Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is THE Winningest GotY Of All Time!

[UnderwaterFunktown]

firebush03 said:

Kyuu said:

I'm going to sound like a true hater lol (I swear I'm not!). But its "relevant" compeition wasn't nearly as fierce as Baldur's Gate 3's or Elden Ring's.

The game probably deserves it, but it's a little annoying how many people hype it up like it's another TLoU1, BotW, God of War 2018 (which I don't like but it beat RDR2's ass), Elden Ring, or Baldur's Gate 3 moment. It's just not. The game scored in the low 90's and is being treated an objective 97 just because it dominated a strong year in gaming. Hades 2 is the better received game, but it's penalized by its indie 2Dness. Hades and Hollow Knight just aren't the type of games to win in these events. And Bananza, while solid, obviously wasn't on the same tier as Nintendo's best platformers reception-wise.

Silksong? Bananza? Hades II? MarioKart? Ghost of Yotei?? Death Stranding?? Split Fiction?? And so on.

This year was stacked with heavy hitters! It’s not even comparable to 2022, which saw only a handful of a games win more than a couple of awards. And in spite of the more aggressive competition, ER won 69% of all awards whereas E33 swept >70%.

Also: “The game scored in the low 90’s” ignores the fact that it scored around where GoW’18 and TLoU:Pt1+2 scored. It sits as the 32nd most acclaimed game of all time on OC.

To be fair lots of competition is different from having strong competition. Ragnarok was a very real candidate for GotY in most other years, but take Clair Obscur out of 2025 and the year feels a lot like 2021 with lots of great titles but no one really obvious game that blew people away. I think in that scenario Silksong would have run away with it like It Takes Two did for being a very impressive indie.