Giant Bomb's Game of the Year Thread: Skyrim? Skyrim? Skyrim? Skyrim? Skylanders!
- Thread starter The Dutch Slayer
- Start date
giant_frying_pan
Member
Brad does it again!
I don't think Saints Row getting #1 or #2 really makes that much of a difference. The coverage and exposure that Giant Bomb has given the game up until now has very clearly got a lot of people interested in it that wouldn't have been normally, myself included and I think that's a success for the site and Volition.
All of Giant Bomb's game of the year programming has been exemplary as per usual and say what you will about their final calls, but they let everyone hear exactly how they arrive at the decisions. And it's all personal preference and opinion anyway. Ranking aside, everyone should play Saint's Row...and everyone should play Skyrim.
I don't think Saints Row getting #1 or #2 really makes that much of a difference. The coverage and exposure that Giant Bomb has given the game up until now has very clearly got a lot of people interested in it that wouldn't have been normally, myself included and I think that's a success for the site and Volition.
All of Giant Bomb's game of the year programming has been exemplary as per usual and say what you will about their final calls, but they let everyone hear exactly how they arrive at the decisions. And it's all personal preference and opinion anyway. Ranking aside, everyone should play Saint's Row...and everyone should play Skyrim.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Jeff has always wanted to do wrassling, so we're just helping him get SMARKED.com started.
Indeed, not to mention this thread was made specifically to discuss their GOTY podcasts. People coming in here being mightier than thou can fuck off.
Yeah, "just wow" really raises the level of discussion in here. I wanted to stay out of this mess, but holy shit are there some runaway egos on display in this thread. Do you have a counterpoint to go along with that smug indignation?
There's being passionate and there's just being uncivil. A few of you leapt clear across that line feet-first in the last couple days.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Yah, I love you Brad, but you made some equally hyperbolic points on the podcast.
Wait there was politics in Skyrim? What, is that referring to the Imperial/Stormcloak divide that has almost zero effect on the game world no matter which side you choose or prefer and both questlines are nearly identical in structure and purpose? It must refer to something else, I should check the podcast sometime.
darkressurection
Banned
Brad, you are a cool dude, but I don't think you can really come in here and a say that that there is a poor level of discussion then turn around and call the people in here smug and uncivil. It seems like every single time you decide to post on GAF it is to point out the posters that you disagree with or are making outlandish posts, but you can't do that then turn around and leave ignoring any of the rest of the discussion that is taking place. There are plenty of even headed people that wouldn't mind picking your brain to understand the reasoning behind the points you made towards Skyrim.
elrechazado
Banned
It's easier to drive by and ignore all of the good points.
I really, really enjoyed most of my time with Skyrim, but when I finished the civil war questline, I paused and thought to myself "...and?" Obviously it would be difficult to implement, but I would have appreciated it if some of the world's NPCs acknowledged what I did (or at least that the war itself
was over
It's also referring to the Nords segregating dark elves into a slum district on one end of the province, and a separate group of indigenous people being displaced into the mountains by the occupying regime--and then staging a coup to retake their city from the inside--on the other end. All that stuff takes place under the umbrella of religious persecution that factors into the main storyline and colors a lot of side quests and specific character interactions. Hell, you yourself get the chance to significantly remap the balance of power between specific cities later in the main storyline.
It's hardly great literature but it's a lot more textured than you have any right to expect from most games, and you only encounter as much of it as you choose to seek out. Most games are so bad about whapping you over the head with their story elements that being able to subtly encounter them in-line according to your specific path through the game is really refreshing.
I'm not about to start addressing every out-of-context quote you guys pull out of the discussion, but do you not recall that quote was in response to a specific point Jeff was making (about mediocre quest design, if I remember) or are you just trying to be intentionally misleading? There's no game in existence that you can't find bad things about; you don't have to look further than our own GOTY arguments to prove that point.
I freely admit there are plenty of things about Skyrim that need to improve. It's still the best game I played this year.
Or, you know, it takes time to type out a reasoned response. It's just this kind of warm even-handedness that makes me want to be an active user of this forum!
elrechazado
Banned
Hey, great to see you, but slandering the whole thread in a previous post was pretty lame. Glad you came back and responded to some specific questions. There's lots of people here who love your stuff and aren't being internet jerks, so some courtesy if you care about your fans is much appreciated.
The majority of the postings seem geared against Brad and his arguments, while the other guys seem to get a green card on everything, who I think make some terrible points as well. But as an example, I am already afraid of saying anything "against" Vinny because I already know that most of the people would go for my throat. It's sad because the whole discussion suffers from the bias.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Off topic, but you guys really need to play or at least watch Yakuza 4. It's the only major game last year that dealt with "real world" racism.
Jeff was describing how he found a lot of the randomly generated quests and locations to be fairly boring, concluding with the same boss battles and same "help me kill some dudes in a cave" storyline. I encountered similar quests... so I, personally, find it amazing that you never hit any boring quests in your 60 hour playthrough.
Saints Row The Third makes references to that very match. Ryan planned the doublecross all along to honor the game!
darkressurection
Banned
Alright, so while you are here Brad I would actually like to ask you about Ryan's decision to back Skyrim. You obviously know him better than anyone here will ever but I really want to know if you can give any insight to his decision. On the surface (and what comes through on the podcast) is that he doesn't feel like it has enough content even though he played it for, I believe 30 hours (I could be wrong but I felt like he mentioned that number at some point). Earlier in the discussions Jeff downplayed himself from talking about LA Noire because he hadn't played much of it, and so to many people, the reasoning behind Ryan's vote felt false in someway because Ryan hasn't played much (or any?) Skyrim.
Did he talk to you guys after the deliberations at all regarding his decision and why he did so?
Did he talk to you guys after the deliberations at all regarding his decision and why he did so?
You know, perhaps if you didn't ignore all the good and well written comments to focus on a handful of negative ones you might be more inclined to be an active user of this forum. Well, any public internet forum.
elrechazado
Banned
Yup, basically what I was trying to say.
RomanticHeroX
Member
Looking over the past several pages, I think anyone would be forgiven for not seeing good discussion going on for all the garbage.
It's an expression of shock at the marker the statement sets. If you interpret that as smug or indignant than I suppose there is little wonder as to why most of the Bombcast's arguments related to Game of the Year devolve into a stewing silence of standoffs that end in anticlimax.
There is little of any political value occurring in Skyrim. It becomes a very confusing point to me because the game is designed in such a way that everything is purposefully self contained. Because the player can go anywhere and do things in almost any order the game has to sit and wait patiently in order for that to happen. Characters become contained to their chairs and paths to their beds, so the opportunity for them to ever really interact with one another never really takes off. What political intrigue can really be offered within such constraints? The result falls primarily to the game falling to its usual tricks, and you're sent on assassination missions but now the target has some purported high profile.
The most interaction that ever really occurs between different ideological beliefs is Bethesda's rather flaccid presentation of civil war, where the player is sent to identical preset castles on a wave clearing mission. A city gets sacked and burned at the end, but ultimately that has no bearing on the outcome of anything. The town goes back to being pristine, and its inhabitants seem to have no recollection of the events. As great of an asset as the open world is for Skyrim it also notably hamstrings the storytelling.
To be rather flat about it, the statement seemed rather uncultured. I don't mean that word in any particularly offensive way, but the statement reflects more on what you haven't played/read/watched than anything else. Even within the sphere of gaming this year when there are titles with a great deal more to say about politics than Skyrim. Vinny brought up the Wither 2 right in the conversation, but Deus Ex also has far more political (if campy) trappings that lend to more backstabbing, resource rearranging, and diplomacy.
Totally get where you're coming from and it's not lost on us that we sometimes give a disproportionate amount of attention to the squeaky wheels, but for my part, I haven't figured out a tasteful way to respond to the more positive comments about the things we do without it just coming off as self-aggrandizing pap.
That said, I do post in discussions on other forums on a regular basis, but you can't seriously expect someone to wade into an environment of open, targeted hostility here and just be like "hey guys what's going on!" Well, maybe a stronger person, but not me.
You should really play Saints Row the Third.
It is goddamned hilarious how formulaic Giant Bomb discussion is here.
Most people like them, and have fun discussing the positives and negatives of the latest feature.
A few talk shit about them and are rude towards them and are basically assholes.
Brad comes in to respond only to the latter and generalizes GAF to them.
Most people like them, and have fun discussing the positives and negatives of the latest feature.
A few talk shit about them and are rude towards them and are basically assholes.
Brad comes in to respond only to the latter and generalizes GAF to them.
It takes time you know to type out the context.
(btw his is my first visit to the thread so no need to generalize the entirety of GAF when responding to my post)I think its reasonable to assume that most people visit this thread already know the context. Within the context that quote is lunacy. The vast majority of the quest lines I encountered in forty hours of play were extremely boring and run of the mill.
Also, I don't understand how Mortal Kombat 9 can be knocked out of top 10, mostly because it's online was broken for months even though most of the crew never cared to play it online, yet Skyrim can be considered and chosen for number one even though one out of three platforms it launched on is borderline unplayable.
(btw I played it on PC and ran into a game breaking bug 20 hours in my first play-through with my save where any visit to Whiterun would result in CTD, forcing me to start over.)
Either way, you just need to play The Witcher 2.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Look, taken outside the context of this thread, Saints Row 3 is legitimately one of the best games I've played in the last year, if not years. If you ever thought the GTA3 games were fun open world games, SR3 does that a thousand times better.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
By who though? I think it's won precisely zero GOTYs, if that thread is correct.
Giant Bomb and GAF. Only places I pay attention to.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
But... Ryan hates the game because it's too short. lol
I still haven't gotten into the civil war stuff, but after the peace negotiation scene in the main quest you can visit the basement of the castle in Solitude and find all the Empire-friendly jarls you deposed--and they certainly haven't forgotten it's your fault they're no longer in power. That's of course in addition to there literally being new rulers on the thrones of whichever cities you decided to rearrange. To say nothing you do has a lasting effect on the world is just inaccurate.
Skyrim winning just shows how broken GOTY awards for videogames are. They can't play all games so there is a lot of quick judgments and guesswork going on.
Far worse was their handling of Bastion. Having that close relationship was definitely an issue and one they brought on themselves. Preemptively mocking any critics with money hat jokes and using the VGA awards to back up your argument was extremely childish.
Far worse was their handling of Bastion. Having that close relationship was definitely an issue and one they brought on themselves. Preemptively mocking any critics with money hat jokes and using the VGA awards to back up your argument was extremely childish.
elrechazado
Banned
Can we stop with this "bastion unethical situation" nonsense please? It's been addressed over and over in a reasonable way that the mocking now just makes sense because stupid people won't let it go and haven't read the perfectly rational logic.
It's hardly overrated. Check out the OT. I and many other fans of the series have mentioned the problems with the game. I've have quite a few problems with the game compared to 2 but the base game is still a lot of fun. Also "one of those games" is pretty much every game on GAF. The same thing will happen to Skyrim as well.
They didn't review it because of the coverage they gave the game up to its launch. That was how they handled Bastion and I think they did a fine job at it.
Professor Fog
Member
Agreed. I don't quite understand what there is to get upset about here.
I think the only rational logic is that Giant Bomb isn't impartial, doesn't claim to be impartial, and shouldn't even care about being impartial.
The biggest bullshit about the whole situation is that they didn't review it, because that actually gave the impression that they were attempting to be impartial.
They ain't, they shouldn't be, and we would all be better off if everybody accepted that.
And they should totally get the devs to pay them for Quick Look EXs. In all seriousness. I already skip them because they are PR driven, why not get paid for that?
I think they handled the Bastion coverage perfectly. Reviews are essentially purchasing advise, and it'd be pretty fucked up to recommend someone buy a game your good friends made.
Game of the year for Giant Bomb is really all about personality, and I feel it would be fucked up in the reverse if they were to pretend they didn't love that game just for appearance purposes. It would be just as disingenuous.
And, yo, it's not like Bastion's a game most people don't like. I mean... come on.
What did they say that was reasonable?
Reviews are just as much purchasing advice as GOTY lists.
They should have reviewed it, or they should have exempted it from awards. Preferably the former.
Because no one is getting paid for previews, exclusives, videos, pics or videos.
elrechazado
Banned
You're so outraged about it, maybe you could look into it before calling them out for their war crimes.
EmCeeGramr
Member
I hadn't gotten to that part yet, so maybe I'll warm up to it, but I had a similar "I really can't change shit unless Bethesda wills it" reaction to a certain power struggle going on in Riften. I hate Maven Black-Briar, hate her kids, discovered
a Black Sacrament in her basement
I can end up improving the Thieves Guild and the Black-Briar family's fortunes in life, and thus effect a change in Skyrim, but so far the opposite choice has been completely denied to me. I'll end up finishing it because I've been playing a thief character and in the end it'll pay off handsomely, but my role-playing ability was dampened by the fact that I couldn't throw a monkey wrench into the whole situation by having my only ally be myself.
I've probably just been spoiled by New Vegas, which really gave freedom into the players hands, and had far more interesting and compelling factions backed up by strong social and political argument.
War crimes? Isn't that a bit much?
I don't follow everything they do, and they offered no real explanation in their podcasts.