Giant Bombcast Game of the Year 2017: Best World

Giantbomb is the best world. Fact.

Brad if you bring up Destiny 2 for this...

Here we go!

yes day 3 underway!!!

Prey...

the lack of Prey being mentioned so far this year is a bummer, but ESPECIALLY in this category.

I'm not championing anything for winning, but their arguments are all over the place here. Also feels like a category where only Triple A budgets can compete if they only qualify games that can provide full interactivity and story telling.

I see they finally started spelling 'possible' correctly in these videos, my OCD can rest now...

I am Jeff's frustrated failure to grasp what this category is.

Are todays videos vibrating for anyone else?

Best World is a mess, dude. You guys should've sussed out what this category actually was about before you started. Is it best worldbuilding/lore, best open world game, best looking environments, best exploration, Most Interactivity, best runnin' around, what?

Yep, the entire time I was kinda with Jeff, thinking what even is this category... Technically, Nier has a world built around three games, and fiction that runs very deeply into the world that Yoko Taro built. But I could understand what they were saying in regards to the difficulty in interacting with the world at large. Might have been worth just cutting this category altogether.

AC Origins easily deserves this.

@redhotchilimist: I think it should be all of those things (excluding best open world), because they all factor in to what is the best world. And I feel like that is what Alex was basically stating at the start. But then everyone started to chime in with their own opinions and got confused.

I have to agree that this category is poorly thought out and defined, and am sympathizing with Jeff's confusion on this. I thought this would be about world building, and thought that the other arguments should have gone into a separate Best Mechanics category.

This entire category is a mess and should probably be removed for next year.

So, I'm 30 minutes into this and to me "Best World" would be almost synonymous with "Best Environmental Storytelling". Things you discover about the history of the world and the state it's in just by looking at the environments. The newspapers and notes and such that Jeff is talking about wouldn't count as environmental storytelling as much as just... storytelling, but bombed out New York, Nazis on Venus and the Roswell mission would make a strong case for it in this category.

Same thing with Horizon Zero Dawn, the tribal settlements, husks of massive machines, underground bunkers filled with forgotten technology and so on.

I'm interested in hearing where this trainwreck goes, though :D

I nominate the Giant Bombaverse!

I think "Best Worldbuilding" would be a great category.

This category though,

Highlights:

45:48 when Jeff finally snaps and asks what the hell this category is about.

52:50 when the question arises that the category should be cut.

I'm completely on board with Jeff as I'm 24 minutes in. "Best World" to me is mostly "Best Worldbuilding", the game that does the best job at creating a world you're really interested in, regardless of how you're able to interact with it. For example, Freedom Wars would qualify for this IMO even though you dont really interact with the world that much.

And Worldbuilding is NOT story.

Edits: Yakuza 0 getting cut is the HEIST OF THE FUCKING CENTURY. That game built its world (both in terms of 1980s tokyo and osaka and 1980s yakuza) fucking PERFECTLY. Alex really short changed it here, yes they have had Kamurocho throughout the series but it changes RADICALLY throughout the series, and that doesnt even get into how the substories and minigames fucking MAKE it.

At 49 minutes in now and I literally want to murder brad holy shit.

Having finished.

Fucking WOW. Zelda winning to me is so UNBELIEVABLY wrong it's actually insane. For me, pretty much everything they said about it being one of the first games to truly "do" open worlds in an engaging way was how I felt about Horizon. I went into both of those games and went "wow these look like generic cookie cutter ubisoft open worlds". Zelda went a little beyond that for me, but Horizon went WAY beyond it.

Can this and sound track not be included next year?

I'm with Jeff here on what i thought this category was going to be. Everyone else (except Vinny) describing super specific mechanical things about the environments and traversal and trying to compare them sound crazy

20 minutes in and I still have no idea what this is about. Judging at this point in the podcast, Jeff should have killed it.

I'm a half-hour in and with Jeff's confusion on this as well, and completely thinking that worldbuilding enhances story, but is not necessarily story itself. I personally think that Horizon is one of the best worlds created and I hear Brad knocking it because of navigating the map. Wolfenstein II also has an amazing world, even though its level design is pretty bad.

*Edit* 50 minutes in:

JESUS I couldn't disagree with Brad more as far as what this category was meant to be.

Giant Bomb's Hottest Mess 2017: Best World category

Lore is not the same as story... and how they can have a discussion about something they call world without including lore is beyond me. The lore behind a world is a huge part of what can make it interesting.

I feel like everyone except Alex were making it harder by obsessing over details. Just accept that it's a broader and more abstract category, make your statement about the game you thought had the best, most interesting world and why. If it was the exploration mechanics that made the world in Breath of The Wild interesting, discuss that. If it was the unique art direction and lore of Pyre that made the world in that really cool, talk about that.

I am perplexed by the cultural appropriation thing with Horizon. I come at it from the perspective of a European, because while the devs are European, Giant Bomb is American and the reflexive cultural appropriation response seems to me to be an Amerocentric one. We've had tribal culture and history and animism in Europe since the earliest parts of mankind. To me that critique is a different kind of narrowmindedness, one where every story is judged against the history of the United States, or where every story is assumed to be authored by Americans. It reminds me of the misguided critique against The Witcher when Wild Hunt came out.

I'm 30 mins in and I'm with Jeff. I have no idea what they are comparing. I took this as lore, world building etc. (which is not the story). I don't see why mechanics has any consideration for this.

The problem being that because it was too abstract and broad, people were dismissing valid points (specifically Jeff's idea of what this category meant, which I agreed with, being shot down several times). Well defined guidelines allow for clearer discussion and argumentation.

My best world award goes to the world where this category is called "best setting," and the clarity of the name that was chosen made this video a lively discussion rather than a confusing debate over semantics that no one has a clear picture of. Sadly, that world is only a fantasy.

This is easily the worst Game of the Year category in years. No one knows what it is. Story absolutely should be separated from Lore, and this would have been a great category to recognize it. Shoving world-building and lore into a generic "Story" category is the reason that Doom won, a game that barely has an actual story. I don't understand why Brad is so hardline in pushing what would have been a wonderful category into Best Open World Exploration Gameplay Mechanic because he isn't willing to separate lore and story.

I call this category "Best Excuse to Give PUBG game of the year instead of Zelda"

@borklund: The game takes place in the US and appropriates Native American culture and terms in very specific, yet superficial ways.

@rattlebox: Perhaps you're right. In any case I liked where Alex was going with this category, but maybe it was too broad for everyone to be on the same page.

Boy, Brad made this category needlessly confusing. Im with Jeff, I have no idea what you people are arguing.

PLEASE STOP this category (or just refine it in the future - there is merit to both 'best world-building' and best 'interactive environment' and maybe this should be split up into two categories)

Good conversations about world, world building, storytelling, and atmosphere, with two somewhat surprising runners up. However, the winner was predictable before the debate even began.

I feel for Jeff. The semantics surrounding "Best World" got pretty squirrelly here, and anything that didn't have (with exceptions): A) a AAA budget, and B) wasn't an "open world" game, didn't stand a chance for consideration.

Best world is this

Would you want to play another game in the world if the story and characters where different.

Like Star Wars, would you want to see a movie in teh Star Wars universe that wasn't about Luke and the Jedi.

I vote to rename this category to "Best World-building" next year, so it's way more clear what they're even arguing about.

Or, just cut it all together. I'm almost an hour and it's just all over the place. This is just bad times. Come on, guys.

What a disaster.

I reckon it's best atmosphere. Also, Horizon should have won this. Also, Horizon feels really good to play and I'm baffled by Brad's complaints.

This Best World discussion made me miss Austin. What a mess. I like the potential of the category though.

Gonna echo the "I'm with Jeff" sentiment here. "World building" is such an established concept and I thought that that was what they were talking about. Pyre is the poster child here: I want to know what the Commonwealth looks like. I want to understand how it and the Downside are seperated. I want to drop down in third person and explore that space. I want to read that entire goddamn book. But . . that's not what the award is for?

"cultural appropriation" again, without explaining anything? They've brought this up during Best Looking category (along with somemthing concerning Cuphead) and did not bother to actually expand on it - why bring it up at all? I still don't know what this is about and left me confused overall. If their intention is bringing social issues into the spotlight, they're not doing a good job at it.

Also yeah, this category seems like a mess so far, I'm with Jeff on this one.

For fucking real.