Giant Bombcast Game of the Year 2017: Best New Character

Alex is my GB spirit animal during these debates.

Dang Pyre was a huge hit this year with everyone. I finished the game and Super Giant is one of my favorite devs but could not get into it. Too much dialog, not enough game play, not enough art, story kinda dragged is how I felt.

Makoto from P5 is a good character. I need to play night in the woods. I'm with Brad and Dan otherwise, in "I don't care about anybody on this list." Good as Pascal's story was, he's a piece of Nier's puzzle, not super interesting in and of himself.

Leave it to Abby to bring up "but she's black" as a good reason for a character being good. What a weak argument...

Oh, here's another one "he's a trans dad"

The People's Champion

As a trans person its rather disgusting that she is more than happy to just reduce a character to that trait alone and have that be her argument at the time. We are more than a novelty Abby.

Well this was a pleasant surprise, glad to see Bayek get some well deserved recognition.

Makoto's not even nominated?

How did that character win? Such a one note character lacking any depth.

@namoo: Good thing that's not at all what happened.

It's a shame that Dan didn't play any Nier and Abby didn't play enough as their silence is extremely noticeable everytime the camera pans to the right when Ben is giving his piece during a Nier discussion.

Yeah, she's still super new to all this and will find her way over the years if she sticks around but I don't agree with her when she starts making sweeping statements like "always believe in women" or stuff like this with strong visible minority or transgender characters.

I think her heart's in the right place and as a visible minority I also like to see a more diverse representation but I think she's going about it in maybe a naive way in championing for the industry to be more progressive for progressive's sakes. I think that leads to a false sense of progression and to a more exploitative one where game developers look back and go "see, people love it when you include x and y people and it wins awards, we need to shoe-horn some of those characters in to chase after the x and y money".

Senua is the only character in a video game I have ever believed in. I've felt empathy for other characters, but I believe in Senua. The actor's performance, the performance capture, and the bravery with which the story is tackled are all incredible achievements. Never mind though because Abby's read a little bit about the game and apparently "that's not really how mental illness works." Fucking what?

GREGGG

@teigen: Uh-huh.

Yeah, I have a fundamental problem with Abby's characterization that the "correct way" to deal with mental illness is about learning to live with it and getting help. Mental illness is unfathomably complex and dismissing the characterization in Hellblade for that reason is reductive. It's a psuedo-intellectual argument that fails to grasp the realities of actually dealing with serious mental illness. Not to say that the way Hellblade portrays it is flawless, but it also isn't wrong. The reality is that there is no right way or wrong way to deal with mental illness.

I heard "Pascal" as "Pascual" and thought it was gonna be that really good character from PUBG.

@lanechanger: I agree with everything you wrote and i would consider myself slightly right of center. That's always been my understanding of any situation... it doesn't mean much unless it felt like it was earned, many people act the same way with all choices. (if it's not my decision then i can't own it.)

I didn't want to requote you because i feel like it would be just dragging a person through the mud more, and i don't want them reading the comment section and feeling bad. I think there is enough of that on here.

I think I get what Vinny was trying to get at. Damian being transgender doesn’t matter to the story or your interactions with that character. It is a part of him, that one could miss, but it doesn’t define him or your relationship with him. Abby bringing it up as a plus should not have mattered for the sake of this category. It makes for a great article about diversity and inclusion in games, but not for a great character in this case. He should have been judged solely on your interactions with him, and his impact to the game world. If that impact was greater than Gregg’s, then yes, he belongs on the top 3.

Maybe I never checked them in the past couple years since coming to this site, but why do these comment sections have to all be raging dumpster fires of people angry about ranking games in subjective categories? I haven't been made upset at any of the goty stuff so far and I just don't understand it. In fact I feel a great reason to listen to these to begin with is to hear people aside from yourself talk about their feelings or opinions on stuff. So why do the comments always resort to such vitriol? Why bother watching if you feel the need to get mad when they "pick wrong"?

@scojoe66: I feel that most of the people upset about rankings are more upset at the poor reasoning for certain rankings. If the reasons were articulated in a compelling manner, I feel people would be less upset but some of these categories have had games completely dismissed because not enough of the staff here played them, or a certain person has very strong distaste for a particular genre/game and is actively trying to snipe it out of categories where it might do well, or the game had some other issue completely unrelated to the category that caused people to bias it lower in every category, or even recency bias with regards to games they played more recently having a statistically significant higher ranking compared to games they played earlier in the year...

@morkins324: I guess I can see why people disagree with certain rankings, or why people think certain rankings weren’t reasoned for well enough, but also like I suppose my main point is why are people getting as upset as they are. The comment sections have just been long tread after long thread of comments of people either attacking each other or attacking a member of the staff, and I’m just confused as to why folks are letting it bother them so much when they feel a category wasn’t ranked properly or was subject to bias. Dunno, for me I’m much more happy about the prospect of getting all this stuff to come home to and listen to from my favorite games folks during a busy season at my work and I don’t have the mindset that getting mad at staff or other commenters is fruitful in any way.

TLDR: Can’t we all just get along?

There are a lot of negative comments here which is understandable as characters are our portal into the games we often love. We personally identify with them so it hits closer to home when they are dismissed by others. While I don't agree with Abby on most things, it's refreshing to have her (and Ben) add such new, different voices to the discussion. This is so much better than last year when it was "will person A overpower person B". It's an actual discussion. I wish Dan and Jeff were more vocal but I imagine they don't want to feel pushy and likewise aren't big on story/characters in general.

I really didn't like Night in the Woods gameplay or story but the characters were fantastic. How is Mae not even considered? Greg and Angus were fantastic. They had layers that made them feel like real people. It's really touching how they are both going through their own personal struggles and it's not made obvious or is part of the player's mission to "beat the game".

Haven't played much Persona 5 but I'm surprised that didn't make the cut. I only played 10 hours and nearly every character is fantastic. Even the ones you are supposed to hate are really good at being evil and interesting. I really don't get the Persona 5 hate on staff. I though it was a bad game due to staff but then discovered it's one of the highest rated games of all-time on various online databases.

Thanks @unastrike for fighting the good fight on this one.

In a year with a ton of great characters, I never expected the daughter of one of the evilest members of the Nazi party to be my favorite.

I agree. I think the central problem is not necessarily unique to this, but a thing alot of fans of fiction do; they are so passionate about the things they love that they sometimes intertwine their emotions or identity with those things. When those things get criticized, discarded, or ignored, even in a minor way, it's feels like a personal attack.

It doesn't make logical sense at all, but it is a thing I notice constantly.

@slaughts: Yeah I can totally see that and you’re right it isn’t unique to this. It just stinks that people are dragging a lot of the discussions into the mud just based around their emotions for games they like when these are really just a celebration of the games of the year rather than something to definitively say “x is better than y”. Granted, they *do* say x is better than y, but I feel like those going into this with the intention of only getting that out of it rather than the discussions are always gonna have a bad time

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I still love this stuff, and thanks for being civil duder.

Haven't started this video yet, but I'm just assuming a character from Cuphead wins.

Abby's take on mental illness is disheartening.

Love this category.

Wanted to mention though, the thing with Senua and the idea that the game treated mental health as an obstacle to overcome "without help" is bullshit, the game didn't treat it that way at all and I think the author of that article (because I know what article Abby is talking about, Danika Harrod mentioned that in some Waypoint stream recently as well...it's a Polygon article) is just using the game as a launching point to lament about personal experiences and interactions THEY may have had with people that don't have mental health issues and have treated them that way in the past (and believe me, I can empathize with that).

Nowhere does the game say that. Dillion doesn't "invalidate" her desire to seek wellness. The game is simply presenting the fact that mental health issues are a challenge, and an extremely difficult and rough challenge, but they don't have to be life-ending, doom-forever challenges. It's something that presents unique obstacles that, whether through help or otherwise, you are going to have to learn to deal with. Have you ever gone to see a psychologist or someone like that? That's called getting help; but YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING AND READY to WORK AT IT. It doesn't mean you're by yourself, it means you should seek and should have support and guidance from others, as did Senua with Dillion. But it doesn't mean there's a "magic pill", and nor does it mean that you have to let something like that drag you into the mud. It's just part of what makes you YOU. And sometimes that might cause you trouble and create problems in your life and it might be difficult.

The article written by the author had this air of "oh god, that's an affliction that sucks dick and is this horrible thing that I want to expel and NEVER LOOK BACK ON". Like no, that's the wrong attitude. It might suck sometimes, but it's the hand you're dealt and the only thing you can do is learn to cope, accept, and grow. You can't magically wish it away, and so there's really no point in looking at it that way. And in some ways, maybe you can gain a unique outlook. I know that in learning to live and cope with some of my personal difficulties, I've grown and matured as a person in ways that go beyond just things that relate directly to mental health. It doesn't mean better or worse outlook, it's just different. If you look at things in a "woe is me" way ALL THE TIME, you're never going to learn. And no one is perfect, we all fall back on that sometimes, mental illness or not. But it's something you need to, through help and through growth, find methods and ways to cope with and live with, whatever that may be for an individual. And that's what the ending of Hellblade was -- that she carried on and is coping, not that she'd magically defeated her demons through an internal struggle forever. It's not about that and the game doesn't say that. Personally, as someone who's dealt with similar things as well, I found that article to be very worrying and somewhat misguided. But that's just my experience I suppose. That's how I've learned to view things. Again, it's not about this politically conservative "you can always persevere through hard work and you need to take responsibility", that's not what I'm saying. But I think the author of that article took the game that way, when it's really not that.

I could dig into the article's text further and debate a WHOLE LOT of the points the author makes, but I'll cool it here since I'm not being paid to write this and I just wanted to express some surface level thoughts :)

@delitist: Well said. I think there's something to be said about the power of acceptance especially when learning to cope with something like mental illness and at the same time not participating in the victim culture of "why me, how come this shit happens only to me". In fact it kind of makes it worse and leaves you resigned to feeling hopeless and powerless while the truth is so many people go through with it and are finding their own combination of the right psychiatrist, the right medication, the right exercises (both physical like yoga and mental like CBT, meditation, etc) to approach their unique situation that works for them.

How do you have Yakuza 0 characters and not have Kuze and Makoto?

Also removing a character from a game with dual audio because of their dubbed voice is awful.

Gregg was... cut. I'm going to riot.

For what it's worth the real thing of note isn't simply the fact that Damien is trans, it's the fact that he's a trans character who's trans status is ultimately inconsequential. I have faith that that's the point they were trying to arrive at, and it's what the discussion ultimately did circle around to. We live in a world in which "trans" and "cis" are useful labels for the purposes of social and political mobilization against oppression, but Dream Daddy imagines an ideal scenario in which that fight isn't being fought and Damien can simply exist as he is. The world supports that subtle piece of chraracterization, and the point is that he's a pretty good character even if you don't pick up on it.

P.S. Gregg rulz, ok?

They went with Nishitani over Kuze or Sagawa? Weird!

Sometimes i wish they would be able to sketch a situation in which something was good. Like i know that Bayek is a charismatic , funny dad, but that's pretty much all i can say about him from listening to this. I feel like the article paragraph does a better job than the actual discussion.

Jan wins best new character hands down.

Sojiro is my personal character of the year. I have to try Night in the Woods sometime.

I think Abby has been a little overeager to comment on and evaluate games she hasn't played and I wish she was a bit more openminded, but the comment sections for the GOTY videoes are getting more and more insane. Can't say I blame her for not wanting to read any of it.

@scojoe66: My problem with the discussions is how shallow they have been. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t remember it being this bad in the previous two years I’ve followed the deliberations.

The games they don’t like are dismissed with the the most perfunctory complaints and the games they do like are described using empty superlatives. Cuphead is “very good”, Zelda is “very cohesive”, PUBG is “shaking up the industry”. I want Austin in that room, I think he would have asked for examples or reasoning. I will gladly listen to a well-reasoned criticism of something I love or a meaningful argument for something I didn’t enjoy, but mostly that is not happening. I find it very frustrating.

Wow, didn't delve too deep when i commented before but looking over it and man.. alot of really bad faith reads here i would guess probably don't mean to be as harsh as they sound? I've never been entirely comfortable with some of the ways the crew struggle to characterize things but i appreciate that they are getting better at it in spite of those nervous hiccups and some old guard rigidness (love the old crew too!)... I too miss Austin's gift for distilling complex ideas down to a shared language and still appreciate Jeff's knack for cutting to the core argument but not everyone has to be Austin or Jeff, and i think the new voices are already good and getting better over time!

Shame Vinny didn't get more into DOS2, all of the origin characters are so well written , and there's some really crazy plot threads in there, particularly involving: Fane, Sebille and Lohse.

I don't think Abby made that sweeping a comments about Senua as a character and I felt like she acknowledged that it's just "something she read about". I will say that I (I work with people wth various MH-issues myself and base this next statement on accounts from various people with the same illness that they attempt to portray in Hellblade) am firmly against saying "that's not how MH" works since that is factually wrong. Just like physical illnesses, it affects people differently and they make their own individual stories. Reading "somewhere" about how it "works" and using that as an argument in this case is poor form. Especially with how Ninja Theory did their homework.

I also very much share the view that the game does not promote "you gotta truck through it yourself" but is about acceptance. I Think if you believe the prior, then you missed the whole Point of the game. Someone else said it above more eloquently. And if you go down the route of pointing out problems of how a RL-problem is portrayed in a game, then you have to dissect every game the same way. Nier has sexist/gratuitous elements, Dream Daddy can be perceived as a fetishization, etc.

That said, Senua was robbed. That character says more with a glance that most other characters in this list. It's almost unfair with the level of performance capture they use. The kind of work put into the research behind mental Health and including people who carry it is also incredible and add a level of depth to Senua that most other characters lack. I will admit that because of what I do, I was extra taken with the game and the portrayal of Senua. She was my def preference for this category and I feel like she got robbed for what seemed like other issues with the game.

There were plenty other good characters, but I just can't compare a cuphead character to the level of depth and portrayal that came across in Hellblade. That game stuck with me in a way that few games did.

Yes. I don't really care who or what wins. The last time I actually cared about the outcome of the GotY deliberations was when Ryan was still with us. Since then I realized, non of this matters. But I still like to listen to these debates, even though they are really cringey sometimes.

That being said, when you listen to hours and hours of discussions, you start to see the patterns, how the individual crew members approach arguing for or against something or someone. To me at least, it really sticks out how the well articulated arguments are met with counter-arguments such as "it's really good", "I like it" and blanket statements. And the Best World category was another pile of problems on its own.

To me, these shortcomings take the enjoyment out of the deliberations. I don't know why it is such a crime to point out these problems.

@whatshisface: I agree. I've listened since the Ryan-Days and most of the time the crew pick favs that are not mine, but I've always enjoyed the deconstruction and deliberations Before. Between the sort of same-y (somewhat shallow) discussions this year (coherence seem to be the word of the year), the incongruity in arguments (my above Hellblade example) and the messy "Best World" category this the first year that I've been sort of bummed out with the deliberations.

Not all of it obviously, I think Ben in particular has been very good about articulating his arguments and vocal in the right places (I enjoyed his reasoning for why PUBG shouldn't be best debut). Well done Ben. =)

Bayek "had" to be on this list? And he's the best new character of the entire year? I will never understand that decision, but okay. It is a collective list, so it's bound to come out in some kind of compromised form, to be fair. Still... Sweet, beautiful Jesus, why?

@friskysmokind: I've also been really impressed by Ben's ability to express his thoughts and make convincing arguments, no matter if I agree with him or not.

Other than when he tried to torpedo Horizon by comparing the robots to Michael Bay Transformers (funny mind you, but erroneous)