It’s looking to be a tough battle between the best video games of 2023, as The Game Awards nominees have been revealed, including those vying for the Game of the Year title.
After the 41st annual Golden Joystick Awards, video game industry insiders, news outlets, and fans have been abuzz with discussions on who would make up The Game Awards nominees. With Larian Studios’ hit CRPG Baldur’s Gate 3 dominating The Golden Joystick Awards, it was literally a shoe-in to make the list. But which ones were going to join it in the running for GOTY at The Game Awards was a hotly debated topic.
The Game Awards itself put the debate to rest after it revealed which games made it on its official social media channels. And it’s almost as surprising which games made the cut, as it is which games did not.
Here are your six nominees for GAME OF THE YEAR at #TheGameAwards
Vote now: https://t.co/ExP93r9hmS
Tune in December 7 to see who wins! pic.twitter.com/pR8S3ZExJW
— The Game Awards (@thegameawards) November 13, 2023
Let’s take a short look at The Game Awards 2023 Game of the Year nominees, shall we?
- Baldur’s Gate 3 needs no introduction at this point. The roleplaying game masterpiece six years in the making, Larian Studios did the unthinkable in this era: make a turn-based and story-driven fantasy RPG a huge mainstream success. Bringing back the venerable Baldur’s Gate franchise beginning with licensing it from Wizards of the Coast (owners of the Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms IPs), putting a AAA-level budget and development time into it was a huge gamble. And it paid off with a Nat 20 roll.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is another GOTY nominee that comes as no surprise. Nintendo’s pedigree fantasy open-world adventure builds on what made The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild successful and improved almost everything. Expanding the verticality areas on an already vast open-world with mechanics that truly lets players take whatever route and method they can come up with is sheer brilliance.
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 might be the first (although minor) surprise on the list of GOTY nominees for The Game Awards. The superhero action-adventure game from Insomniac Games was released just this October 20th, barring it from qualifying for The Golden Joystick Awards 2023. Moreover, many players have pointed out how short the main story is compared to the first game. Still, it is undeniable that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a big success for the Playstation 5, selling a record 2.5 million units in just 24 hours.
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder made the biggest and fastest selling debut for a Super Mario game in just two weeks after it was released, selling over 4 million units. That alone would make it a contender, but the game received critical acclaim for going back to the basics of 2D platforming while introducing brand new mechanics for a Super Mario game. However, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 it came out just last October.
- Resident Evil 4 is the only remake this year to make it to The Game Awards GOTY nominees. And just like the remakes to Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, Capcom modernized the gameplay. Not only that, but Capcom also changed up the features from the original RE4 based on player feedback, including interactions and commands for Ashley (which could be a frustrating experience).
- The second survival horror game on The Game Awards 2023 GOTY nominees list is also remarkable for being the underdog in a packed year of AAA titles. Remedy Entertainment took the 13-year gap between the 2010 Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2 to craft a deep single-player experience. The investigative detective sections and using Saga’s Mind Place to connect clues together fit seamlessly with the returning manuscript pages feature to foreshadow events in the course of the story.
Looks like a tough decision on which stellar title gets the Game of the Year crown, but there are two notable games that are noticeably not in the running for GOTY.
One is Blizzard’s Diablo IV. Considering Diablo 4 is the fastest-selling game in Blizzard Entertainment’s history and was heavily promoted in The Game Awards 2022, its absence in the GOTY nominees roster comes as a bit of a surprise.
The other title that is interestingly not in the running is Starfield. Bethesda’s ultra-massive sci-fi open-world exploration RPG reached 6 million players just a day after its release in September. It even won the Xbox Game of the Year at the recent Golden Joystick Awards. But whereas the other winners of their respective platforms made it to the list (Baldur’s Gate 3 for PC, Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo, and Resident Evil 4 for Playstation), Starfield did not.
Aside from the Game of the Year nominees, the full lists of The Game Awards categories and nominees can be found at this link.
What do you think about the nominees for The Game Awards 2023 Game of the Year? Do you think they all deserve to be there? Which game do you think deserves to get the top spot?
The 2023 Game Awards will be aired live on December 7, 2023.
