Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is up for 12 awards, making it the most nominated game in the awards’ history, followed by PlayStation titles Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Ghost of Yotei with eight nominations each, and Hades 2 with six.
I really wish Abiotic Factor at least got a nomination, it was easily my favorite game this year.
We’ve gotta figure out some rules for what “indie” means. E33 is a great game, but that budget is estimated to be least $20 million. How many small teams are not being honored because a spot is being taken up by a game that has the same budget as a small AAA project?
A small AAA production in 2000, maybe. E33’s was only a fraction of a small AAA budget today.
TGA calls it “a game made outside the traditional publisher system,” which fits. I’d agree that we’re looking at wildly different scales of production in the same category, though.
Indie doesn’t and hasn’t ever had anything to do with budget.
Indie has always been a way to define a category for creators without access to the same amount of money that publishers had historically provided. Now publishers are both no longer needed to release a game and are very rarely taking chances on original games from first time developers.
Am I the only one who finds it a bit gross that there’s a Spotify ad right in the awards list? “BEST SCORE AND MUSIC, LEVELED UP BY SPOTIFY”
Everything is for sale in capitalism.
Good showing for E33 but I’m not convinced it’s a shoo-in for GotY. It’s a media-run event and the press adored Hades 2. Plus there’s always the Kojima factor and it would be the first time TGA’s ever given it to a studio’s first game.
Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 is definitely my pick for Game of The Year.
Although there are many great games in this category but E33 was definitely my favorite game this year.
I almost feel bad for all the other games lol. Especially silksong but hey I mean gang comes outta nowhere can’t do much about that.
Silksong, KCD 2, Hades 2, Death Stranding 2 alongside. It’s quite the lineup!
An overall really good year for gaming!! 👍
E33, Hades 2, and Silksong are all very very close for me. I’d probably pick E33 as it’s the one whose story resonated the most but at the end of the day I’d be happy with any of them getting the recognition.
Hades 2 is tough cause after having played early access for so long I’m almost not that excited about it anymore which hurts it a tiny bit, but that shouldn’t take away from the things it did well.
Must have been a really slow year given nearly every category has Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2, and Ghost of Yotei. Or the people that came up with the nominees only heard of those 3 games all year and decided to sprinkle in a few randoms to make it look like they have heard of more than 3 games this year.
They’re just games that favor those categories. Even if Peak pops off, it’s not going to win a category like art direction or narrative, ever. It was far from a slow year.
Impressive list of nominees except for Donkey Kong Bananza?! that just looks so out of place. But it’s gotta be Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 all the way for GOTY.
Think it’s going for a Titanic level sweep here
Wow, the only games I want to see win anything are Dispatch and I guess Peak. Pretty much everything else did not click with me. E33 has really surprised me with how widely praised it is. I put it in the same area as Death Stranding 2. I recognize that people seem to really like those games but I just do not get the same enjoyment and I cant understand what other people like so much about them, other than that they evidently do.
E33 is the only game to have ever made me ugly-cry, and it did it multiple times. That alone secures it a place in my personal pantheon. I didn’t love the combat system, but I will admit that’s because I have never liked JRPG systems, and I eventually grew to be okay with it. The game was a work of art and passion that we rarely ever see, and that came through.
Have not played it yet, but for me, personally, E33 looks like one of those “better to watch the cutscenes on YouTube” games.
It’s getting made into a movie already so you can probably wait for that worst case :>
Different strokes for different folks and all that. I personally couldn’t stand The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, or Baldur’s Gate 3 despite them being constantly praised.
I bounced off Witcher 3 too. Watched friends play a lot of RDR2, not interested.
…BG3 was sublime though. I don’t even like D&D combat, or ‘Tolkien-esque’ fantasy, but holy hell. It’s gorgeous, it just oozes charisma, and was quite fun in coop.
Expedition 33 is the only game on the list that isn’t a sequel or derivative of a previous IP so it’s got originality going for it :>








