Giant Bombcast Game of the Year 2020: Day One

HELLO!

Ease into the Daddy

Happy Game of the Year!!!

Thought this was a great day 1!

• Everyone seemed to come in with a good headspace
• People were constructive and thoughtful
• Even when they disagreed, nobody jumped down the throat of another
• Every choice felt like it had been justified thoroughly even if they weren't what I would have picked
• Built games up a lot more than tore them down

Feels like a resounding success all around.

If you think Joel is a good dad please never ever have kids. And to be fair to Goku, the guy was dead.

The "Lightning Crashes" defender has logged the shit on. I am prepared to throw down Navarro.

LOOKS LIKE CATEGORIES ARE BACK ON THE MENU BOYS!

Great first day. Best daddy is a surprise favorite category

I wat there...LIVE!

Good, engaging first day. Definitely lower conflict than previous years. Not much arguing as they usually do. Pleasantly suprised they brought back the classic style.

I do wish we got the fun everyone gets together and plays a game video (like Hitsmas) - but I understand how that is difficult this year.

Very disappointed Jan didn’t Canadian South Park Ben

Edit: Jan doesn’t miss

Did they ever mention why Ben wasn't on camera for this?

This content makes my day better. Thanks everyone.

The best dad conversation was fantastic. The best part of these is how cutthroat it gets over this dumb, dumb stuff. This was fun to watch.

(Barrett isn't the team's dad in FF7, Tifa is.)

So much about your relationship to Hades is about living in an abusive household, which you can never take back even you make amends and learn the reasons why. Zagreus makes peace with his dad but his love for his two mothers and extended/chosen family is really the emotional core of that game. There is no way in hell (>.>) that Hades is a good father! Even by the end!

Yusuf Khan and Tony Hawk represent what good dads can be.

Was Dreams ever mentioned for best looking game? Some of the stuff people are doing is beautiful.

Great first day, thanks for the "spoilers still active" for Yakuza, that game takes a million years.

@lilmoefow: he was nude the entire stream so they edited him out

I think perhaps they didn't because it was a candidate during last year's Best Style category because it was out in early access form.

Second all of this. I know the team dropped the old format for a bunch of reasons, but this was a real return to form. Fun debates that got contentious but avoided going too far to the point where people got actually upset. A combination of "serious" and completely not serious categories, but everything taken seriously. Looking forward to the rest of the week!

I read this as "ease into me daddy"

So glad they went back to the old category. Should be much less divisive this year

Hades is the worst kind of dad. Treats his kid like shit all his life then blames him for not showing any respect. Zagreus is a good boy. Notice how he's an asshole to his dad and no one else in the game (except Theseus, of course, but fuck that guy). The game ends not with a ham-fisted redemption arc for Hades--he's still a shit dad--but more of a start toward reconciliation.

Great discussions, guys! Looking forward to the rest of the week.

I know nitpicking is sort of pointless, but it certainly seemed to me that among the arguments for Flight Simulator, very little of it was an argument for it being a Good-Looking Game. Vinny & Alex were clearly very passionate about it, but it really sounded like they were praising the technical accomplishment underlying the game rather than how the game actually looks.

I agree with Alex that it's an accomplishment that should be recognized, but Best-Looking Game doesn't seem like the right place to do that.

Day one, category one, and I am already yelling at my monitor about how they made the wrong choice. I love game of the year. And I am very happy they brought categories back.

Today was fun! Thank you guys for bringing back the old format, it's so much better.

Thanks all! Was real fun to watch live.

Jan's animations... Mwah.

Cant wait for the rest of the week, cant catch it live because of work but loved that it was on the site same day ! Much love bomb crew!

I thought this was an especially funny day of discussion.

"Tony Hawk didn't make his kid go on an Islamic retreat AND he can do a 900!"

GOTY deliberations are at their best when they produce proclamations like this.

I agree but I feel like for those in favour Flight Simulator was more of a meta pick in this category. I don't think it's going to end up with many other nods (without knowing what the other categories are going to be, of course). Not to undersell Flight Sim (a Good Game, certainly) but for this group it feels like a "put it on to take it off" kind of game for the Final GOTY cast and then??? It's worth discussing but where else are you going to talk about it?

Great start! Such an abundance of dad's this year. Hopefully we'll have more mothers show up in 2021 so we can also find out what the best mom is :)

@enemylandlord

Perhaps it would show up in best surprise? Like none of them are traditional Microsoft flight Sim folk, but this game was so impressively made that they got into it. And that let's them talk about what a pleasant surprise it was to see how well done the world is created in that game. Exceeding the expectations Jeff had based on Google Earth VR.

Who is the best video game mom (all time)?

@goldgreg:The answer is Aloy's mom probably from Horizon.

Let's just take a moment to recognize how Ben's ideas of what constitutes a "good" dad are deeply concerning and.. err... child services are on their way..

@quasiconundrum: Because it (hushed voice) Looks Like Shit

I’m glad Ben put Jessie Raspberry as best “dad”

@enemylandlord: It's especially funny because I feel like Brad took Demon's off the list for the exact reason why they left Flight Simulator on. Technical achievement over design, although I was truly confused by that argument for Demon's where some of those areas like Tower of Latria end up looked really spectacular now that they have been brought up to modern standards. Now that I think about it Vinny made an argument about this but man those were long discussions..

Either way I'm happy Ori didn't get cut because I feel like that first game got absolutely snubbed years back and it's a tremendous 'metroidvania' as is the sequel.

this category doesn't make any flipping sense to me, giantbomb crew, this was a weird one...

I think Cyberpunk looks fucking incredible, I dunno, gb you keep on doin you, ima keep on doin me. Otherwise, fun cast, even if whatever looks gooder in the way you're doing this is...questionably subjective which is to an art person a very non-compute thing to try and understand!

Brad literally later contradicts the exact same reason jeff discounted cyberpunk's inclusion as a notable for the list, with how to paraphrase its especially 'quality even when' stuff does glitch out in Flight Simulator. I'm not saying it's hey same thing, but is confusin'. And, the same thing, just keepin honest but I love you guys thank you for this bounty of game speak, MOOORE, you are all appreciated.

I won't be getting a psv any time soon, uh, is Miles Morales worth the play on ps4?

Was able to catch most of it live. Had to bow out during the Best Dad discussion, but I'm glad the Dad from Marvel's Avengers won, since he was a very good Dad to Kamala, with Barrett from FF7R being a runner up. They improved his character a lot in that game from the original.

When it comes to Best Looking, I got to thank Jan who I've grown a new respect for after yesterday. Not only did he speak up for himself more, but he made very sound logical arguments. And he saved The Last of Us Part II from being knocked off the Top 3 list, when Ben and others tried to make a strong play against it, using arguments I image will be common in the days to come to try and discredit a great game. I knew Ori was going to win it though. I mean game looks great, and if you have the means, you can play it at 4K 120Hz, or 6K 60Hz. Hard to beat that. Flight Simulator, while I respect the reasoning, believe other games on the list were better. But Vinny and some of the other staff really loved it, so I knew it wasn't going anywhere. Surprised they cut Minecraft RTX, because I believe they were going to be biased for it for the same reasons.

For people upset about Cyberpunk 2077, get use to it. First impressions are everything and that game left a pretty bad one for most people. I liked it overall, but even I stopped playing when the minor bugs I kept encountering became too much to overlook. Hopefully, CDPR can fix it by the end of the year when the Next-Gen console versions come out.

So I feel like I should clarify something regarding Hades' plot that I believe Ben got kind of wrong when he was explaining Hades' actions and why he tried to keep Zagreus away from Persephone.

The reason why Hades wants to keep Zag away from Persephone is because Persephone was taken to the Underworld by Zeus in order for Hades to have a bride, but the other Olympians are completely unaware of this, particularly Demeter who is Persephone's mother. This is the reason why Demeter is keeping the surface world and humanity in a perpetual winter as she believes the mortals are at fault for why Persephone went missing. And it's important to understand that Olympus has a pretty low opinion of Hades and that Demeter would more than likely have NEVER consented to her daughter going to the Underworld of all places rather than stay with her.

So Hades' fear is that, should Zagreus make contact with Persephone, he will reveal that she is still alive and that Zeus and Hades were responsible for why she disappeared even though Persephone left willingly given her distaste for Olympus and Demeter's overbearing mothering. And the consequences of Demeter finding out about this are repeatedly suggested to be that it could ignite a war between the Olympians and the Underworld, especially given how Demeter went from being a kind, caring goddess of bounty and harvest to basically becoming the Night King from Game of Thrones by creating an everlasting winter upon all of humanity as punishment for her thinking they killed her daughter or something.

The way Ben explained this made it kinda sound like the Olympians were all aware of Persephone's departure to the Underworld, a slight misunderstanding which makes the reason for Hades being so obstinate about Zag seeing his mother seem far less reasonable or justified than it is given the potential disastrous ramifications of Olympus discovering what happened.

Any idea why this isn't in my premium bombcast feed? Was hoping to listen through work today!

Great first day, love the return back to the old format

Best Dad in particular was a surprsingly good category. It was the right move to shoot down all the "cool dads" for the real genuine dads.

Also I feel all the things Ben was praising Hades for are things that Goku did to Gohan in the cell saga and he was deleted immediately.

@sasij said:

I think there's a glitch, it seems to be in the regular audio feed but not in the premium one. Definitely frustrating but I just temporarily subscribed to the regular feed until it gets sorted.

All time is a tough one. But from 2020, probably Rio Morales. I'm a bit disappointed that Aaron or Jefferson weren't even mentioned.

I appreciate the arguments for Arakawa. I knew it wasn't going to make the cut here, but I'm happy that it got proper recognition during the talks. It's the best game about family that I've played in a while.

Or am I supposed to complain? In that case, Flight Sim was robbed!