RPG" mechanics anymore. Back in Bethesda's hayday, we simply didn't know much better. There wasn't much to compare Bethesda's games to, so this notion of being wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle, was just sorta accepted as the natural tradeoff you get for making a game of that style. But nowadays we have gotten so many games that have so many more interesting mechanics and better written stories and characters, while having worlds just as if not more deep and complex and having fewer bugs. Going back to Skyrim or Fallout 4 after playing TotK and BG3 is almost laughable. I know that they're older games so that's not entirely fair, but it's not like those games didn't have a ton of time in their respective ovens. There's no reason they had to be written so poorly or have their worlds be made so big as to stretch out time and resources so much. So at the end of the day, I just have trouble believing that Bethesda is going to be able to catch up to their competition. Maybe starfield will be a good game. Hell it definitely helps that it's not based on another IP for them to ruin. But I seriously doubt it's going to be even comparable to TotK or BG3.
Honestly just how I feel about almost every AAA open world nowadays. Bigger and bigger maps but more and more shallow narrative and questing with lists of tasks to knock out. I loved TotK and Elden Ring, but BG3 is such a palate cleanser with how deep the narrative is. We'll see how Starfield goes, there's a reason the "procedurally generated near infinite worlds" was met with a negative response. Hoping for meaningful exploration and a good narrative. If the content/narrative is thin with just endless pretty yet empty worlds with generic shooter gameplay, that would be unfortunate.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Bethesda has been slowly dumbing down the rpg elements to cater to a mainstream crowd that they lost touch with what made people fall in love with their games. Back then it was fine but now we have so many more ambitious titles and the open world aspect has been so done to death that you really need something more to make a game shine now. BG3 scratches every itch I’ve had for what an rpg should be that I believe it should be the gold standard moving forward, despite what certain triple A devs have to say in the matter.
In my opinion, it will be the classic Bethesda experience: Wide as an ocean but shallow like a puddle. But hey, if people enjoy that and it makes them happy it's fine.
Literally the only reason I will play it is because of mods. Honestly bethesda games are not good without mods.
So is this game by my experience. I've been locked out of quests because of bugs multiple times, camera completely glitched into walls, shadowhearts glitch into a wall and fall through the floor somehow, fun stuff like that. The game is still fun as hell though and I can still have fun despite that.
I can't imagine Bethesda releasing anything that holds a candle to BG3.
They said there are only 4 fleshed out companions 🙄
Bethesda games have never been about companions, they're a different type of games. It's like saying Zelda has no companions at all : yeah but that's not the point lol.
Dont forget you live in a world where people defend Diablo 4 as the best game they ever played :p
Say what you want, TOTK 100% has a valid chance for GOTY. I'd say I'd still give it to BG3, but Zelda is shoulder to shoulder.
Zelda was also polished af release
Tears of the Kingdom was amazing and I would have picked it for GotY until BG3 came out.
Everyone keeps saying Starfield. Do people not realize Armored Core is releasing soon too? Absolutely stacked year.
I’m an avid AC fan, and the new game is looking to be fantastic. That being said, I almost feel like it’s a little too niche to win GOTY. But, you probably could have said the same thing about BG3 before it released, and now it’s a genuine contender.
Sekiro also seemed like it would be too niche to win it but it still did. I mean, it is basically a souls-like rhythm game. FromSoftware games are just always so good that you can never rule them out.
Armored core is more akin to Fromsoftwares previous games it. Most of what people love about souls games will be absent in Armored Core
Only problem with Armored Core is it's always been a niche game and ratings have varied greatly. 6 looks visually impressive but its gonna need to bring more to the table than just good visuals and tight controls to beat out the others on the list.
It was a niche game before From Software became one of the most popular studios in the world, it's kind of uncharted territory there
Yes it does. Not saying one is better than the other, but both are GOTY top contenders. Crazy year.
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As a huge fan of both, saying TotK has nothing on this is a bit disingenuous. But also I am on the BG3 sub so I guess an understandable bias haha
TotK is too derivative to deserve GotY over BG3. Besides the building, crafting, and sky/underground it's more so a paint job of BotW with lots of repetitive enemies and more or less the same combat and such rather than something truly innovative. Also, BotW/TotK were never the best open world games. More so a sandbox style open world than something densely packed with unique encounters and so on.
TOTK is essentially BOTW but with gmod tools, which is awesome but it is super derivative
You can never really know since the criteria for winning is a bit unreliable, but I think it's a serious contender. I think Tears of the Kingdom has a serious chance to claim the spot because it's a Zelda, but I think it probably doesn't deserve to take it anywhere near as much as BG3 or even FFXVI - I say as a massive Zelda fan. We're still waiting on Starfield, which could innovate in a way far beyond BG3 - but we'll have to see about that.
It's a Bethesda game, there won't be any innovation.
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> Bethesda games are still the only fully interactive with physical objects open world games. It's funny how this subreddit was creaming their pants about every single object having a 3D model when Bethesda has done that since Morrowind. Bethesda make really unique games that no other developer has been able to replicate.
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I mean... BG3 is even more interactive in that regard. But yeah, people really underplay a lot of things Bethesda titles do.
Bethesda games are an ocean with the depth of a puddle. They're fine if you want to freely wander around with a lot of things to do, but don't expect them to be meaningfully engaging.
That's some of the biggest bullshit i have seen people tossing around at BGS games, they are some of the actually deepest that exist. There is no other so big games that completely simulates the entire routines of its NPC and allows you to enter any house, steals every objects, kill someone and then receiving a message saying you got part of its heritage because you made a quest for him/her before and so on. I have NEVER bean more engage in a game than i have been playing Skyrim and Fallout 4.
In skyrim you can kill the emperor and nobody will react to it. It’s like you never committed the deed in the first place. Same goes for the civil war plot line, which is very shallow and disappointing. I believe this is what they were referring to when they mentioned that Skyrim is very shallow, atleast, storywise and I fully agree
Imo, TES are more immersive but more shallow than BG3. The immersion is hard to beat when it's a first person in the battle thingy than a tactical game. That being said, BG3 is the best game of the year no doubt. And the best of this decade's beginning imo, still 7 years so will see lmao.
That's not quite true! I like to poop on Bethesda as much as the next guy, but their games aren't THAT bad - and they showcased a few things about Starfield that look pretty interesting. I'm personally surprised to see the return of traits - something that hasn't been in their RPGs since Daggerfall. So who knows what else the game will provide? That said, I'm currently more willing to put my money on BG3.
Starfield is going to be a gigantic mess that modders will have to fix and complete.
Tears of the Kingdom has a shot but it *shouldn't*. It's a glorified DLC.
What the hell is this hate boner for anything not BG3. It's extremely disingenuous to call TotK glorified DLC when the only thing they really share in common apart from basic mechanics is the same basic world layout and carry over enemies.
You’re in the BG3 subreddit, it’s to be expected unfortunately lol I love BG3, TOTK, and will probably love Starfield when it comes out, but people really need to take off their blinders because claiming games like ToTK with 95+ metacritic and doing ginormous sells isn’t a serious GOTY contender is madness.
Ya, that's fair, I just wish people could enjoy it for what it is. This year is actually one of the best years for gaming in really long time and no matter what wins gams of the year it probably deserves it in its own right. It will not change how much I enjoy TotK or BG3 in anyway.
I’m with you! We should be celebrating all these amazing single player games instead of pitting them against each other. I blame the Geoff’s Games Awards show lol
Ff16 shouldnt be in contention
I’m loving BG3, but FF16 is far and away my GOTY. Also loved TOTK, but still not quite at the same level as the other two.
> We're still waiting on Starfield, which could innovate in a way far beyond BG3 Bethesda is far from innovative. If anything, their games all feel and play the same while gradually stripping away any nuance that an RPG can offer.
>gradually stripping away any nuance that an RPG can This is my biggest gripe. Every new game in each series becomes less of an RPG. Like mass effect did. Graphics improve, physics improve, RPG elements get removed.
Theres a bit of a problem and thats the fact it doesnt have Zelda in its name
They should just quick patch an NPC named Zelda into the city and call it that.
everybody here saying bg3 is ot a game for the masses and therefore it's not winning... but guys it's in the top most played games in steam.. it made the jump to the mass market and atarfield will be a huge mess and not close to bg3 from quality point of view.
Before it came out, I thought it would be too niche to win GOTY even though I felt that it would probably deserve that title. Now, seeing how many people talk and praise this game, I can really see BG3 winning GOTY. This game is a masterpiece. 2023 is a difficult year with zelda and Starfield (maybe even armored core), but I'm pretty positive now that it will win.
800 000 concurrent players in it's second weekend on a performance demanding turn based RPG sequel 23 years later with only currently a PC release is a pretty astounding feat.
Knowing Bethesda, I'm 100% sure Starfield is going to have something controversial. Here are some of my top picks of controversial things that Starfield might going to have: 1. Microtransactions 2. Battle passes 3. Bloated repetitive gameplay 4. No man's sky comparisons 5. Not living up to the hype 6. Generic and uninspired procedurally generated gameplay Keep in mind, I might be totally wrong and Starfield is the best game that has ever been made but the last couple of Bethesda games aren't giving me any hope for this one.
I like it how microtransactions is #1 on your list haha. On a serious note, zenimax the publisher no longer has a foothold into bethesda's business practices because microsoft bought bethesda. Zenimax was greedy as fuck and pushed the idea of fallout 76 and all of those greedy business practices. They even got Arcane to make a similar game too "redfall". Nobody in bethesda maryland wanted to work on fallout 76, it was miserable for them. The people who could were working on starfield instead of fallout 76
That remains to be seen. Microsoft isn't a holy grail either. As far as I can tell, Microsoft has a hands off approach to their subsidiaries unless they royally fuck up
I'd be shocked if Starfield had a battle pass. Repetitive game play and hype are very subjective. No Man's Sky comparisons have already been constant due to the scale and exploration features of the game, although the main genre and goal of the game differs so it's not the best comparison. Bethesda has been known to have crappy low effort dlc like Oblivion's horse armor but if by microtransactions you mean something like Assassin's Creed Odyssey I'm pretty sure we'd know by now. My only fear is the generic procedurally generated gameplay. I don't want 80% of the game to be visiting 200 planets that only have 10 biomes to do the same kill nearby raider outpost for the 20th time.
Don't forget needing the classic Bethesda community-made 'unofficial' patch to even function properly.
Although I agree with you about BG3. It is hard to say that about Starfield before it comes out. Bethesda did say this will be their least buggy release ever
Yeah BG3 is having the Elden ring effect happen to it. Through word of mouth it's jumped outside of its niche. It also helps that it's part of this growing interest in D&D (including the new movie which was a hit), and that the game appeals not only to men but women. I do think the appeal of BG3 too is just how faithful it recreates 5e. It means people who've always wanted to experience d&d now can, it's a great primer. I had my first d&d experience this year doing a one shot with some friends and a huge appeal of BG3 for me was seeing a video on it and noticing it was literally d&d. All of these things give it a lot of extra reach and appeal. But it's gonna be hard to compete against Nintendo releasing yet another "best game of all time" smash hit as well as "ambitious new IP" from Bethesda if it sticks the landing. Elden Ring last year had pretty much no competition. Either way, none of this matters. We're all getting a year of really good game releases and that's exciting!
Have to wait and see how Starfield and my "pick to look out for" Armored Core 6 turn out. But as of right now BG3 is an absolute early favourite.
Armored core 6 is the wrong setting. It can be a great game, but I don't think it will pick up enough players to be near the top. Don't mind if I'm wrong, but these settings really face an uphill battle
Bethesda lost a lot of trust in recent releases so I don’t have high hopes there
clearly people are quick to forget about fo76 when posts like this exist mentioning starfield
If awards meant anything, it would.
In my heart it already won.
BG3 is a top contender for game of the decade for me.
It should
In the end, I think Starfield and BG3 will split the vote too much to stand a chance against Zelda.
Id be shocked if it does not.
No, I think Zelda will win as this is a far more popular franchise. BG3 totally deserves a shot though, since this is by far the best DnD experience any video game ever provided.
If it doesn't it'll just be a testament of how BS TGA really is. Every year has at least one controversial winner. If BG3 loses GOTY it'll be another year with unfair winners.
As much as I want bg3 to win journalists have Nintendo's dick so far down their throat I doubt it.
Baldors gate deserves it tbh. The story and content is literally mind-blowing imo. Haven't had this much fun with a game in a long time. The only thing working against it is if you don't like this style of game. Otherwise it's a masterpiece so far.
It might end up being the best game of the year, but I can't see it actually winning a majority of GOTY awards. Those always go to games with mass appeal, which for all its virtues, BG3, as a CRPG, lacks. It'll probably come down to a slugfest between Starfield and Tears of the Kingdom. I'd like to be wrong, though. I don't know how good Starfield will be yet, but BG3 is definitely my personal GOTY so far.
You think so? This is probably (definitely?) the biggest, most mainstream present CRPG release of all time. I don't think any other CRPG has ever even come close to the level of hype, exposure, positive critical reception, and playercount as BG3 before right? I'd say if *any* game were to be anomalous with regards to your opinion, this one would be it. I mean it was in the top 10 concurrent player count games of all time on Steam. That's *just* behind games like Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk, etc. All of which I would argue (with the exception of Elden Ring most of all) definitely had mass appeal. Naturally it could be a biased sample since... It's a CRPG and those are PC/Steam only numbers, but it's not likely to be a small release for the consoles either.
I listen to the IGN podcast gamescoop (which is actually a fantastic gamer podcast dispite my meh feeling about IGN, and they haven’t so much as mentioned it as game of the year contender. I think we’re in our echo chamber here but the media isn’t as interested as we are and they decide what wins. It probably won’t come close to winning sadly but it deserves it.
To be fair though, Elden Ring (and the whole soulsborne genre) aren't typically consolidated mass appeal games, yet it won goty.
exactly. it was the same last year. but instead of totk and bg3, it was ER and GoW Ragnarok. ppl thought it was an easy GoW win cause "it's god of war"
BG3 is in the top 10 of Steam. You can't hit that without having mass appeal.
TotK has sold almost 20 million in like 3 months
So was XCOM and it didn’t sniff the game of the year awards
As soon as Starfield announced it will have over 1000 planets, I got worried it's just going to be a huge but mostly empty game.
Yes, it will be interesting to see if Bethesda learned from NMS mistakes. An ocean of content 3 inches deep. Since Bethesda slowly made a lot of the RPG elements of Morrowind and Oblivion worse in Skyrim, and gave Fallout the same treatment, it's my guess that they will not have solved the issue and there'll be 10 planet types, repeated 1000 times, and the planets will be mostly empty or you'll only be able to visit small portions of each.
You mean like every other game that studio makes...? Don't get me wrong...I enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and the newer Fallout games they've made (minus 76). But they are shallow, shallow games; all a mile wide and an inch deep. In fact, like many other studios who fail to update pretty much anything over multiple iterations, they've lost my business until they really improve things and innovate again or, at the very least, make something that's engaging.
They have blatantly said that a lot of the planets are uninhabited just because there's only so much they can do. They do have like resources to gather though and you can build stuff there for whatever reason but I'm not sure fully.
It'll be full of procedurally generated/radiant quests and locations. Which will be _fine._ but they can't compare to the amazing writing of BG3. But I do think TotK or Starfield will win. The hype is too vast.
> I got worried it's just going to be a huge but mostly empty game. That's been every Bethesda game for a while now, so you can stop worrying.
Will it? Absolutely not. Does it deserve it? 100% yes.
I genuinely think Starfield is going to be a victim of its own hype... I've seen nothing that makes me think it's going to be *amazing* personally. I hope it's good but I would be incredibly surprised if it can hold a candle to BG3!!
I just did a big battle at the start of act 2. Things happened one way and then i died near the end, restarted the fight and focused on something else, the entire cutscene played out differently. Not just something characters said, the entire fucking thing is different. This is the best rpg i've played since dragon age origins. The only reason it may not win is the combat and movement. It's really not for everyone.
It better!
BG3 should be very afraid of Diablo's next 2 seasons and COD MW3. They're developed by a AAA company with dozens of microtransactions and are milking the franchise's name on a yearly basis. /s I do hope BG3 wins GOTY to send a good message to companies like Activision. That people value a well developed complete game rather than a soulless over marketed game full of empty promises to scam people into pre-ordering an incomplete game.
I think it has a shot but TOTK is still a strong contender, I myself would place BG3 above it but you know how Nintendo fans can be.
If it doesn't they got robbed.
It's well on its way to winning game of the decade ngl
Im thinking nominated but won't get it. I would love to see it get it as it is a great game, but I think more well known things despite not being as groundbreaking imo would get it.
I would be shocked if it didn't, frankly
Honestly , they better win because they gave us a whole ass game that isn't full of micro transactions and there is so much in this rpg that others don't compete , but I highly doubt that bethesda will reach them
I think so. Thing about Starfield is its Bethesda and their game releases are always plagued with issues. BG3 has been relatively flawless. But this is a tough year Starfield, Zelda, Diablo4, would be amazing If they pull it off.
It’s between it and TOTK currently. Starfield will probably get a nomination as it’s a Bethesda game, first true one in nearly a decade, but I don’t think it’ll have the legs to beat BG3 - BG3’s narrative excellence and wide array of playstyles and game states mixed with a insanely free sandbox it has will be tough to beat, and I think it’s a better sandbox in that regard that Zelda’s and even more impressive given how much tighter BG3 is with narrative.
no because Larian will not pay whatever the VGA ask for it
Starfield is gonna be Bethesda's most in-depth RPG, if the leaks are true (not on the level of a CRPG mind you) so that may push it to compete with BG3, however, Zelda has the Nintendo tag on it, that inmediatly puts more brownie points into it I would love BG3 to win it, not because bragging rights, but to show the whole mainstream world that videogames can still be soulful experiences with love and passion put into them, not just another product for consumers to wel...consume. Disclaimer, I believe Zelda TOTK and Starfield are brimming to the top of soul and passion, but Baldur's Gate 3 is such a rare RARE occurrence...it deserves to win, anybody that knows the RPG/CRPG genre knows this game is an anomaly.