Mega upset of the year...did you see it coming?

Saints Row the Third is a shoe-in for Giantbomb's GOTY (unless Brad can muster up some insane arguments for other games on the Dec 31st bombcast) and I must say I am extremely surprised. Right around E3 2011 when Skyrim demos were being shown I was skeptical Skyrim would get any recognition from the GB guys, then the previews were shown to them and they were praising the game. Then the game came out and it's all they were talking about, Greg ran that marathon, Ryan stayed up all night with Dave, Jeff called it the game to beat on The Bonus Round, Brad gave it a glowing review, etc.

Saint's Row showed off that airplane level in a trailer and again I was extremely skeptical about it making any impact; don't get me wrong, the level looked like crazy fun and the E3 demos with VTOLs and wrestling looked just as ridiculous. But even Ryan was scolding Johnny V for being excited on their E3 podcast. All in all SR3 looked like another forgetable sequel. Then it came out and it's all Ryan and Jeff could talk about.

Did you see this coming? Did any of these two games look like anything special around their announcements? What was more surprising: Skyrim being so well liked or SR3 overtaking it?

**Note: I am not upset that SR3 is GOTY, that game has Burt Reynolds in it, but it's safe to say more people played Skyrim than SR3 in this community. That's why I call it an upset....it's like when the US beat Russia at hockey that one time in the 1980s.**

No, I really didn't see it coming, but that's probably because I've never played Skyrim.

Not at all, but that is probably because I didn't actually play the game.

I am mega upset

It was an upset for me as well. It's what happens when I buy a Bethesda game on the PS3.

I wouldn't call it a shoe-in at all. I think there are some STRONG arguements that can and will be made for Skyrim.

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

I'm still skeptical that Saints Row will get it. Liking a game a lot and holistically calling it the best game of the year are two completely different things. For instance, the game I liked the most of 2010 was Just Cause 2, but I still consider Red Dead to be the best game that came out that year.

Didn't see the upset coming before the games were released, but if you listen to the bombcasts its not that surprising. There was a TON of love for the SR3.

I think it helps Saints Row 3 that its a contained and beatable experience, while Skyrim seems kind of like a monumental timesink when you're rushing to play everything for game of the review purposes.

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

I'd be disappointed if either of them made it. Both are sequels and only marginal improvements over their predecessors. That's not to say they weren't good or even brilliant, but are we really going to reward people over and over again for releasing, essentially, the same thing?

Just because Jeff and Ryan have picked Saints Row for their GOTY picks doesn't necessarily mean it'll win. I have a pretty good feeling that Patrick will also pick Skyrim to top his list and Vinny will ultimately be the tie breaker. I'm actually really excited to hear the discussion for the final podcast because you have two games that could not be any more different from one another probably controlling the debate and it should be really interesting to see what everyone has to say. I haven't gotten a chance to play Saints Row yet, but based on everything I've heard, my 20 or so hours in Skyrim aren't even enough to make it my favourite game from this year when I know what potential fun SR has in it.

well surprise or not..i regret buying rage and not saints row the third

@laserbolts said:

@Animasta

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

No that's an opinion.

I'm sorry, but no; whatever opinions that you hold about both games, skyrim is pretty much the same gameplay the whole way through. Do you do anything differently from the first mission to the last? on occasion, yes, but it's still very very similar.

Saints Row has things that shock you and totally innovate, purely for that level... deckers.die, murderbrawl, the first couple missions, etc.

This is where GOTY lists prove themselves to be essentially worthless. I haven't played Skyrim yet but I hear it's brilliant. SR:TT was not high on my wishlist but I have played through it and, yeah, it's the best game I've played this year. Ultimately though, they're completely different games designed for completely different audiences. If Skyrim wins, that doesn't that mean RPGs are better than open-world action games - and vice versa.

Dealing specifically with the point you raised, I'm not one who subscribes to the theory that GTA4 is an inferior game because Rockstar eschewed "fun" for a serious tone. I welcome the seriousness. Saints Row 1 and 2 are, IMO, juvenile, puerile clones that lack the maturity and intelligence of GTA4. I know admitting to this on Giant Bomb is the equivalent to admitting to an unhealthy enthusiasm for children but that's my opinion and I stand by it. I see the other side of the debate, I just don't buy into it. SR3 was not on my radar because of this and it is a very welcome surprise that it's been such a brilliant laugh to play. Rockstar actually has a competitor in this genre which is confident, in its stride and with a clear direction for the franchise. I can only see GTA5 being a better game because of it.

PS - I've really enjoyed GB's GOTY stuff so when I say it's worthless, I don't mean I haven't valued it.

@Vinny_Says: No, I didn't see them enjoying Saint's Row The Third that much.

That being said Vinny is still in the room and Patrick might swing either way.

Jeff had Skyrim as number two and Ryan omitted it. I feel like they're all gearing up for that argument though. I hear Jeff and Brad letting things go like they have to save their energy.

I'm still skeptical that Saints Row will get it. Liking a game a lot and holistically calling it the best game of the year are two completely different things. For instance, the game I liked the most of 2010 was Just Cause 2, but I still consider Red Dead to be the best game that came out that year.

I still feel like Skyrim could pull of GOTY. While Jeff and Ryan love the game, it is SILLY, and it might seem kind of weird to them to award it with GOTY when a more traditional and acceptable game like Skyrim is out there. Plus there's Patrick who I believe will pull for Skyrim. Vinny, as always, is a wildcard.

Skyrim used to be the front runner for GOTY, then it took a Saint's Row to the knee.

@laserbolts said:

@Animasta

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

No that's an opinion.

I'm sorry, but no; whatever opinions that you hold about both games, skyrim is pretty much the same gameplay the whole way through. Do you do anything differently from the first mission to the last? on occasion, yes, but it's still very very similar.

Saints Row has things that shock you and totally innovate, purely for that level... deckers.die, murderbrawl, the first couple missions, etc.

@Animasta said:

@laserbolts said:

@Animasta

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

No that's an opinion.

I'm sorry, but no; whatever opinions that you hold about both games, skyrim is pretty much the same gameplay the whole way through. Do you do anything differently from the first mission to the last? on occasion, yes, but it's still very very similar.

Saints Row has things that shock you and totally innovate, purely for that level... deckers.die, murderbrawl, the first couple missions, etc.

Except for the part where you might get two dragons to fight each other along with giants. Or doing any number of crazy daedric quests.

Where Saint's Row the Third manufactures those moments, Skyrim is more organic and because of that those moments feel more real.

Saints Row: The Third is a completely viable game of the year. Skyrim is well done, but it's just another overly dramatic bug-riddled RPG. It's huge. It's enjoyable. It'll fill a couple winter weeks or so. But it's just more of what we've always gotten. Why people are masturbating all over it obsessively baffles me (and yes, I bought it on launch day - pre-ordered it on Steam, actually).

Saints Row was a ridiculous and absurd blast. For all the "wild" stuff you supposedly do in Skyrim, I don't remember any escape sequences in it between chariots being pulled by naked men in gimp suits with auto-tuned voices.

Frankly, I'd even consider Gears of War 3 to be stronger GOTY competition than Skyrim. I"m not a huge GOW fan, but I played it at launch and then just played it again in co-op and that game has so much content, a lot of variety, and the campaign itself is so solid and well done and thorough. Just long enough. Nothing that needs to be trimmed. Nothing goes on long enough to get boring. Wide variety of areas.

Again, I dig Skyrim. I love RPGs. I love hard core PC games. But really, Skyrim is just another dark brown dragon-filled sword-weilding bug-filled Bethesda RPG. I look forward to those, but I've played enough of them by now to no longer piss myself in excitement over them.

It's not just to generate any kind of tension for the GOTY podcast? I haven't been following any of the GOTY coverage or recent Bombcasts, and I haven't played SR3 yet (though I have always been a big advocate of that franchise), but I'd still be very surprised if Skyrim doesn't take it.

Im just happy that Skyward Sword is getting zero exposure, fucking good times.

@Animasta said:

@laserbolts said:

@Animasta

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

No that's an opinion.

I'm sorry, but no; whatever opinions that you hold about both games, skyrim is pretty much the same gameplay the whole way through. Do you do anything differently from the first mission to the last? on occasion, yes, but it's still very very similar.

Saints Row has things that shock you and totally innovate, purely for that level... deckers.die, murderbrawl, the first couple missions, etc.

Exactly. Skyrim is well done, but it has lots of problems and my experience after several hours was "you know, this game isn't going away anywhere . . . . I can get back to it in a few months" and I put it down. And I love me some classic RPGs and PC gaming. Saints Row, on the other hand... constantly surprised me. Was always a blast. Kept topping itself . . . and kept me glued such that I completed it in two sittings.

There are other games worthy of GOTY status, too. I begrudgingly would consider Gears of War 3. Not a huge fan of the series, but it was a fantastic game with so much to do and so well crafted. Skyrim as PC game of the year? Totally. RPG of the year? Strong possibility. GOTY? . . . Man, I just can't quiet do that.

@Tesla said:

Skyrim used to be the front runner for GOTY, then it took a Saint's Row to the knee.

hope you get banned

@Suedehead said:

I still feel like Skyrim could pull of GOTY. While Jeff and Ryan love the game, it is SILLY, and it might seem kind of weird to them to award it with GOTY when a more traditional and acceptable game like Skyrim is out there. Plus there's Patrick who I believe will pull for Skyrim. Vinny, as always, is a wildcard.

GOTY has traditionally been the game they enjoyed the most, and color me surprised if tomorrow's video doesn't have SR3 as number 1 on Vinny's top 10 list. At this point Brad will pull for Skyrim but with Ryan having not even played it and Vinny cheating his way through the whole thing I see very little chance in Brad somehow convincing Jeff to pick Skyrim over SR3 and having it be GOTY. But hey, if that happens it will be a even bigger upset and this thread will be pointless....

I'm so jealous you can look into the future.

I always felt that Daffy Duck was funnier than Donald Duck but didn't get as much recognition because he was black.

@Animastasaid:

@laserbolts said:

@Animasta

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

No that's an opinion.

I'm sorry, but no; whatever opinions that you hold about both games, skyrim is pretty much the same gameplay the whole way through. Do you do anything differently from the first mission to the last? on occasion, yes, but it's still very very similar.

Saints Row has things that shock you and totally innovate, purely for that level... deckers.die, murderbrawl, the first couple missions, etc.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree. I played both of them and finished both of them(well... finished the main story lines since both of them are open world games and technically there is no "end" to it). Saints Row is not shock and awe all the time. It does a pretty good job on mixing stuff up but basically it comes down to driving and shooting. Yes deckers.die was good and murderbrawl was also amazing. But Skyrim has a lot of different things mixed up too. Killing a bride on her wedding, stealing a specific item, break someone out of the jail just to kill him, etc etc.

Both of them are great games and I don't have anything against you for liking Saints Row. But I just wanted to point out you're mistaken for thinking Skyrim is pretty much the same gameplay the whole way.

@Vinny_Says said:

But hey, if that happens it will be a even bigger upset and this thread will be pointless....

Nope.

The bigger upset would be that Skyrim's PS3 troubles would be taken into consideration. Someone is going to mention it and then: "Are we really going to award a multiplatform game that's broken on one platform GotY?". Chaos ensues, fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

And when the dust settles, we'll have PS3 GotY: Saints Row, Rest: Skyrim.

Then again, the big compromise would be Uncharted 3.

Saints Row is fun to play, that's what playing video games is all about isn't it? FUN!!!

Considering the way they have been talking about both those games, no I'm not really surprised.

A couple of friends and I decided to do our own GotY podcast and we gave it to Deus Ex Human Revolution. It wasn't on my top 10 list due to the fact that I haven't played enough of the game, but I cannot disregard a great game because I can't find the right strategy to get past the first few hours.

I think the guys can and will make a distinction between 'personal favourite' and 'the best'. I'm sure Skyrim will win.

@Demoskinos said:

@BaneFireLord

I'm still skeptical that Saints Row will get it. Liking a game a lot and holistically calling it the best game of the year are two completely different things. For instance, the game I liked the most of 2010 was Just Cause 2, but I still consider Red Dead to be the best game that came out that year.

That makes zero sense to me. GOTY should be what you enjoyed playing and gave you the most fun not necessarily what was the most attractive from a production standpoint. Which is exactly why I picked FFXIII for my GOTY last year. There were better "made" games but I had the most fun with FFXIII

Previous GOTY awards have always been about the quality and how high the production values of a game were. For example, take a look at last years GOTY list. Almost every major gaming news outlet had Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, and every other big budget AAA game that came out in 2010 on their list. Yahtzee was the only one to actually have Just Cause 2 at the top of the list because he enjoyed the game most out of the year. But for this year, it seems like their has been a push for more people to start including indie games, licensed games, and other games from genres that would've otherwise been in their own category for for a "Top 10 games of the year" list.

Less objectivity, more subjectivity

@McGhee said:

It was an upset for me as well. It's what happens when I buy a Bethesda game on the PS3.

@Animasta said:

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

I agree with both of these statements.

@Animasta: you could oversimplify literally any game to that degree and make it sound boring and generic. that's a bad argument

Yes and no. My 3 favorite games this year are a tie between Saints Row 3, Portal 2, and Skyrim. So as long as one of those win, I'm happy.

@MysteriousBob said:

I think the guys can and will make a distinction between 'personal favourite' and 'the best'. I'm sure Skyrim will win.

I like this with the exception that it has to be Skyrim, personal expectation irregardless.

Are we discussing the game itself as being good or discussing what the website's staff liked and didnt like?

I'm not sure if I could say I saw it coming or not, but when I look back on my previous favorite games of this generation, they would have been The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Saints Row 2. So I was understandably excited for both of these games, and would have been extremely disappointed if either of them were poor. Luckily for me, they both turned out to be pretty amazing, but even with that in mind, I am very surprised that both are in the running for most people's Game of the Year awards. Saints Row 2 was either overlooked or looked down on by most people, and Oblivion gets hate from just about everyone within earshot whenever its name is uttered, so I half expected to love both of the sequels, but have them be shunned and despised by the community as a whole.

Let's say I'm pleasantly surprised at the way things have gone.

@Animasta said:

@laserbolts said:

@Animasta

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

No that's an opinion.

I'm sorry, but no; whatever opinions that you hold about both games, skyrim is pretty much the same gameplay the whole way through. Do you do anything differently from the first mission to the last? on occasion, yes, but it's still very very similar.

Saints Row has things that shock you and totally innovate, purely for that level... deckers.die, murderbrawl, the first couple missions, etc.

Whether or not those special missions are shocking and massively entertaining is going to be entirely up to the individual playing. Perhaps one person considers those missions to "hit higher" than anything in Skyrim; perhaps someone else considers some of the side quests in Skyrim or even just an emergent gameplay moment to "hit higher" than the stuff in Saints Row. It is a fact that some of the missions in Saints Row do some crazy things that are different than the standard gameplay in the rest of the game -- it is not a fact that those missions make the game more universally satisfying than anything in Skyrim to every possible player. Therefore, the phrase "skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does" is not a fact, it is an opinion.

@Animasta said:

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

That is the definition of an opinion.

Im upset because other people don't get upset when I voice my opinion.

I dunno, I think Skyrim will take the win. Jeff backed down on Arkham Asylum when it was up against Uncharted 2 and I would bet good money that Patrick will put Skyrim above SR3.

Skyrim was a big and awesome experience, SR3 was a bunch of little awesome experiences chained together with some hacky, disjointed bits. Also, it occasionally came off as a little forced; like the game was constantly yelling "HEY DOODZ LOOK AT ALL THE CRAZY STUFF IN OUR CRAZY GAME ISN'T IT CAH-RAZY?!?!"

I think Alex's 4-star review was right on the money.

I started SR3 last night and I am playing it right now. I'm having just as much fun with it as I am with Skyrim, though I doubt I will play it as much, simply because it is so short compared to Skyrim (so not 100+ hours long).

I don't think the true arguments for and against SR3 have been made yet. When it comes time to discuss GOTY, they are going to get the attractive silliness out of the way and get into the gameplay itself a lot harder. Not that I'm saying the SR3 has bad game play, only that it's charm has only been discussed thus far and not the entirety of the experience.

EDIT: I should also add that the relationship between "fun" and SR3 versus other games seems pretty poorly thought out by most people. It seems to almost be an assumption that the amount of craziness in a game is exactly equal to, and is the only barometer of, the amount of fun in a game. I found GTA IV to be far more "fun" than SR2, even though it was the more serious game. The fact that GTA contained less crazy laughs did not make it a less "fun" experience. I understand that others may feel differently, but I disagree with the common assumption when looking at SR3 and saying "Well, look at all the craziness packed into here. It has that much fun in it, right?" Skyrim's beauty and the seeming random coherence of it's world seemed more fun to me, even if I might have gasped and laughed less.

@Brendan said:

I don't think the true arguments for and against SR3 have been made yet. When it comes time to discuss GOTY, they are going to get the attractive silliness out of the way and get into the gameplay itself a lot harder. Not that I'm saying the SR3 has bad game play, only that it's charm has only been discussed thus far and not the entirety of the experience.

That being said, Skyrim isn't exactly a flawless game when it comes to its own gameplay. Not to mention the massive number of bugs. They've even managed to break the game in some ways while trying to fix other problems.

@Animasta said:

@laserbolts said:

@Animasta

skyrim just can't hit as high as saints row does, and that's a fact.

No that's an opinion.

I'm sorry, but no; whatever opinions that you hold about both games, skyrim is pretty much the same gameplay the whole way through. Do you do anything differently from the first mission to the last? on occasion, yes, but it's still very very similar.

Saints Row has things that shock you and totally innovate, purely for that level... deckers.die, murderbrawl, the first couple missions, etc.

A: *states opinion is empirical fact*

B: *calls you on your bullshit*

A: "NO UR WRONG"

You can't seriously be trying to justify your choice of video game as absolute and objectively correct...