Everybody played Cuphead, so it won best style. Hardly anyone played Persona (and thus were not exposed to its visual style), therefore it did not win.
If you think the chorus of, "Persona 5 got ROBBED!" That we're seeing today for the Best Styyyyyyyyyyyyle category is a bit much, I invite you to tomorrow's comments section when Persona 5 doesn't even make it into the Top Ten Games of 2017.
I'd hope people realize that Best Style is the only category P5 had any chance of being recognized for by this group of people. Not nearly enough people played it for it to have any chance of making it onto the Best Game list.
I'm more concerned about what the reaction will be if/when Nier is not number one.
I posted this in another thread already, but I don't think Persona 5 was an automatic shoe-in for best style this year. While I really enjoyed the jazzy soundtrack, and can appreciate the care that went into the menus, loading screens etc., I think there are aspects of that game that are just kind of lame. The Hot Topic black/red color scheme is exhausting, and having half of the text in that RaNsOm nOtE style is pretty ugly, even if it fits the "heist" theme of the game. In addition to that, having your main characters have names like "Joker" and "Skull" is about as cool as wearing a trenchcoat with sunglasses and a fedora. Also, constantly being hit over the head with typical anime tropes can be a bit off-putting for a lot of people.
Everything may be cohesive, but I don't think that makes it necessarily cool or likable. Game is easily top 3 though, even if it's not to my taste.
Why no Yakuza 0 best story??? I guess I'll find out in the podcast... I also feel Persona 5 and Nioh have been short changed as well in the whole proceedings.
@chaser324: As a Persona fan, I was expecting a nod (maybe a win) in Best Music and an absolute walk in Best Styyyyyle. But I will say (and have been saying for a month now) that anyone who thinks Persona 5 has a sliver of a chance at making the top 10 is out of their gourd. It'll be on the initial list, it might even make through a round or two of cuts, but it has no chance of landing on the list when the reception from the two staff members who played it was so tepid. If the comments go wild, then those people haven't been paying attention.
@zombiepie: you are 100% spot on. The game overstayed it’s welcome by a record margin. I don’t think any of the characters were much better than average, there were virtually no truly epic moments, and most of the payoffs were insanely disappointing. There were times when I loved it, but it honestly felt like they made a game, then figured they had to make it 3 times longer to fit the Persona name.
Man Ben is shooting like a goddamn rocket to my #1 favorite duder in these podcasts. The one lone opinion who can see the forest for the trees here. I feel P5 could have had some stronger arguments for best style (no mention on how every single character that can do an all-out attack gets their own unique and hyper stylized splash screen for their finishing touch, or how the design of tying the battle commands to face buttons allows you to flow through battle in a fast and fluid way both visually and in design.)
Also jesus christ ouch on how hard 9S crashes and burns in the best new character category, his entire story is easily one of the strongest parts of Nier Automata's narrative.
It’s really bumming me out how much Horizon is getting shafted with these awards, yet certain people won’t shut up about Cuphead, and somehow people are impressed with Zelda’s incredibly bland and dated open world. Oh, and since I guess people aren’t allowed to write certain kinds of fiction anymore we get to keep hearing the garbage phrase “cultural appropriation” brought up whenever Horizon actually is mentioned.
"Best Styyyle" just needs to be merged into "Best Worldbuilding" so they can quit saying "styyyyylllee". I skip past this segment its so annoying to keep hearing that word over and over.
Glad NieR is picking up some significant awards this year. What I don't understand is Dan & Abby's hate for the game. But like I said before and will say again, NieR : Automata is above a lot of peoples heads. Most will go as far as the admittedly mediocre gameplay and immediately shit on it. But it's when you look past that, to the game as a whole, it's unparalelled in this console generation. An incredibly deep, human, and emotional story without a single human character in it. And not to mention a story which could only be told through the medium of video games. Easily my favorite game in years. Hoping it nails GotY.
Seriously, Persona 5 is the epitome of Styyyyyyyyyyyle. Cuphead doesn't need both best looking and most style. Ben should have held his ground a little harder.
Just gonna drop in here and say it's crazy to me that Wolfenstein was even in the top 3 for story. The moments were amazing - the story was just...fine.
Glad NieR is picking up some significant awards this year. What I don't understand is Dan & Abby's hate for the game. But like I said before and will say again, NieR : Automata is above a lot of peoples heads. Most will go as far as the admittedly mediocre gameplay and immediately shit on it. But it's when you look past that, to the game as a whole, it's unparalelled in this console generation. An incredibly deep, human, and emotional story without a single human character in it. And not to mention a story which could only be told through the medium of video games. Easily my favorite game in years. Hoping it nails GotY.
Dan & Abby I can't speak for, but personally I played the shit out of the first Nier and over a couple of runs through found it to be a an emotional, wonderful story, and garbage to play. That Automata has similar high points and still plays like crap is the reason I don't like it.
@dogmata: I agree with everything you had to say here. Sadly, since everyone else seemed content to roll over and not challenge Abby on any of her stances I don’t necessarily see it getting better any time soon. Jeff and Dan seemed to be particularly hands off, almost as if they were afraid of saying the wrong thing and suffering backlash, and it just made everything feel awkward.
1. Alex's extremely odd and extremely awkward discussion for why he thought PUBG was popular this year was peak cringe for Alex's "bit" this year. My wife has listened to almost all of the game of the year stuff and she legitimately asked me if he was playing a character. That will have to be added to the bingo boards next year: "Alex makes another eye rolling remark about corporations".
2. If I had not spent near 100 hours with Bayek I wouldn't think he was best character but he is great. Senua from Hellblade actually might be choice as she has a great arc and is one of, if not the, best acted and actualized character in a video game I have ever played. I think Hellblade has completely gotten the short end of the stick this year, even in terms of just talking about games. Same for Horizon Zero Dawn. Either they want to talk about it being culturally appropriating, awful combat, or the main character being "one note"...I'm fine with it not winning stuff but just the discussion around it is disappointing. Similar to Witcher 3, just the discussion itself is annoying to me.
3. As much as I like Persona 5's style more than Cuphead I think Cuphead is the bigger achievement.
@frostyryan: You may be right. This may have been better suited in the Final day. Vinny saying a lot of things about Nier being painted with "a shitty Anime brush" is a much harsher dunking.
Sorry about the typos here, I can't edit further down on my phone. Persona 5's style argument lost for the same reason Undertale's music argument lost, because no one really knew how to give a correct argument for it. Abby pointed out the snapping attacks, the music, the attitude, etc of Cuphead but did anyone mention how each scene ij the real world finds a creative way to involve Morgana in cat form or how the game uses "beneath the mask" in different ways to escalate how lonely a scene is. Did they mention the great use of the popularity tracker and how it manipulates player and character alike? The fact is P5 lost because Cuphead was defended better. Just like in real debate, the best position doesn't win, the best argument does.
Wolfenstein has great moments, but overall story i can't get behind, Alex mentioned the side mission stuff and that's massively important, i guess the others who played it didn't bother with the side missions because they come at a point where if you do take the time to do them, it completely derails the momentum of the story, when you do return to the main missions there's only 1 or 2 before the end of the game, i thought i'd skipped something. Speaking of those moments they arn't enough to carry it for me because i saw them all coming, BJ had the ring around his neck in the very first reveal trailer so him losing his head was obviously going to happen from the get go, the audition scene is really good but it has zero affect on the story, it's just a scene that happens and then you just do a regular mission with no payoff, what else is going to happen if you're suspiciously told to enter a dark room other than a birthday surprise, what the hell is that mcguffin that the inventor guy is stumped by, whose lack of explanation only serves to prevent that character from talking to you about anything interesting for the rest of the game? ... It goes on, it has specific moments but nothing cohesive.
@auspexao: That's a very fair explanation of why it went that way. There's an absolute tonne of stuff they left out of explaining about the style of P5. Stuff like the All Out Attacks, Hold Ups, musical call backs, the treatment of the Velvet Room, the dungeons and how their owners see themselves and the denizens of it (the bank manager, the ATMs etc). How you transition from the world to combat, to the reward screen and back into the world. The popularity tracker and how it was used.
Abby did a better job of debating for Cuphead than Alex and Ben did combined for Persona 5.
They need to cut the best style or best looking category, same game should not win both.
I think that's silly. Graphics and Style are two different things and one game can do both of those things well enough to win both categories.
I kinda disagree, I think the reason they have two categories is because they really aren't supposed to overlap. Normally style is something that is used in place of graphics because they aren't going for graphics, and why cuphead really should have won one or the other. But not both. If anything I think it has weak style because it is just copying one-for-one the old cartoon style of movies and shows.
Nonsense, Best Style takes in the visual and audio and whatever other nebulous factors that make a game really stand out. There's no reason a game couldn't have the best Look and then also combine that with whatever else and take Best Style.
I mean it shouldn't have because it's a much better Second Place choice but it's totally eligible.
I just think the two categories are different enough it would be extremely difficult for a game to do both well enough to win them both. Personally I just don't think cuphead has much style, I think it has a beautiful cartoon-style animated look; but I don't see much style from it outside of copying that old cartoon look.
I just finished the "C" route in Nier like an hour ago and to me the plot was just nonsense gobbledygook like most JRPGs. I have so many unanswered questions. Apparently there's a lot of stuff that references the original Nier (in particularly all the Gestalt and Replicant archives which were meaningless to me) and even the Drakengard games before it. In any case, I found it impossible to have any kind of emotional resonance with the characters because the world and events happening around them are all so fantastical and absurd.
That said, I haven't really played anything else released year that I thought had a particularly strong story either.
Maybe it’s because I’ve listened to so many hours of these discussions in such a short time but way too many discussions have dissolved into ‘X is so good’ or ‘X is so cool’ which moves the discussion exactly nowhere. I appreciate Jeff’s attempts to move things along by suggesting final lists once it’s down to 5 or 6 left because it feels like everything after that is just people mentioning their personal favourite without adding anything to their case hoping everyone else will eventually cave in.
After watching these videos I've come to the conclusion that throughout 2017 Abby has only played Dream Daddy, Cuphead and enough of PubG to die and hate it. Listening to her interject over others about games she has never played is infuriating. It's come to the point I just want an option to turn off her mic because I know what she's going to say.
I'm also not sure why a 'Styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle' category even exists if Persona 5 isn't going to win. It would be more accurate to properly rename it to either 'Style' or 'Whatever game Abby has played this year and will never stop arguing for. As Ben said, its style caused people to cosplay as its menus. Not everyone may like anime but the fact that half the world lost their shit over Persona is mind boggling to overlook.
Interesting they disqualified early access games, but PUBG (early access as of recording) was able to qualify multiple times. Odd double standard, especially since Fire Pro and PUBG went 1.0 around the same time.
Interesting they disqualified early access games, but PUBG (early access as of recording) was able to qualify multiple times. Odd double standard, especially since Fire Pro and PUBG went 1.0 around the same time.
I think they let it qualify, since it got an official release before the year's end. The early access rule seems to be on the outs from this point forward though.
So, unless I'm missing something, Night in the Woods is not a debut. I suppose no one who works for the site still remembers Lost Constellation or Longest Night? Or did I just not notice when they mention them and explain why they don't count?
This is a legit question, not a rhetorical jab - I watch a lot of these with only one ear while I'm doing something else, so I might have totally missed someone bringing it up.
They need to cut the best style or best looking category, same game should not win both.
I think that's silly. Graphics and Style are two different things and one game can do both of those things well enough to win both categories.
I kinda disagree, I think the reason they have two categories is because they really aren't supposed to overlap. Normally style is something that is used in place of graphics because they aren't going for graphics, and why cuphead really should have won one or the other. But not both. If anything I think it has weak style because it is just copying one-for-one the old cartoon style of movies and shows.
Nonsense, Best Style takes in the visual and audio and whatever other nebulous factors that make a game really stand out. There's no reason a game couldn't have the best Look and then also combine that with whatever else and take Best Style.
I mean it shouldn't have because it's a much better Second Place choice but it's totally eligible.
I just think the two categories are different enough it would be extremely difficult for a game to do both well enough to win them both. Personally I just don't think cuphead has much style, I think it has a beautiful cartoon-style animated look; but I don't see much style from it outside of copying that old cartoon look.
IMHO Cuphead does have style, but not STYYYYLE. What we need is a clear statement of (1) how many Y's are in this category & (2) what the different numbers of Y's mean. For most possible answers to these questions I figure Persona 5 comes out on top.
Just came here to say Persona was robbed in Best Styyyyyle. Sure Cuphead looks amazing, but it's more "Best Looking Game" material for me.
@themanwithnoplan: I also don't get that argument, I suppose it's native american culture, but I really don't get the whole culture appropriation thing.
Interesting they disqualified early access games, but PUBG (early access as of recording) was able to qualify multiple times. Odd double standard, especially since Fire Pro and PUBG went 1.0 around the same time.
I think they let it qualify, since it got an official release before the year's end. The early access rule seems to be on the outs from this point forward though.
I think it's a bit iffy tbh. The game came out of Early Access December 20th, No other game would have been considered for GotY awards because these podcasts have already been recorded. So the fact that it was in Early Access for awhile, actually helped it qualify.
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