Omission of Horizon Zero Dawn in GOTY

Just listened to the game of the year podcasts. Dam horizon zero dawn got shafted big time. Completely dismissed in the top ten. In every category it was actively pushed down by Abby so a text novel "Dream Daddy" could rise. I have been listening and reading this site since the beginning and how can a game Jeff gave a 5 out of 5 and one of the GOTY contenders early on get treated like this?

I mean, there are 25 hours of podcasts that answer your question.

No one was passionate about HZD, people were about Dream Daddy.

It is a meaningless top 10 list, calm down.

It wasn't Abby. Sure, she didn't care much for it, but she didn't really talk much about it all. It's just that nobody cared enough about the game to get it on the top 10 or any categories except for best looking. It was Brad who mentioned it for most disappointing. Overall I have to say I agree.

It happens, every year there's a well received game that doesn't stick come GOTY time, better games than Horizon have been similarly struck down. Remember Bloodborne? Super Smash Bros. 4?

Jeff talks about this on his blog actually:

http://jeff.zone/post/169052770416/though-arbitrary-lists-are-arbitrary-and-as-such

Sooo...

Doom was robbed?

Horizon faced far more stiff opposition than Abby. We can start with Jeff.

Probably because the game came out early. I bet they soured on it without even really knowing why.

Jeff said he loved Horizon when he was playing it but has no passion for the game when he’s not, which kinda explains the 5/5 review but cold shoulder during GOTY.

If anything I think best debut was a category that it could shine but they really went in some weird directions there. I was with Ben in that I find it weird to consider PUBG a debut in the same category as all these unique new IP’s.

I'll be honest - I played through Horizon for the first time just preceding the GOTY podcasts and I share all the sentiments the crew had about it - while I was playing through it I absolutely loved it, loved the gameplay, it was gorgeous, the story was pretty good.

However after finishing it it's had no lasting impression on me - In a weird way its actually a game that is less than the sum of its parts - all the individual parts are great but it just hasn't wowed me once I got some distance from it.

I do agree to an extent that the game got a bit shafted - but it is their GOTY top ten's and other lists, can't ask for them to be passionate about a game that they clearly weren't.

Also something I've noticed about GOTY is that even though people may go NUTS for a game early on in the year - once GOTY rolls round there are some crazy changes of tunes - Earlier in the year I thought Zelda would be a dead cert for GOTY because they raved about it so much and was totally taken aback when people started tearing it apart.

Also as mentioned in the podcasts Horizon came out shortly before Zelda and Zelda kind of ate it's lunch.

THOUGH I DO THINK THE ARGUMENTS THAT "OH THE ANIMALS LOOK LIKE TRANSFORMERS AND MICHAEL BAY RUINED OUR CHILDHOODS SO THEY SUCK" IS TOTALLY INFURIATING

If Abby had that sort of power, Cuphead would have been higher.

Horizon was the victim of an early release date, having its main game release within a week or two of Zelda, and having its DLC release at the same time as Assassin’s Creed. No one on staff argued for that game, and even though it’s my personal GOTY, I’m fine with it not making their list.

Persona 5 got shafted though :P

I refuse to get riled up over goty deliberations, it's a completely subjective and meaningless list. I felt bad about Yakuza/persona this year and also that year Witcher 3 when it didn't make top 10. or maybe it got in at 10, I can't quite recall. But like a normal person I got over it, it's not our list, it's theirs, if they reach an agreement that's that I guess.

Shout out to the following exchange I saw in the GOTY Bingo thread for predicting this:

@kingbonesaw "Another one to potentially add is space for "game that Jeff praised all year long but come GOTY time he apparently didn't care about". Previous winners include Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge."

@elmorales94 "It's getting to the point where I fully expect this to happen to Horizon. Good call."

Also props to Horizon Zero Dawn for joining Axiom Verge and Shovel Knight in winning such a prestigious award.

Yes it's hilarious how they say the time of release in the year does not matter in these deliberations - it most certainly does and that's ok, it would be great the staff would admit it though. One of the reasons these awards are dumb, if you ask me.

Horizon is a great game, I enjoeyed it a lot and that is what matters to me the most. But it is at least interesting to listen to the arguments, especially to those which I don't agree with. My opinion is Horizon stands on the finely tuned combat and movement - yes, jumping up a cloff can be clunky, but the movement is tuned for combat in the first place and the way you slide across the land (and the way the camera follows smoothly) is perfect, combined with the elaborate damage type and hit box system, which rewards precision and preparation, makes this a thinking man's shooter/action game. Ryckert spammed arrows for the entire game and brute forced it, which led to him avoiding encounters. I myself played on harder difficulty and I had trouble not stopping at every herd to atack it, not just for the experience points, but for the thrill od the combat itself. And that lasted for the entire game and the DLC.

Opinions. I also never played Zelda but from the coverage on this site alone, it's mindblowing it was not first. But hey, whatever, it's all so dumb!!!

I hope a new trend will emerge: not doing game of the year, just award the more specific things, which are actually comparable. And the silly categories are great too, I want more of that. But top 10 - just ditch that asap.

All really good points, I just spent so much time with game over the year and I felt like it hit a lot of what I want in an open world game. I guess we can Call this the STARDEW VALLEY effect

C'mon man, Horizon did not get "shafted" and it had nothing to do with Dream Daddy. The people who liked Horizon the most when it first came out (Jeff and Dan) were the ones who were least passionate about it, and they articulated that very clearly.

I personally love it, but I have no problem with them not including it, because (as they stated several times) the experience just didn't stick with them like other games did.

There were far more negative opinions on Horizon than Abby's, but sure, it was all Abby's fault. It had nothing to do with the fact that every positive thing someone like, say BRAD, the PODCAST HOST, had to say was immediately followed by 1 to 3 negative things. Nope, nothing to do with that at all.

Because some 5 out of 5 star games are sometimes better than other 5 out of 5 star games or even lower starred games.

Who cares about about a bunch of meaningless numbers and top 10 lists, it's their opinion. Agree or Disagree or make your own top 10 list.

I couldn't care less where certain games end up because you have to remember they're all games they really enjoyed.

I mean, it was a hell of a year for video games. If ever there was a year to shift perspective from "not making it means it wasn't great" to "the things that did make it must've been really exceptional in some way," it'd be 2017.

That's of course in reference to personal top 10s. The group GotY was always a negotiation (i.e. neither 'science' nor feeling), and even moreso in some of the most recent past deliberations.

We all knew this was going to be a brutal GOTY this year. A lot of good games got shafted or robbed this year, that being said Horizon should of at least made top 10.

I wasn't surprised that it wasnt in the running. Jeff had been pretty clear that it didnt make a lasting impact on these and previous podcasts. Its def my game of the year. PUBG has sold over 24 mil copies and has had an impact on this site and the others as well as its streaming popularity so I can see how they get there.

It does bother me that a game that launched feature complete and is REALLY well made doesnt really get credit but a buggy game that has had numerous problems gets the publicity? Sends a weird message.

I dont really buy the whole meaningless list argument. They are one of the last large gaming sites and pull the team in from across the country to podcast for A LONG TIME so to say its meaningless is a cop out. This sites opinion carries weight in the industry. Jeff knows that.

Having said that i consume this site and others because I enjoy hearing diverse arguments and opinions. Form your own opinions and value others as well.

Horizon Zero Dawn was one of my favorites of this past year, I went back for the DLC too. Though I understand their arguments. I loved my time with it, the world was fantastic. I also did enjoy the narrative for the most part. The style and the looks of the game...oh man, it was beautiful. The photo mode only played into that more and more. Each time I have gone back to play, I have been wowed by the way it looks and engrossed in the world.

All that being said though, as I mentioned, I understand what they mean. I may not fully agree, but it does not leave as a lasting impression. The bow mechanics are amazing, (a game finally did bows well!) but once you get to a high enough level and your skills are much improved, and you learn you can just spam fire arrows, some of the challenge is gone. But its long, so you have to keep going. It wasn't revolutionary and in a year where other games turned their heads upside down, its hard to stick. It was very, very good and mad props to Guerilla for making it. I hope they make another or go another direction with these base ideas because this was a great surprise.

But remember, dang, this was an amazing year for videogames.

P.S. Its just a list in the end. I learned to not worry about it, because everyone's opinions may differ. If I loved it and they didn't, no big deal in the end.

@puck2dag: Dude, where have you been? There are hundreds and hundreds of comments on this sort of thing. The best ones are the ones that blame Abby for getting Dream Daddy on the list instead if Pyre, HZD, and several other games, as if that ONE GAME kept multiple others off the list.

The podcast always felt like a warm and cozy campfire, where people are hanging out and having a good time.

Except everyone was acting miserable for no reason :D! Nah not really, of course I'm kidding.

@puck2dag: Real Talk, the Podcasts only serve to show how the hearts and minds of every staff member put their tastes on the table, its not at all like closely-objective science. If you want context, everyone has made their own lists! The Giant Bomb GOTY list will have no real impact of what should be considered the best game for every person who is looking into it. As an example, people do like PUBG but theres like hundreds of personal reasons why you can also consider the game absolute garbage, even considering that you can easily have a better time with a mod that do a similar thing. I'm not the only one who says this. Theres like several hundred thousand people over on Steam who don't enjoy the game at all, some are even pointing out its fundamental problems in reasonable fashion (I'm not one of them, I'm liking PUBG as a multiplayer experience).

Anyway, regarding the matter of PUBG I always felt like that even MOBAs do better in encuraging teams of friends proper communication and coordination than PUBG does and you don't even have to be skilled at the game in order to have a good time. The same arguments that people use to say on why PUBG is the best game this year can easily applied to other multiplayer games with a heavy emphasize on coordinating together in gameplay dependant situations. And thats the thing, GB loved PUBG not because its objectively better (the game has problems bugs, not-so-great UI, lots of weird fundamental stuff that make the game feel more like you're playing RNG roulette rather than letting your skills come into play, etc), but because it came and people picked it up and had a good time together, which also is a thing outside of whether or not the qualities of the game impact the overall enjoyment you might have with it!

I don't write this stuff to undermine the integrity of the Staff at all, its quite the opposite. I think that they're usually correct at pinpointing down if a game is good or not. I'm fond with every opinion they're providing and how they're reasoning them even if I'm disagreeing. The thing is that they're not objective (in a sense that they're speaking the same truth as a scientist would) in anything they're talking about but regardless they all became professionals because they all have a knack in coming up with reasonable and concicse explanations and in the end it all boils on the matter on how much you can relate with their justifications and perhaps even more importantly their personalities.

So, with all of this written down, while I think that not putting Horizon as the GBs top ten seems a bit odd BUT in the long run it really doesn't matter much. You know its amazing, even Jeff gave it 5 stars, time to move on. At best, it shows how Giant Bomb is pretty diplomatic with taking everyones opinion into consideration and at worst it makes people mad.

So don't feel disappointed if one of your favorite games got "shafted" as again you have the same subjective opinions as they have, the game just reasonated differently with you than it did with some of the Staff members.

Horizon is just a very forgettable game for most unfortunately. I surely didn't love it and had some problems with the camera, but it was still a good game overall. It just wasn't a great game. I will agree it shouldn't have been lower than some junk like Dream Daddy though.

You want to talk about shafted? The only list Y's VIII showed up on was one from a wrestle man with a rad perm.

Having Persona 5 and Horizon as absolute favorites of 2017, it doesn't matter that they where not (even) in GB's top 10. They are still favorites. While the chosen GOTY format and some of the discussion being questionable in my eyes, let's leave it for the threads that discuss those.

As for Horizon specifically, I felt it was a deeply rewarding game. Rewarding to explore, rewarding to learn and execute mechanics, rewarding in story beats. It, however does ask a certain amount of patience of the player, especially for it to shine. Patience during exploration is rewarded in items, amazing vista's and some nice morsels of story/world building. I really felt like I was out in nature for most of that game, however that would probably be different had I used the "horse"/strider traveling, or even quicktravel more. I barely used it, and felt much rewarded for it.

Same holds true of the mechanics. Horizon can give the player a true sense of being on the hunt. Stalking prey, preparing traps, cutting off escape routes the machines might take, thus allowing the enviroment to play a big role in gameplay mechanics. Just before the fight making use of the potions and rocks to get your prey where you want it. Heck, even swapping out weapon/armor modifications if facing specific (groups of) harder enemies. The planned way to engage, plus some unexpected on the fly choices, made playing this game exhilerating. Also engaging/disengaging, was something that further added to the flow of combat. Pretty sure If i dashed in on horseback to club some machines to death, ASAP without doing any of the stuff described above, I would have a very different experience.

This is where the crew comes in. I do not mean this as a knock on their opinion, a lot of people would play the same way. Brad had the game on a last minute GOTY award clock to impress him, I doubt a very fun way to engage in any game. Abby and Dan pretty much used rush mode to engage in combat. Vinny gave up on the game as soon as Zelda came out, maybe to be able to discuss zelda as soon as the beastcast came online. Jeff has admitted in the past, multiple times, to be very impatient with games. Even more pronounced as he gets older. I was surprised he gave the game 5 stars in the first place. Let's just say working at a site that professionally rates games, patience and huge games often ask something different from us at home, that do not play 100 games a year. Horizon is a good game if you just give it a shot, while looking over your shoulder at the next game (you have to play for a quicklook). However it can become something very special if you engage with it in a different way, which is how it resonated with me.

I thought they all muttered around the table, toss it.

That was my impression for the part of the Best Game I watched, before I started reading the comments and silently crept away from the TV.

I wrote one comment that I was surprised.....so early a death!

But I am playing Horizon everyday, and except for something about the character acting, especially the npc's, I am engrossed and having a good great time.

P.S.-@mercutio123, Totally agree. I thought it was in a different category they brought that up, comparing Horizon's robots to Transformers. I thought it a real miss. And perhaps what you even call a cheap hit. Borderline. Not the whole team in this case.

Yay, another thread singling out Abby. Be mock(?) upset your favorite game didn't get on the list, ok. But for crissakes stop dogpiling on her already, or at the very least offer something constructive for future debates.

I still find it funny practically zero people bitched when Austin strongarmed Invisible Inc. on the list despite being the only one who played it.

It’s super annoying how a lot of this community point to Abby as to why they’re angry with the top 10. By the numbers, the game that shouldn’t be on the list is Tekken, not Dream Daddy or NITW. God bless her for defending different stuff.

I can point to many things I found more annoying than Abby defending Dream Daddy or Cuphead but those discussions always come a little raw, it’s the point of them, so I don’t think it’s fair to heavily criticize anyone about them. I like it that way, personally.

I also found Horizon to be an excessively boring game. I don’t understand the love for it but everyone like different stuff and that’s fine. Acting like it was objectively « robbed » though is just plain wrong. I’d also put Dream Daddy, NITW or Tekken over it.

But it is like that with most games that you are into them when you are playing them and then you move on to the next game and forget about the previous one. At GotY time you think back on the games you played and what it was like while you were playing them. As humans we are naturally biased towards the things we did more recently and can remember more easily. Part of your job when you make a honest GotY list, is to recognize this bias and try to account for it. Something like Wolfy2 does so much crazy shit that it leaves a memorable impression. Are you going to fill your list with games that do outrageous things because that is more memorable?

The problem with Horizon for me, and I think the GB dudes as well, is that while it is an incredibly well made game, it's not a particularly memorable one. I can't say it did any one thing better than any other open world game I've ever played. The graphics sure, but that on it's own isn't enough for me to want to invest 40+ hours in beating it. I tried twice this year to let it get its hooks into me and both times, about 12 hours in, I fell off (and ended up playing a bunch more Zelda instead ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

Either way who cares. It's a dumb, arbitrary list, made even dumber and more arbitrary by the sheer volume of great games this year.

Horizon Zero Dawn was my GOTY & all this thread gets from me is a shrug. Giant Bomb members we may be, but the GB staff's opinions are not fact. Stick to your guns & tell the world that they should play Horizon if you are so inclined, but respect the opinions of others & try not to take them too seriously.

@mike was correct, this really is the best part of the GOTY stuff.

Complaining about a game not making the site top 10 is dumb on its face, but it's especially weird to blame Abby when Jeff was the one who knifed it.

Edit: This is just a response to the above post regarding Austin and other Goty stuff. I did veer away from the topic at hand so I've put my response in a spoiler block to try and mitigate the tangent.

@bollard: There is also Brad with Diablo 3.

I have tried multiple times with horizon but I just don't like the way it plays at all. Especially coming from BOTW back to it. No game should get a special privelages of having to be on a GOTY list. Especially if no one who decided that list is passionate for it.

Contrast that with Dream Daddy, for which 2 people were very passionate of and managed to get it onto the list.

And yet another commentor singling out Abby, when all of the participants agred for it to be removed.

Hardly, Horizon is a well made game. But that's it. Even when it was released it felt like it just disappeared. No one had any passion to play it past that launch window and I even seen more than a few negative reviews about the storyline. Just like Persona 5, it's a fine game. Not bad by any stretch, but a Top 10 GOTY list is no place for games that are just fine.

Abby was far from the only one praising Dream Daddy, Jeff and Vinny were in it's corner too. Honestly if it wasn't for Dan's "It's just a Dating Sim! I don't get it! Wah!" Things would have been much shorter.

Also it's their Top 10, not yours. Neither you nor I have any say in it. You are perfectly entitled to make your own Top 10 List. There are places on this very website to do just that.

If you want to get mad a game on this list that seemingly offended you by "stealing" a spot for one of you favourites be mad at Destiny 2. Night in the Woods is just another "text novel", does that offend your being too?

@flstyle: Simply the best comment in this thread. Lets focus more on why we love games instead of talking down other experiences.

However, sometimes poking some good old fun of a game, even if its a alright video game, is still ok if nobody gets hurt of course.

@paulmako: I was right behind him on what he said but he was wrong about the anime avatars though.

Horizon was one of my favorite games of the year. The combat was great and the lore and narrative were captivating to me. Ashley Burch's performance was top notch too! I ended up returning to it several times throughout the year to try and finish it (which I'm so glad I did) Within the deliberation room it just didn't hold much ground though. The same goes with Persona 5, another game I loved dearly. When something doesn't sit with the room as a whole it makes sense for it to be cut, regardless of the games actual quality or worth in the space.

It makes no sense to me that Jeff has Destiny 2 on his personal list and not Horizon, considering what he has said about both games in bombcasts. It is like willfully choosing to ignore Horizon for some unknown reason. If he WANTED to make a case for Horizon, he could. It has arguably a great story, great characters, and great combat. If Jeff can't remember why he gave 5 stars to Horizon, maybe go back and play some of it again.

Anyone can say, this is just an arbitrary list. But if you don't care about making an honest list, no one else will care about your list either. That is what happened for me this year. They don't seem to care, so I don't care. They seem really tired and lazy in this GotY. Where is the leadership (Jeff and Brad)? You need to teach by example so these new underlings can learn how to do it right.

This part also irked me a lot. She refused to concede any of the arguments Alex used for Nier that she and Vinny also used for Dream Daddy, what would've been a good moment of reconciliation was marred by a selfish attitude.

@sd_ds: Did Alex PM and you tell you he felt she was rude at this moment because you and others seem to be pushing this narrative as if you have some sort of inside info. Alex seemed fine to me. If you think he thinks she was rude, why don't you ask him rather than just making assumptions based on your interpretation of the room and the video?

I doubt Horizon was sitting at #11 just waiting to get onto the list (I think Rorie was the only staff member that even had Horizon on their personal list), so circling back to this same argument about the #10 game that's been had countless times over the past week is kinda pointless if the point of this thread is to hash out why Horizon didn't get more acclaim.

@rigas said:

Hardly, Horizon is a well made game. But that's it. Even when it was released it felt like it just disappeared. No one had any passion to play it past that launch window and I even seen more than a few negative reviews about the storyline. Just like Persona 5, it's a fine game. Not bad by any stretch, but a Top 10 GOTY list is no place for games that are just fine.

This kind of reasoning is probably why so many people want to say something about the whole GOTY situation, even after almost a week. Arguments like these can be made for any game. Tekken is fine, its just another fighter, thats it. Destiny 2 is fine, its just a well made sequel in the loot shooting genre. Dream daddy is fine, its a well made dating sim, that does its own stuff within established borders...

As I said before, I like a game regardless of what the rest of the world thinks. Nor do I mind anyone doing the same. Still would be nice to hear why you bounce off a game, or do not think it stands out in any way. Heck the crew can even say "I haven't played enough of game X or Y to judge." Persona 5 and Horizon where 2 games where barely anything was mentioned as to why it couldn't be a contender, which is probably why these keep returning in comment sections as being overlooked.

The only thing that bothered me was the quick dismissal of Persona 5. I fully expected them to talk about the story, what they thought was good / bad and so on. But it just got out of the talk immediately. You can be killed in that game wtf

@sethmode: I don't know what he thinks but as an outsider I thought that was selfish. Maybe she didn't realize the irony of dismissing an argument that she used before to defend Dream Daddy, and that's fine. But she should have realized Nier meant as much to Alex as Dream Daddy did to herself and dropped the argument when everyone else was in agreement of putting Nier in 2nd..

It was also rude to boo Nier when the top 10 was finally getting read, but apparently I'm supposed to think that was a joke.

I feel like this is a somewhat fair response. We don't know how a staff member felt, nor do we really need to defend them. We can really only speak to how the discussions affected us. And while I may be disappointed with aspects of the arguments each year, it's important to note that these discussions are a group effort and no one person has the power to unfairly strongarm a list. This group effort and the included games reflect that. I may not have been satisfied with Vinny and Abby's justification of Dream Daddy on the list, but it was clear by the end it belonged there (even through sheer passion alone). Much like how Horizon just didn't have the support or enthusiasm to make it.