To the surprise of absolutely no one, Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year at the Game Awards 2023, leaving The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in the dust. At least the new Zelda title won in the Best Action/Adventure category, but it's quite clear that it hasn't left the same impact as its predecessor in 2017, even though Nintendo tried hard to surpass Breath of the Wild on every level.
Well, Tears of the Kingdom is still my personal game of the year, if that counts for anything, where I've spent most of my free time in 2023 either playing or talking about this game. But even I can't deny that it doesn't have the same level of excitement that Breath of the Wild brought originally, mainly because it's set in the same world. It's also a bit too much of a good thing, making this the first Zelda game to have me lose motivation a couple of times.
The above artwork, which Nintendo has published for this occasion (on Twitter), is absolutely fire, however, and they could have used this as the boxart. It's so vibrant, perfectly captures this feel of an ancient civilization, and actually just makes me want to go back straight to the game, which I will do this weekend.
The artwork also tells me that Nintendo probably has expected more than just a single award. Either they have kept this under lock until now or maybe this was even made specifically to acknowledge the awards. Whatever may be the case, it shows that Nintendo took this quite seriously. It may not be on the same level as releasing a whole DLC pack during the event, which is what they did back in 2017 with The Champions' Ballad, but it's still quite the hype artwork.
Of course, getting a free update (with Master Mode) would have been even more awesome and could bring back many of the players who are already done with the game. But we already knew that this wasn't going to happen, because Nintendo kept saying so...
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Nintendo should keep catering to this event. The Game Awards are a farce, where the awards themselves and their winners are sidelined for mobile game commercials and Hollywood actors. The less Nintendo invests into this, the better, where this year they didn't have any announcements for the show. And that's fine.
Wow, thank you so much for the long and insightful comment!
ReplyDeleteBeing a direct sequel isn't so much the problem, I think, because Tears of the Kingdom is doing many new things that completely sets it apart and makes it more interesting. The reason why Majora's Mask is usually preferred by the hardcore fans is that its three-day-mechanic makes it less accessible, because it creates the feeling of playing against a time limit. The hardcore fans appreciate it, because they have learned to play with the clock instead of against it. It takes some getting into, where this isn't for everyone.
In my eyes, the main reason why Tears of the Kingdom failed to excite was simply re-using the same world, while most of the additions to this world (like the caves and sky islands) were pure filler content. This has severely hurt the title and I hope Nintendo will never do this again (outside of something like a proper 2nd Quest).
I haven't played Baldur's Gate 3 yet, but I've only heard good things and I'm certain that it deserves the award. I also fully expected this to happen, so there are no hard feelings here or anything, where I'm already happy that Tears of the Kingdom got the Action/Adventure award, because it also deserved to get some recognition.