COURIER

Yeah I don't really know enough about this personally. The only esports I watch vaguely are Dota 2 and League, so I can't comment on the other teams. I did watch TI this year for Dota, and I generally like watching ATF and Cr1t play. But Dota ends up not winning these awards generally, so I'm just gonna predict Gen.G cause they are the only other team I know.

All the esports categories are gonna be like this. I just don't watch any of this. I would've actually voted Chovy but that guy is a serial choker and just cannot perform at worlds. I don't really care if he's god's gift to earth in LCK if the brother cannot perform on the most important stage of them all then what are we even doing here man. I think I saw a frag montage of Zyw0o a bit ago so I'll just vote him

Okay the esports trifecta is over after this one. Look man I really don't like tactical shooters, so CS2 and Valorant are out of the picture for me. That just leaves the 3 mobas, and I think I downloaded Mobile Legends once when I was bored on vacation, so that's out too. I personally like Dota a bit more than LoL so that's getting my vote, but League is much more popular so idk I guess it wins.

Ok fuck my predictions for this category I don't actually even care. I like Caedrel's league coverage and Kai Cenat is vastly popular, there's all the explanation needed. But who is The Burnt Peanut? I'd literally never heard of this guy before in my life. I haven't heard of Sakura Miko either to be fair but I'm just not all that into V-tubers, so that makes sense. Mr. Peanut seems relatively popular I guess? But he just doesn't seem to be on the same tier of popularity as like everyone else here and I actually don't know why he's there. I sometimes wish there would be like explanations associated with each nominee just so I can see what the TGA jury could possibly write for this dude. No offense to Mr. Peanut though you probably make fire content.

Rockstar is going to keep delaying this damn game every year just to keep winning this award. Like let's be serious here, the other games in this list aren't like pushovers or anything. The Witcher 4 especially is gonna have a ton of buzz around it. But GTA 6? Be for real man this shit isn't a competition for what's the most anticipated.

Bro I haven't seen NONE OF THESE. I didn't even know there were Until Dawn and Splinter Cell shows. I think I only heard of the DMC adaptation because the creator was an Asmongold fan or something along those lines. I voted the Minecraft movie for shits and giggles, but The Last of Us usually just generates awards for existing so it'll probably be that.

For this category, I've only actually played Elden Ring Nightrein, so it sorta had to be the one I voted for. Well I guess I played like 4 hours of the BF6 beta but that hardly counts. For what it's worth I thought Nightrein was actually pretty good. I think it definitely has flaws but overall getting on that with 2 friends was super fun. I think Arc Raiders has generated enough hype and buzz around it to take this award though.

A lot of these early categories are gonna be full of games I just didn't play. I even made a bigger effort to play new games this year so I could have justified opinions for these awards. But I'm not gonna lie I just don't think "EA Sports FC 26" is really in my wheelhouse personally. Rematch actually looked sorta fun but I never got around to playing it. The only game here I played was Mario Kart World which was admittedly super fun, so it gets my vote and prediction.

Back to a category where I haven't played any of the games! I was actually planning on playing The Alters but never found time for it. If these are the nominees for this category though then it must've been a super slow year for these genres. I mean come on wasn't Civ 7 like mid at best? I guess I haven't played it but it has the cursed "Mixed" reception on steam which is basically worse than a negative consensus at this point. I also heard about your Civ like changing throughout the eras of the game? Like you just become an entirely new Civ? What's up with that? I'm gonna stop before this turns into me just yapping about Civ, but The Alters looked cool so I'll just vote for that.

Two Lego games nominated for this category, and neither of them are Traveler's Tales adventure Lego games? That's kinda crazy considering that's basically all Lego has been in the video game space for a hot minute now. Didn't play either of those games though, only ones I played here was Bananza and Mario Kart World, and Bananza was PHENOMINAL. I think Split Fiction does have a good chance of taking this category, but I dunno what else Bananza would win and I dunno if Keighley would be comfortable snubbing them like that.

Awesome job guys, we got two collections of older games in this category. If the Sim / Strategy genres were slow this year, the fighting genre must've been fucking comatose. Haven't played any of these, I like RGG (studio behind the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series) so I just personally voted for Virtua Fighter. My friend who actually plays fighting games said 2XKO so I'll just refer to them for the prediction. (Isn't 2XKO in early access though? If an early access game wins the category then that genre was like really cooked this year.)

Oh hey! It's our first Clair Obscur nomination, surely we won't get a bunch more of those! Jokes aside, it's the only game I've played for this category. I usually don't like voting for games I haven't played, and in this case I have not actually played Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. However, I have played 40 hours of the first game and from what I hear they are both pretty similar, with the sequel being better in practically anyway. I don't think those games are for me personally, realistic medieval life simulator doesn't really tickle my fancy. I do have a large amount of respect for these games existing though and committing as hard to realism and hardcore mechanics as they do, and for that reason I'm personally voting for it for the RPG category. Clair Obscur was a great game, and I think it's gonna win the overall vote for RPG, but KCD 2 feels like it's probably the better RPG strictly speaking.

Huzzah! A category where I've actually played a majority of the games! Only one here I haven't played is Split Fiction, all the others though I have played and beaten. Defining exact genres is kind of hard with how homogenous games have become nowadays, so I just took the exact description from The Game Awards website for defining which one of these is the best "Action / Adventure" game. The definition provided verbatim is

"For the best action/adventure game, combining combat with traversal and puzzle solving."

I don't know about you, but that sounds like Silksong to me. I think Indiana Jones or Death Stranding probably would've won this if Silksong wasn't there, but alas that isn't the case.

Ok this is kinda bothering me, why is this category called "Best Action Game"? The last two were "Best Action / Adventure" and "Best RPG", not "Best Action / Adventure Game" and "Best RPG Game", just feels like a weird naming convention. I guess "Best Action" sounds sorta weird but the others can sound similarly weird depending on the context they are used in. Sorry I'm getting completely sidetracked. Uhhh I've played Hades II, DOOM: The Dark Ages, and 4 hours of Battlefield 6 here. I think DOOM is definitely the better Action game per say, but Hades II is getting incredible public reception and DOOM definitely had it's quirks, so I'll say that Hades II eeks out a victory here.

Dude I bought a Meta Quest earlier this year and used it to play Half Life: Alyx, and Virtual Boy Wario Land on an emulator, that shit has not been touched since then. So needless to say I haven't played any of these games. I voted for Deadpool since I thought the Silksong joke was funny at the last showcase it was in, but I like how The Midnight Walk looked in trailers so I guess I'll just predict that one. This category is definitely a crapshoot for me.

This one is totally another crapshoot. I haven't touched any of these games, but I loved Persona 5 and P5:X just seems like a mobile gacha version of that, so if I did play these games I would've probably voted for that. I predicted the horse game though because having someone say the words "Umamusume: Pretty Derby" live on The Game Awards stage would be pretty funny so I'm manifesting that to occur with my prediction.

Ok look I have no horse in the race of if Clair Obscur is actually an indie game or not. I think I'm gonna lean towards the "AA" classification for it but that doesn't have a category at these awards so what are ya gonna do. I want to make it clear that I actually really did like Clair Obscur, but to be honest I liked Dispatch more. It's been a while since I've played a new proper Telltale styled game and I thought it brought back memories of those games pretty well. The actual dispatching minigame is pretty fun as well all things considered. But yeah Clair Obscur feels like this year's Baldur's Gate 3 (wins everything) so I'm inclined not to bet against it. Want to also note that I have played Despelote and Blue Prince, but I don't think either of them stand up to Dispatch or Clair Obscur personally, cool games though!

What an incredible selection of games this year for this category. Got some real heavyweights in here that could each legit have a claim to winning this category depending on your taste in games. I know I said earlier (literally the last category) that I expected Clair Obscur to be this year's Baldur's Gate 3, but I think this may be an exception. No I'm not just saying that because I loved Silksong. While that is true I think the Jury might do some fuckery here to get Silksong an award. Something along the lines of "Silksong gives that Indie feeling more" or something like that. If this goes to Clair Obscur I won't be totally surprised, but I think Silksong has a pretty good chance. Hades II can also be in this conversation but I'm much less sure of that one.

I originally had Baldur's Gate 3 as my vote cause I haven't really played a bunch of these other games and the predicted winner as Helldivers 2 just as a random guess. But after seeing that recent Fortnite finale event I think it'll probably get it. They done killed the bus driver bro :(

I don't really know the difference between this category and the previous one to be completely real with you. I was gonna predict Marvel Rivals for this one on a random guess but again that Fortnite even seemed to make waves. I have actually played Marvel Rivals a decent bit this year so I'll just vote for it personally

In this category I played Wanderstop, South of Midnight, and Despelote and personally enjoyed Wanderstop the most. I recognize that this category however isn't really super personal to me and can't really judge it fairly because of that. I think I remember seeing Life is Strange games winning this category in previous years and Lost Records sorta looks like one of those so I'll predict that one.

Similar to to the last category, I recognize that this category isn't made for me. I can appreciate games having more accessibility options but most don't apply to me so I don't really think I can appropriately predict this one fully. I voted DOOM just cause I liked that game a lot and predicted South of Midnight because it'd be nice to see it win an award.

Absolutely CRAZY lineup for this category this year. I think that literally all of these dudes did a great job with their roles. I'm a little sad that Troy didn't get nominated for his role in Death Stranding 2 for Higgs. If he got nominated for two different roles and still didn't win that would be super funny. Other than that though I know there was some controversy around Clair Obscur getting 3 of it's actors nominated. While I sorta get the pushback against that, I'm more okay with it for a category like this. While the studio themselves do play a part in like giving good direction and writing good scripts for these actors to perform, I interpret this as an award for the individual alone, rather than the work that they played in. With all that said, I think Jennifer English is on a fucking roll. She was excellent as Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3, and she was excellent as Maelle in Clair Obscur. No notes, incredible job Mrs. English, I'm really excited to see what you star in next.

This category vs best soundtrack ends up sorta blending together. I'm aware of the difference between the two but they end up being super similar unless a game is doing something different with audio like how Hellblade has done in previous years. Clair Obscur had a great soundtrack, but I will always be a sucker for Death Stranding 2's slow fade in of the music throughout the game. Climbing a big ass mountain while hearing Woodkid ease into your headphones will never get old for me. Clair Obscur can win this one but I don't think I would personally agree with it. I don't think that game did anything particularly crazy with it's audio design other than have good music, which isn't relevant here cause there's a separate category for that.

Yeah I really liked Death Stranding 2's music, how can you tell? Seriously though I adored that game's soundtrack so much. I really also did like Clair Obscur's soundtrack a lot, and I think it has this category in the bag, but I had to be true to myself and give DS2 some love. Hades II also had some kickass songs in it much like it's predecessor so I had to mention that as well.

So it's true that I liked Death Stranding 2, Hades II, and Silksong more than Clair Obscur this year personally. But I am willing to admit that Clair Obscur was absolutely stunning. Despite some issues I had with navigating some environments and actual design of the areas you explore in the game, visually they were almost all impeccable. Hades II and Silksong also looked great, but I don't think they diverged much from their predecessors, and generally felt like the same game again visually. Not to say that's entirely a bad thing, those games look awesome, it's just that I don't know if that's particularly award worthy when I felt like they didn't do a whole ton different.

I had my vote as Death Stranding 2 until writing this. It was always between Death Stranding 2 and Clair Obscur in terms of narrative for me, but on further reflection I think I only gave Death Stranding 2 the edge because of the spectacle of it's ending. In terms of a fully thought out story I actually liked Clair Obscur a good amount more. I will still hold to the opinion though that Clair Obscur had some weird pacing and general vision issues throughout the game. I could talk about those specifically for hours but overall I think that game had an incredible story. I want to also give an honorable mention to Silent Hill f's story though. It was basically the only thing keeping me through that dogshit gameplay.

Ok I'm sorta fucking around with the prediction on this one. If we are being completely realistic Clair Obscur will take this too, but I think there is a legitimate chance the Geoff won't let that happen and wants his boyfriend Kojima to get some gamer points. I also do genuinely believe that Clair Obscur had some vision and direction problems, or rather just stuff I didn't personally vibe with. Some elements of the game felt a little out of place and I can't really justify having what felt like a good 40% of game content locked behind post game. Death Stranding 2 on the other hand felt like Kojima's realized vision for what he wanted MGS V to be, free from the creative restraints that Konami placed upon him, for better or for worse. If we are talking about direction and vision then I realistically just have to give it to Death Stranding 2, sorry Clair Obscur.

Here it is! The big one! Insanely good year for games overall, all of these games genuinely could deserve the award in their own way. I'm not delusional though Clair Obscur is taking this instantly for the actual award. My personal game of the year was Silksong however. I wasn't really in the super big hype storm around the game in the sense of me actually being excited for it, I just thought the shitposts were funny. I played the original in 2020 or so and liked it, but don't remember particularly loving it. So imagine my surprise when I played Silksong a couple weeks after it came out and ended up absolutely falling in love. My tastes have definitely changed in these past few years, but to this degree is pretty crazy. I think if I were to rank all of these games, well the ones that I played at least, it would look something like this.

1. Hollow Knight: Silksong
2. Hades II
3. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
4. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
5. Donkey Kong Bananza

All of these games are incredible in their own right however, so don't feel bad DK.