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

If you ask someone what their favorite game of the year was, they'd probably say Saints Row the Third, but if you asked them what "The Game of The Year" was, they'll probably say Skyrim, so I'm betting that'll win even though Saints Row is just plain better.

Meh, Saints Row was okay, I just got bored of it very fast. The combat didn't feel that great to me and even when I got the VTOL and other stuff I felt underwhelmed.

@Hailinel said:

@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.

That should also be taken into consideration.

Wait, did Giant Bomb secretly spoil their GOTY Award for GOTY?

@McGhee said:

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

Playing a Bethesda game on anything but a PC is a mistake :)

But if SR3 wins over Skyrim because of the console issues (especially the brokenps3 stuff) I can live with that.

@Gaff said:

@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.

you know, how many times have we had great games on the consoles with a busted PC "port"? It's never mattered to anyone before and it doesn't matter now. The PS3 version is busted. Oh well, too bad for the people who bought a PS3 version before reading a PS3 review.

I should really play Saints Row The Third...

After hearing them talk so much about Saint's Row I thought it would be cool to see Saints Row contend for GotY, but never expected it to. 
After finishing it myself, I thought that it would have a really good chance of taking out Skyrim.  
 
Both games are pretty consistent as far as quality goes, but the high points in Saints Row are MUCH higher than the high points in Skyrim 
 
Then again, this is all about thinking what THEY are thinking, which is absurd.

@AhmadMetallic said:

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

I'm just trying to see if anyone saw this debate coming. Would you have ever imagined that Skyrim and SR3 were up for GOTY? Skyrim was the followup to a pretty loved game but it shared a lot with another game series that Jeff was "tired of" (Fallout) because of all the bugs and whatnot. Ryan was berating Johnny for anticipating SR3 on their podcast. What were the ods of this happening come December.

I seriously thought we would just listen to them debating Batman vs Uncharted again, but this is much more interesting. ( I don't see into the future but I'm fairly certain SR3 will take it just saying)

I found myself feeling against SR3 getting GOTY and then I realized I was just being fussy and that it really does deserve the title. As much as I love CoD, Skyrim, BF3, and etc, Saints Row really epitomized what gaming has been about and that's just all out entertainment in a polished form.

Saints Row the Third is one of my top games of the year. First its Zelda than its SR3, so I am happy if it wins

I started Skyrim today and I am only amazed by how laggy it is. Even if I can run it on max, its only playable on the lowest settings

Don't get me wrong I love Skyrim to death and played it for 110 hours in like 2 weeks, but Saints Row The Third is probably the most fun I had playing a game this year. I would not be surprised/aggravated if it won.

@mandude said:

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?

So what game should win GOTY that isn't a sequel?

The only original games that came out this year that could be contenders are Bulletstorm, LA Noire, Dead Island, and Bastion; and Bulletstorm is really pushing it.

@Animasta said:

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

Learn to differentiate opinion from fact, please.

On the topic at hand: No, I didn't see it coming. Making it their game of the year won't make me interested in playing it anyway unfortunately.

2 months from now when everyone has forgotten about Saints Row because the "new" has worn off, this will all look kind of silly. People will still be playing Skyrim though.

@mandude said:

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?

So what game should win GOTY that isn't a sequel?

The only original games that came out this year that could be contenders are Bulletstorm, LA Noire, Dead Island, and Bastion; and Bulletstorm is really pushing it.

@SomeDeliCook: I'm open to sequels winning, as long as there's a significant improvement or innovation. The gap between Morrowind and Oblivion was massive, for instance, whereas the gap between Oblivion and Skyrim was pretty much just the setting.

Complain the the VGAs make your hobby look immature... Give Saints Row the Third GOTY!

I say they just give it to Mass Effect 2 again.

@Branthog said:

Frankly, I'd even consider Gears of War 3 to be stronger GOTY competition than Skyrim.

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.

Hmmmmm.

Also, 2 things.

1. Skyrim isn't a hardcore PC game. It's a console game. You think they made that radial menu for us keyboard types? Please.

2. Calling Skyrim "just another" anything is an insult to everything Bethesda did. Name a better realized world. Go ahead. It doesn't deserve to be dismissed like that. It deserves to be dismissed for that complete dog shit PS3 version.

@Bwast said:

@Branthog said:

Frankly, I'd even consider Gears of War 3 to be stronger GOTY competition than Skyrim.

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.

Hmmmmm.

Also, 2 things.

1. Skyrim isn't a hardcore PC game. It's a console game. You think they made that radial menu for us keyboard types? Please.

2. Calling Skyrim "just another" anything is an insult to everything Bethesda did. Name a better realized world. Go ahead. It doesn't deserve to be dismissed like that. It deserves to be dismissed for that complete dog shit PS3 version.

Skyrim has a huge and nice looking world, but it *is* "just another". You have all the same ridiculous tropes of every other similar RPG, including "you are a hero set out to save the world, but you'll set aside some time to collect ten chickens and deliver a love letter for someone". I love big, huge, long games. Skyrim qualifies as that. However, what makes it big, huge, and long is a lot of nothing new.

Also, emphasizing "GoW3" and "just another dark brown" just goes to suggest you didn't play GoW3. That game is extremely colorful and varied. It truly breaks out of the dreary depressing environment of the first two games.

I wouldn't call it just yet. I am surprised how much love SR3 is getting (I only guessed it as Jeff's #1), though I'm happy to see it as I've been playing SR3 myself and I have to say, it is indeed awesome. I still think there will be strong arguments made for Skyrim (and Portal 2 and Bastion, for that matter) when it comes time to pick the final GOTY.

The GB Crew, particularly Jeff and Ryan, have always shown an appreciation for video games that aren't afraid to be video games, and SR3 absolutely revels in its video gameyness. For those upset by the SR3 love, just remember it's their opinion and you're still entitled to your own.

Is Burt Reynolds not the man in that?

Just like Gator. Which I realize is the sequel to White Lightning, but I feel it's the better all-around film.

@Branthog: I wonder if this site has any way of showing what games I've played and the achievements I've accrued while playing them? I don't know, let's just assume shit instead of actually looking.

You're really going to get behind Gears of War and champion for it's environments and then dismiss Skyrim as just another brown RPG? I honestly don't know what to say to you. How long did you play Skyrim, anyway? From the way you're dancing around the specifics, I'd wager 2 hours.

@Atramentous said:

2 months from now when everyone has forgotten about Saints Row because the "new" has worn off, this will all look kind of silly. People will still be playing Skyrim though.

I'm already done playing Skyrim. Around the time the third or fourth bad ass level 100 skill ended up being glitched and breaking the game in a new way, I was more than finished with it.

@Atramentous said:

2 months from now when everyone has forgotten about Saints Row because the "new" has worn off, this will all look kind of silly. People will still be playing Skyrim though.

As much as I do love Skyrim, you look pretty silly saying this. Saints Row also has a pretty big world, a lot of activities, a stupid amount of challenges and an incredibly fun co-op mode.

Skyrim may have a lot of quests, but there's a lot of randomly generated "go here and find this" stuff. Once you've done the main quest, the guild quests and completed the Daedric shrines.. You're done. It's not an infinite, never ending master-piece of gaming.

Comparing the two games, it's a bit weird. Like comparing fine vintage wine and pure blissful ice-cream. In terms of an upset, indeed everyone in the know sort of expected Bethesda to one-up their craft and produce an even better sequel in the lineage of the Elder Scrolls series but seeing the track record of the Saints Row series, no one saw it coming. Volition was just coming off from Red Faction and that was not well-received. It would be a triumph if Saints Row the Third become Game of The Year, though it may be upsetting the fanboys.

One must remember that ultimately, Saints Row became the seminal video game experience of playing around and having fun, whereas Skyrim was the pinnacle of role-playing games, a gem in a sea of popcorn games. Mega-upset? Nope, I thank God that it turned out the way it did as now developers will know that making batshit crazy playful games have a place in the hearts and minds of many a game reviewer.

@WinterSnowblind said:

@Atramentous said:

2 months from now when everyone has forgotten about Saints Row because the "new" has worn off, this will all look kind of silly. People will still be playing Skyrim though.

As much as I do love Skyrim, you look pretty silly saying this. Saints Row also has a pretty big world, a lot of activities, a stupid amount of challenges and an incredibly fun co-op mode.

Skyrim may have a lot of quests, but there's a lot of randomly generated "go here and find this" stuff. Once you've done the main quest, the guild quests and completed the Daedric shrines.. You're done. It's not an infinite, never ending master-piece of gaming.

You are joking I assume. If not I would like to point you towards Oblivion and Fallout 3.

@Atramentous: Oblivion was garbage. Fallout 3, yeah it was great, I sunk a few hundred hours or so into it, and moved on. But so did Saints Row 2 (without counting the competitive multiplayer), and SR3 will easily match that.

I get the feeling that Skyrim might have lost out due to the broken PS3 version.

I feel like if they try to make Skyrim Game of the Year if three out of five of their editors pick it as their personal favorite that is a little bit dishonest. If they do they would be saying, this is the best game but the majority of us do not hold it to be our favorite. This perpetuates the myth that video games are objective experiences. The downside to big open-world games is that they are full of jank plus the Playstation got screwed. So no, this was not a suprise. Hey guys you should play Saints Row.

@Sooty said:

Some original games you didn't mention of 2011: Catherine, Pushmo (although, this is kind of similar to Catherine), To the Moon, Frozen Synapse, Minecraft (hey 1.0 did come out this year) and well I can't think of anything else right now, but there's definitely some other games.

Minecraft is not an original game. It is also a horrible game.

Also anyone who gives Skyrim GOTY loses all integrity as a journalistic source. I loved it, had a good time playing it, but there are just so many problems with it that it can NOT be called the best of 2011.

I'm sure there will be some sort of hipster vindication to be found when Giant Bomb gives crazy self-aware open-world crime game GOTY instead of big bad mainstream appeal Skyrim, but honestly I can't speak for the former, and if I were to speak for the latter I would say that at the end of the 57 hours I had sunk into it the magic had faded somewhat, partially because of the mad-easy difficulty if you invest in stealth at all and partially because of the quality of the writing, which honestly isn't amazing. It's still great, obviously, but Dark Souls is my GOTY, even though that in and of itself seems rather hipsterish

@BelligerentEngine said:

Kind of not related, but after this weeks podcast I'm pretty sure, might be I'm just crazy, Saint's Row 3 will win Giantbomb's GOTY.

Me three weeks ago in this thread:

http://www.giantbomb.com/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/61-33394/skyrim-cant-possibly-be-a-goty-contender-right-guys-right/35-527211/

@McGhee said:

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

I'm just still baffled, wondering when exactly the tide suddenly turned against Skyrim. It seemed like it took the internet by storm in November, receiving high praise from practically everywhere, breaking records on Steam and selling like hotcakes, for a single-player game. And now here we sit at the end of December, and it seems like people are struggling to find something else to pick because it's the "obvious choice."

When did the internet decide to hate Skyrim? Because I blinked and missed it.

@Marokai We didn't decide to hate it. We've just played it before. It would feel wrong to give a palette swapped Oblivion an award, even if it still makes us become celibate basement dwellers, because Oblivion already got an award.

That's how I'm justifying it anyway.

@Sooty said:

Some original games you didn't mention of 2011: Catherine, Pushmo (although, this is kind of similar to Catherine), To the Moon, Frozen Synapse, Minecraft (hey 1.0 did come out this year) and well I can't think of anything else right now, but there's definitely some other games.

Minecraft is not an original game. It is also a horrible game.

Also anyone who gives Skyrim GOTY loses all integrity as a journalistic source. I loved it, had a good time playing it, but there are just so many problems with it that it can NOT be called the best of 2011.

Maybe the guys end up going with Saints Row 3 as their GoTY, but don't discount the stubborness of Brad. He may filibuster for Skyrim until the other dudes just relent from exhaustion. ;)

@Bwast said:

@Branthog: I wonder if this site has any way of showing what games I've played and the achievements I've accrued while playing them?

Hey, that's a swell idea. You should call the red phone and suggest it!

I don't know, let's just assume shit instead of actually looking.

I didn't say you didn't play Gears of War 3. I said that insinuating Gears of War 3 was just another dark-brown game suggests you didn't. Gears of War 3 is incredibly colorful and has varied environments and the Gears pallette previously wasn't brown, but grey.

You're really going to get behind Gears of War and champion for it's environments and then dismiss Skyrim as just another brown RPG? I honestly don't know what to say to you. How long did you play Skyrim, anyway? From the way you're dancing around the specifics, I'd wager 2 hours.

No, I'm not going to get behind Gears and champion it. I said that I could see it being more of a GOTY contender than Skyrim. It's a very polished, carefully crafted, excellent game that managed to take a series I didn't care about and was only going to begrudgingly play for cultural ("I have experienced this thing that everyone else will be referencing for the next decade") value and turned it into something I couldn't put down, played right through, had a blast doing, and even revisited by playing through with co-op (I never play co-op).

I think that Saints Row: The Third is probably an even better contender than GoW. Portal 2 was also an incredibly well crafted and complete experience that would be worthy. And there are probably a number that I'm not even thinking of right now (or haven't gotten a chance to play, yet).

When it comes to Skyrim, however, I don't think "well-crafted" and "polished" and "complete experience". When it comes to Skyrim, I think of an enormous game with a ton of content, but where the amount of content has trumped the quality of it or the quality of its crafting. Plenty of bugs and glitches. Many huge ones. A really unsatisfactory user interface. Typical RPG tropes like "hero about to save the world has to stop everything to perform trivial tasks for random people". Poor voice acting. Terrible looking character models. A lot of "stories" that people fall over each other to praise, when they're actually fairly flat and unoriginal. Poor melee combat. So on and so on and so on.

I love RPGs. I looked forward to Skyrim for ages. I bought it on launch day. I sat there waiting for it to unlock and played it. And after about eight hours, I said "you know, I've had enough, for now". That isn't to say that I'm dismissing the game and that I'm not going to go back to it. I will. In fact, I'm basically putting it aside as something I can look forward to the next time we have a long lull that I can just really sink myself into. But, in those eight or so hours, it didn't hook me. It confirmed to me that it's a really good RPG that does what Oblivion and other really good RPGs have done and nothing more. Saints Row The Third hooked me. I finished it in two sittings. Gears of War 3 hooked me. I finished it in two sittings (even though I intended to only play it a few minutes and then finish it another day, because I just don't care about that series). Uncharted 3 hooked me and I finished it in two sittings. LA Noire hooked me and I finished it in two or three sittings (though after separating from the game by some months, I grew to be less impressed by it and tired of the rinse;repeat experience it provided). Skyrim didn't do that for me. It didn't grab me and force me to keep at it like it seems to have for all the other people that can't stop wanking over it. . . and after eight hours of dark and dreary Bethesda engine landscapes, I didn't feel I absolutely had to look at more right now.

I feel like Skyrim is the hands down winner for the year, everywhere, because it's primarily a PC game, it's big, it's Bethesda, and people feel like they have make it their winner.

So, no, I'm not dismissing the game. In fact, I'm looking forward to indulging in it, eventually. I just have a really hard time finding any justification for making it GOTY other than because we feel obligated to. I could totally see it, however, as 2012's 2011 GOTY.

Skyrim may be a great game but still has too many bugs and is UNPLAYABLE on the ps3

I don't think Skyrim can win because of the technical issues some players have had with it, but cases could still be made for Portal 2 and hell, even Bastion.

But yeah, Saints Row the Third has it, which is pretty surprising for me, but I haven't played it, and haven't regularly listened to the bombcast for a year.

@Branthog said:

When it comes to Skyrim, however, I don't think "well-crafted" and "polished" and "complete experience". When it comes to Skyrim, I think of an enormous game with a ton of content, but where the amount of content has trumped the quality of it or the quality of its crafting. A lot of "stories" that people fall over each other to praise, when they're actually fairly flat and unoriginal.

I feel like Skyrim is the hands down winner for the year, everywhere, because it's primarily a PC game, it's big, it's Bethesda, and people feel like they have make it their winner.

And you feel comfortable passing that specific a judgment on it having only played 8 hours? Your Steam profile says 6 hours. But, whatever. 8. Beat my estimate either way. Great job.

Once again, Skyrim is not primarily a PC game. It's a 360 game. The interface is god awful on PC. Trying clicking around that skill screen without pulling your hair out. The game runs in Dx9. I sure love my big budget PC games when they run in generations old shit.

Can you drive with a tiger in Skyrim? I think not.

If Saints Row 3 gets GOTY I'll be shocked, seeing as Skyrim seemed like such a safe pick.
 
That said, SR3 is fucking incredible, so I wouldn't be upset if it won, even if Skyrim is my personal GOTY.

So guys...how does this conversation fare now that Skyrim has won over 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.

Exactly.

Saints Row is the real game of the year. I'll fight anyone over this.

The Witcher 2 is the best game of the year, that nobody except Vinny bothered playing.