Giant Bombcast Game of the Year 2019: Day One Deliberations

man, I really wanted Metro Exodus to be the modern breakthrough for the Stalker/Metro type of games so bad.

Giant Bomb don't like games that take 15 hours to get good, so in a way their much-the-same GOTY process is cutting satire of the modern video game industry.

i just like hearing people talk about video games

In talking about Sekiro, they touched on what I think is an interesting design vector over at From Software, i.e. a move from a very customizable character/style of playing to a rigidly focused playstyle.

In Dark Souls, the degree to which your experience differed depending on how you specced was huge. You could do heavy melee with high poise, light and quick melee with high agility, pure spellcaster, pure bowman, not to mention miracles and pyromancies, etc, and any combination thereof.

Then came Bloodborne, and suddenly your playstyle was a lot less customizable. Poise wasn't a thing, and there weren't really any legitimately sustainable ranged builds. You were forced into a light melee style. But even then, you were still creating a character, choosing between stats, and had about a dozen melee weapons to choose from and about as many ranged options.

Then came Sekiro, and suddenly there is no character creator. There aren't different stats to choose from. There's only one weapon. In terms of character/playstyle customization, it's pretty much just a few moves that you can purchase and the prosthetic tools and that's it -- and the fact that prosthetic tools are limited by the number of spirit emblems you're carrying mean that a lot of players probably weren't using them much except against bosses.

None of these designs is inherently better than the others, but they have their advantages and disadvantages.

One drawback to the highly customizable nature of Dark Souls is that the developers were faced with an impossible task when it came to balancing the difficulty of the combat across all the different ways players could approach a given battle. E.g., Smough + Ornstein is usually considered one of the more difficult fights in that game; I specced in sorcery the first time through and breezed through them with Soul Spears and Homing Soulmass. Likewise, the Four Kings fight is easy for a high-poise tank build, or just one with Iron Flesh. That can make the game feel very uneven. Whereas with a more tightly focused gameplay style like Bloodborne or Sekiro, you can design bosses more tightly because you know that everyone is going to be approaching it with the same general set of tools. There is less scope to cheese things.

On the other hand, Bloodborne and Sekiro, due to the fact that there's less difference in fundamental playstyle, are inherently less interesting to replay. I've played through Dark Souls at least seven times now, and something like five near when it first came out. I only played Bloodborne and Sekiro once, and I don't feel any pressing need to return to them, in part because I know it's going to feel roughly the same the second time as it did the first time. I miss being able to change things up.

It really makes me wonder where Miyazaki and From Software will go from here. Are they going to continue making roughly this same style of third-person action game? If so, will they ever return to the abundance of options and styles found in the Souls series, or will this vector of making more rigidly defined gameplay experiences keep going? Or maybe they'll make something completely different altogether!

Great job doing what you said just an hour earlier about skipping these deliberation bits, winner.

iTunes feed is still down. :(

Surprised they kept this format. I do enjoy the year-end review to some extent as a refresher making sure every game gets in there, but it still does not seem worth it to lose several days worth of award podcasts for this. Especially because most of the conversation is fairly repetitive of what has been said all year on podcasts and videos about all these games. It seems like the videos are meant to hit the wacky categories of the past, but that still leaves out the weird discussion and argument that always sprang out from the one-off fun categories, which was generally the best part.

@threeoct: I can confirm I have skipped watching this video but that, luckily, it has not impacted on my ability to read what my fellow Giant Bomb users have to say, such is the nature of a comments section. Thanks!

I really think the KH3 takes are not great, I think the one part of that game that is undeniably good is its gameplay. I wouldn't say there was anything directly like KH1 and 2 when those came out and 2 played amazingly even now having only played it last year and I would say KH3 is a really good version of that gameplay. Ultimately I just don't agree with the notion that that gameplay is outdated.

@phah: Agree

All I want for Christmas is an option to block/hide the impossibly broken, sad fucks in the comments like this one. There are so many amusing, insightful, and genuinely fun people in this community that I would pay significantly more for my premium sub to filter these out.

That said, keep up the great work GB. Hope you all have a great holiday season and I look forward to the rest of the GOTY content!

I think I too must be counted as one of the people that just doesn't love this format. The timestamps are a godsend, but it highlights that I'm interested in hearing the staff talk about the games I liked/played, while the rest I'm just going to skip over. In the context of award categories, there is at least the interest in hearing people argue passionately for their favored game, even if it's not one I care about. In this format, it's like, well, I didn't care about that game when it came out, and still don't care about it now, why would I listen to people talking about it again?

I mean, I hate to say it, mostly because it makes me sound like a bit of an entitled dick, but if the end goal that GB is trying to achieve is to entertain its subscribers, and its subscribers aren't that interested in this format--for the most part, it seems to me, though opinions differ--then maybe it's time to stop doing it? It strikes me that probably the staff themselves have decided they enjoy doing it more this way, and are somewhat ignoring the complaints. I can get behind a certain amount of that, because people are going to whine and complain no matter what you do anyway, so you may as well do it the way you want to do it, right? But still, I dunno man. I feel like this could be so much better than it is.

Speaking only for myself, I can't help feeling a little disappointed, and will mostly be ignoring these year-rundown episodes and waiting for the actual award categories. Sorry, dudes...

So you want to cry about the things you don't like but don't actually want to engage in it to properly cry about it? You can't even be a whiner right.

Riku is Vegeta?
Goofy is Yamcha?

@threeoct: Hi again, I am sorry my extremely mild joke referencing something Giant Bomb say about games all the time has upset you. I am sure if it is over the line a hard working moderator will clear it up. Enjoy the podcasts!

Are GOTY Podcasts full of spoilers for games? Or just their experiences with the games?

Looking forward to these. I personally really enjoy this format.

There are 51 other weeks in the year where I can hear them recap games, putting it in the GOTY podcasts just takes up time that could go to more categories.

I for one am extremely sad they continued with the 2018 format...
Pre-2018 the GOTY casts were easily my favorite of every year, and now 2 hours into this one I'm legitimately bored listening to it. It's just a rehash of what you've already said over the 100 other podcasts you've done this year it's basically not even new content :/ At least we can look forward to multiple 6-7 hour podcasts in the back half of the week as ya'll try to cram what used to be 5 days worth of discussion into 3 cause it turns out talking about all the games like this over 2 days did absolutely nothing to shorten the category discussions going by last year.

personally, I don't care about GOTY anymore and for the same reason it applies to this type of content. This site don't care about Reviews so... what's the point now in this days on produce GOTY stuff. That's entertainment? it's fun to watch? No. IMO (Well, that's until Dan's stupidity rises, that is fun until you got enough of it but that's okay i guess) Don't get me wrong i love GiantBomb crew, but again in my opinion this format is becoming obsolete. People now likes to see more streaming and live stuff over 3 hours of pre-recorded Potcast about GOTY. Again that's my humble opinion please don't kill me. Please.

Metro talk on GB will forever hurt my heart. Cant believe noone clicked with them

Count me as someone else not in love with this format. It feels like the wrong solution to a legitimate issue. If the crew was frustrated with how contentious some of the arguments had gotten that is fair, but to sacrifice 10-12 hours to a fix seems like overkill. Much rather see this be 2-4 hours focusing on their favorite games or games that don't get mentioned in all the other categories. Then use that time you save to make more fun content with the crew together like Hitsmas and the Winter Games, that stuff is gold and much more interesting than a yearly recap. I can deal with less fun categories if I'm getting more east and west coast together stuff.

Agree with your whole post here a lot. I had really enjoyed the videos of the group together as well but we will see what we get this year.

What I really hate about it is that the talk is mostly pretty quick and low depth. During the year they don't really talk in a lot of depth about the games, certainly not with spoilers, with the idea it seems to me that they will cover it during GOTY. So you don't get a lot of podcasts that talk about games in depth like GB used to as much.

I wish they did more spoilerscasts. It was sad hearing Jan had a huge list of notes for a spoilerscast. Even as not a KH fan I would have listened.

@kirkdouglas: Just talking about some key games this year I believe.

I'm open to a new format but listening to them just talk about video games is oddly unsatisfying, which is weird to say for a video game site lol. But I guess the appealing part of the previous years was hearing them passionately defend their favourite games from criticism.

I had flashbacks from last year when they started talking about Tetris.

Not even a mention for Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown?

Agreed with the majority on this one, this format is a waste of everyone's time (and our subscription).

I'll always love listening to GB talk video games but I personally would prefer a return to the pre 2018 goty format, perhaps modified to some extent. The current format just feels like it has so little structure and lacks the dynamic feel of talking about games directly in relation to a specific category. Still enjoyed the podcast and great production Jan!

Yea, don't like this, but still entertaining

Oh great, the awful format from last year is back.

Count me in on the list of people that hate this format. I would much rather have focused discussion about a specific category instead of just hearing them recap games for hours on end.

What a weird choice to keep doing these like this.

I guess 2017's GOTY deliberations were such a mess that they felt the need to make big changes in 2018, and somehow also felt like the new format was better? It's a shame really. I go back and listen to to every GOTY podcast (except for 2017 >_< ) before the current year's GOTY starts, and comparing everything from pre-2017 to what we got now, makes this format feel like a massive decrease in quality.

Agreed. I imagine this format is better for the staff and their sanity but I miss the conflicts. The current format feels oddly sterile without the context of a specific category looming in the background of the game discussions. Prior to this format, even when the staff largely agreed on something the category sparked far more interesting discussion. Like others have said, this feels very rote.

Metro Exodus was my last years "hyped for" game. Was so let down by the incredibly messy introduction and direction. The animation was chaotic and the characters spoke in tandem. The difference was huge compared to 2033 and Last Light Redux.

Shut the game of about an hour in, to never start it again.

I'm not a fan of the new format! Hopefully you'll go back to the old format eventually. Count me out till the last ep.

I remember a Giant Bomb that used to engage with its community and take feedback onboard and do features that we wanted.

It's so sad to see the best week of content every year turned into this lame format and the feedback from last year was obviously ignored.

GOTY has lost the skits and now it's lost three days of awards for lame recaps.

Please reconsider for next year.

I still think this format would be fine if they spent one day on it and not 3/5. It seems like they even forgot this section was where they nominated the games for stuff last year, so it feels doubly aimless.

I'm leaving it on as background noise, but outside of the novelty of the KH3 section I'm not picking up on anything I want to hear non-awards talk about. Hate to be so negative, but it feels like they really wasted the majority of their one week recording this recap.

"just play stalker" lol are you serious? There are many reasons for many people why that is not the option to go for.

Abby looks fantastic in that Knives Out sweater! It's like she pulled it right off of Chris Evans' body.

Yeeeeah, not a fan of this format either. Didn't enjoy it last year, and today four hours of boring and unengaging conversations is just as tedious to listen to. It's a shame the team didn't use this time to make more group video features instead.

I couldn't make it through, this format is not for me. I'll be back Thursday.

Listening to this reminded me that I got Far Cry: New Dawn for free somehow, I played, beat, and completely forgot about it.

@feckless:im glad they think its worth it

I do too. these games clearly aren't filler or else they wouldn't be talking about them.

Kingdom Hearts III Game of the Year!!!!

Hearing them talk about it was so much fun (especially with them genuinely trying - but failing - to get why people like it). You're all so sweet.

Seriously though, Kingdom Hearts III is my Game of the Year!

Edit: Also, I love the new format. I liked it last year and I like it now.

It’s starting to feel like they don’t listen to our opinions. This format was overwhelmingly disliked last year and they used it again. Very disappointed. I’ve never seen so many people saying they would skip a piece of content, but I’m with them. I’ve listened to every Bombcast and Beastcast for years and I trudged through the first 3 days of last year’s GOTY. I think this will be the first podcast I skip since Ryan’s death.

Keeping that awful format from last year? Bit of a shame, to put it very mildly.