- 2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition (TGA and DICE), Dark Souls II (GJA), Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (GDCA), Destiny (BAFTA)
- 2015: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (TGA, GJA and GDCA), Fallout 4 (DICE and BAFTA)
- 2016: Overwatch (TGA, DICE and GDCA), Dark Souls III (GJA), Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (BAFTA)
- 2017: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (TGA, GJA, DICE and GDCA), What Remains of Edith Finch (BAFTA)
- 2018: God of War (TGA, DICE, BAFTA and GDCA), Fortnite (GJA)
- 2019: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (TGA), Resident Evil 4 (GJA), Untitled Goose Game (DICE and GDCA), Outer Wilds (BAFTA)
- 2020: The Last of Us Part II (TGA and GJA), Hades (DICE, BAFTA and GDCA)
- 2021: It Takes Two (TGA and DICE), Inscryption (GDCA), Resident Evil Village (GJA), Returnal (BAFTA)
- 2022: Elden Ring (TGA, GJA, DICE and GDCA), Vampire Survivors (BAFTA)
- 2023: Baldur’s Gate 3 (TGA, DICE, BAFTA, GJA and GDCA)
Legend: TGA - The Game Awards, GJA - Golden Joystick Awards, BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Awards, DICE - DICE Awards, GDCA - Game Developers Choice Awards.
This list doesn’t include awards before 2014, because The Game Awards launched that year.
Pretty crazy that BG3 unanimously won despite the existence of ToTK.
IMHO BG3 completely destroyed the curve. Even if you don’t like the genre, you have to tip your hat to what was accomplished in that game. It blew away Skyrim, Fallout 3, and all the classics in the genre and completely set a new level. The last time I was that impressed with a game was probably Ultima IV.
It’s an unpopular opinion but as I see it, TOTK is wildly overrated, as is BotW. Yes, they are very polished and certainly good games but the 10/10 across the board made me doubt my sanity. The latest Zeldas are basically Ubisoft open worlds with a couple mechanics borrowed from Garry’s mod. It’s fun the first few hours but the lack of variety and absence of any writing really make it dull IMHO. I managed to finish BotW for the novelty and the occasional detail (the lightning hitting you when holding metal is a nice touch) but I’d die if my life depended on me remembering any character interactions. BG3 Otoh, not only is it also very polished, it has sublime combat and absolutely unforgettable characters. Truly a masterpiece.
I loved BOTW and in any year without BG3 as competition, I would totally accept it as GOTY. But BG3 is just totally on another level.
I played FarCry 3 forever ago and to this day I remember the plot and Vaas Montenegro. I remeber Siegmeyer of Catarina, from DS which for all intents and purposes has a not so intelligible story. This just to name a few. I spent the same amount of hours on BotW as FC3 much more recently and can’t for the life of me remember any characters. I found them bland and uninteresting. That’s just me and I completely understand people who love it.
Far cry 3 did have memorable characters but IMHO BOTW is a vastly more enjoyable game to play. The difference in gameplay is massive to me. I never finished Far Cry 3 as it was tedius to play, whereas I happily finished BOTW enjoying every minute.
Different strokes to different folks. Perhaps my longer experience with games makes me more blasé with the mechanics or other features of BotW. I found FC3 and BotW equally tedious in terms of core gameplay loop, except FC3, actually had a plot and occasional sublime moments that made finishing it less of a chore. BotW is an empty sandbox with a handful of enemies (even less if you consider more HP and different colour as not counting as new enemies) and forgettable characters and story. The technical side of it is quite impressive as is the visual design, however everything else is painfully mid.
That said, I disliked the combat in TW3 or the Batman and Spider Man series for being too floaty and unresponsive so, I’m overly picky I guess.
We can at least agree on Spider Man and TW3 ;-).
:)
I didn’t have a very polished experience at all with BG3, maybe because I played too close to the release date?
It was very frustrating to be honest, but at least they are still fixing the game
I played it at release and didn’t have very many bugs. I could see players having issues with the freedom that it gives though. The whole point of the game is it doesn’t tell you how to solve problems, and you need to come up with solutions yourself. I could see people coming from playing only modern AAA games not being used to thinking for themselves and that causing issues, but I don’t know if this is what you meant.
Yes this wasn’t what I meant, the game had a lot of performance issues and bugs when I played. The act 3 was also very unpolished and felt unfinished
Yeah, performance was much worse in act 3. That’s true. It’s a top down turn based game, so 30 FPS was acceptable for me. Still, it wasn’t ideal. I think that’s been improved now if you wanted to give it another go.
What type of issues have ya had? I haven’t encountered any game breaking bugs myself.
TotK sucked. Just like breath of the wild. They took what made Zelda great. And ruined it with open world bullshit and weapon micromanagement.
My point isn’t that, but how unanimous BG3 was. If you look at other years, there were still some juries that prefer one over the other, but not with BG3.
Oh I know. I just hate what they’ve done to Zelda. Lol
Lol, I have the exact opposite opinion. BotW took what made Zelda frustrating (annoyingly linear, samey, and poorly-explained) and gave you a whole world filled with puzzles and exploration!
Tell me you haven’t played the original Legend of Zelda without saying you haven’t played the original Legend of Zelda.
BOTW/TOTK are more like the very first Zelda game than any other Zelda titles.
Just like BG3 really isn’t all that different from BG1 and 2. Everyone so blown away by it saying it raised the bar must be young as fuck, because it didn’t raise the bar. It just put it back where it was in the 90’s after it fell off the post. That isn’t to say it’s not great or deserving of GOTY over TOTK, though. Ideally, they both would win for different reasons.
I have played the original and loved it. Doesn’t change the fact botw is open world slop imo. Lol
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I feel Tears of the Kingdom is overrated. Yes, it has some welcome quality-of-life improvements, and yes, it has more content than its predecessor, but I find the characters less interesting, the environments less inspired, and the encounters more repetitive. Every time I pick it up again, I get bored within a couple hours and go back to another play-through of Breath of the Wild.
I would vote for Baldur’s Gate 3 over TotK without hesitation.
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I wouldn’t call a game where you build weird vehicles and weapons using things around you, or solve puzzles any possible way a walking simulator.
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I’m old enough to remember the chainsaw controller
Sidebar, but the nominees for this year’s TGAs are ridiculous. It’s the same ~7 games shoehorned into every category they can, and a few others sprinkled in where they can’t.
You’d think there were only like 20 games that released this year that were good.
Some games that released this year, but snubbed by TGA in favor of kissing up to the same games n times over:
- Hades 2
- V Rising
- Satisfactory
- Mouthwashing
- Factorio: Space Age
- SULFUR
- Rise of the Golden Idol
I hope people start pronouncing it FISH awards!Edit: my bad, fish would be goti.
I believe it’s ghoti
Ah yes you are right. I don’t know what kind of brainfart got me.
There seems to be an error: 2019 is Resident Evil 2 (the remake), not 4. Otherwise a fun list to scroll through!
I personally don’t care which game wins the awards. I’m there watching for entertainment. I see lot of discussions and people take the awards too serious in my opinion. It’s like taking IGN scores serious. :D
What’s wild to me is, that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn’t appear once on this list.
What’s wild to me is, that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn’t appear once on this list.
Makes sense to me IMO. 2023 was a stacked year, and while TotK was a pretty good game, it was way too close to Breath of the Wild for me to even consider it as game of the year. Other games that could’ve won the award over it include Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Hi-Fi Rush, and Octopath Traveler 2.
Zelda fans suck this and BotW off so hard and the games are literally shitty Ubisoft fucked up versions of a series we used to love. SAD.
I like the games, but man, I really miss classic 3D zelda dungeons. The other day, I decided to try OOT master quest, and it was super refreshing!
Well it’s listing only one game per year and BG seems to be the winner for 2023.
Not exactly. Per year are multiple games listed. Its just incredible that Zelda didn’t won a single award, based on this list.
It won awards, but it didn’t get the “overall game of the year” award from any of those 5 outlets. And, compared to baldurs gate 3 I think its quite easy to understand why. Totk was a well polished experience but it suffered quite a lot from “mile wide inch deep” syndrome IMHO. Probably one of the best games Nintendo has ever made, but it isn’t as good as baldur’s gate 3.
It’s quite remarkable how Larian slowly climbed their way to the top of the industry. While they have been around since 1996, they only created eight “proper” games prior to Baldur’s Gate 3 (if we don’t count their obscure educational titles) and most of them only received review scores in the 7/10 range. It would have been far more likely for them to remain a mid-tier developer that eventually faded away, like so many other studios producing games of similar scope and quality.
I would wager that prior to “Divinity: Original Sin”, which was their true breakthrough game, most, especially outside of Europe, had never even heard of this studio.
It says a lot about the passion of their team, I think. Larian was not even on my radar until a little while after DOS2 came out, and while I enjoyed dos2 I burned out in act 3. It was, however, plain to see that they poured buckets of care and attention into the game, even if it wasn’t exactly for me.
With Baldur’s Gate 3 made an upward trend in quality and kept the same love, care, and attention. If that level of care and attention is present in their previous titles (I have no idea), then I think it was all but inevitable that they’d find this critical success.
I didn’t know BAFTA awarded videogames too. TIL
