Final Fantasy X is my favourite in the franchise and easily one of the best games I've ever played, so that's my clear choice. Shenmue II is also amazing, and very unlucky to be released the same year as FFX, as that too would be a worthy personal winner.

2001 was an awesome year for everyone though and GTAIII, Halo, MGS2, or even Smash Melee would all be worthy winners. This is definitely the decade where my gaming tastes tend to divulge from the general public's the most, so I don't know if I'll be in favour of any of the vote winners, but we'll see.

One thing to note about GTA3 is that it isn't really that great. It revolutionised gaming, without a doubt, but San Andreas is where to franchise got good imo

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

The one between Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Max Payne. Really hard to choose. But since I voted for "Other" I really don't need to

FFX, Super Smash Bros Melee and GTA3 all in the same year.

That was a good year.


My vote goes to Final Fantasy X

Another fairly easy choice here. Final Fantasy X is in my top ten favourite games of all time, while no other game from this year is in my top 50. Smash Bros. Melee, MGS2, and ICO are probably the three closest, though in all of those cases the respective series (if you count Shadow of the Colossus a part of the same series as ICO) have much better games in them.

Final Fantasy X is an easy pick for me. It was a massive change with the move to voice acting. It was also a game that worked well with its limitations - the world was much more linear, and so the story became mostly of a pilgrimage through a linear world. Another limitation was that large cities couldn’t be built anymore because in 2D you can make a city feel massive with 25-50 people living in it because you can make it look like a representation. In full 3D it becomes a little silly unless only spending a short time there (like Zanarkand); it doesn’t quite work the same. So instead, they made it a ruined world of villages and really only one larger city. FF12 tried to make multiple larger cities where the player would interact with only a small part of it, but these urban centers ended up feeling desolate, like set pieces on a stage. FFX did it right for this era of 3D games. Many other games did the disaster torn explanation after like Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 3 - Xenoblade Chronicles X did the single large city with an expansive urban center by making it an exodus ship from earth landing on an alien planet, and all the outside smaller locations were little settlements/stations on an otherwise primitive world with semi-nomadic peoples. Bottom line, I was impressed in how well they weaved the story and worldbuilding through the limitations without trying to fudge the world to fit the story in the way some other major 3D RPGs did, such as FF12. Of course, FFX wasn’t the first game to do the ruined world, Skies of Arcadia did it just a short time earlier, but Skies had shown a bit more recovery and the world had a lot more seems in it than FFX.

GTA3 was also great, I’m a big fan of what DMA/Rockstar was doing in the mid 1990s to early 2000s. The radio and cruising around were always a lot of fun - even if the weren’t quite as developed as they’d become in the sequels. The radio in Vice City was a massive improvement. But GTA 3 had Scarface radio.

Animal Crossing is another game I liked a lot. The first game was really something. I remember that so many people wanted to play that there weren’t enough character slots. But it was really cool having everyone interact in the same town, and see how it evolved over time. For a bit, that game was on 24/7. Many people playing hadn’t experienced a casual game before. For me, Animal Crossing really opened up its potential with its sequels, when it moved to handheld and got connection/town visit functionality.

I don't feel particularly strongly about any of the games here. I opted for GTA3. THPS3 was boss too.

LOL, you DO in fact have to choose.  If there is a runoff vote, then I put games in the poll based on what people voted for in the comments.  You can only vote for one game though.  As your post currently reads, I wouldn't put either of these games in a runoff poll, because you haven't picked one or the other.

GTA III - an amazing transition to a 3D open world.

I'm tempted to just go with Halo.
Myst III: Exile is the best of the series in gameplay, if not story.
If I had played Ico, it'd likely be candidate.

But I'm shamelessly favoring the domestic: vote for Max Payne
(I do think it's better than the sequel)

Halo: Combat Evolved is really the only answer here. No other game that year changed the “game” the way Halo did.