And while cartoonish (intentionally) with its take on capitalism, it has incredibly memorable moments and really entertaining NPCs that stick with you. Murder on Eridanos was more fun than I had with Starfield in its entirety. Plus, OW actually has guns that are fun to shoot.

Can't help but feel that being extremely mediocre at everything it does really hurt Starfield's chances

Good. It deserves no awards. It was a very average game. Average games don’t deserve awards.

Aerith is gonna stab Sephiroth isn’t she?

Sea of Stars! Sea of Stars! Sea of Stars!

I’ve played through Skyrim on THREE different consoles and a PC. I couldn’t even force myself to finish Starfield once. It’s an ambitious game, for sure, but in the process of including more worlds, more missions and more NPCs, they forgot to make the game FUN.

The problem is that there is no good definition of “indie.”  If all it takes is “didn’t go through an external publisher,” then hell, Cyberpunk 2077 was an indie game, and that absolutely does not belong in the same category as anything people actually consider “indie.”

I mean, that’s why *most* of the AAA games that got nominated are there.  It’s almost entirely because they’ve got the most money behind them.  Starfield is remarkable because it’s an illustration of how thoroughly mediocre a AAA game has to be in order to *not* get a nomination.

It’s not a slow year for RPGs at all. Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty, Colony Ship, WH40K: Rogue Trader, Sea of Stars, FF16, Diablo 4, Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn, Wartales, Persona 5 Tactica, Star Ocean: The Second Story R, For the King 2, etc.

I think the sequel has to do something new and interesting. TotK is really just more BotW. I’ll admit I didn’t enjoy BotW myself, but I do think the GotY award was justified that year. I don’t see how more of the same warrants another GotY award, though. After all, Baldur’s Gate 3 is technically a sequel, but I think…

I think he’s suggesting that TotK felt more like an expansion pack than a sequel.

Starfield’s presence in the nominations for this awards ceremony looks to be just about as absent as the overall content of the game.

I think the point they were making is that Tears of the Kingdom is practically a remake of Breath of the Wild with upgrades.

Because Baldur’s Gate 3 and Spider-man 2 are sequels... And they think they should be there.

Lighten up, Todd.

Where are you reading these conversations? Of all the criticisms I’ve read, either on places like this or the Starfield Reddit, nothing strikes me as “console war nonsense”. And as someone who is slogging through it at the moment just out of a weird need to be DONE with it, I can assure you that none of my criticisms…

Man, I don’t know how you even pick a GotY.

Not sure if you fit in there, I’m sure you’ll tell my why you don’t.

As a huge Bethesda fan who has put more than 10,000 hours into Skyrim over the years (and even, yes, loved Fallout 76), Starfield at the very least has serious pacing issues that prevent it from reaching the heights of the other goty nominees. This year was absolutely stacked, so I think in other years, it would at…

That’s because Starfield is the definition of mediocre, and for the budget and time spent pathetically empty.

Why should it get nods at the VGAs? Indie titles are more engaging. It’s supposed to be recognized why, exactly? A gigantic balloon budget and a celebrity game director? 

You’d have to actually be insane to nominate starfield for game of the year, even if it didn’t have so much fierce competition this year, so I’m not seeing the issue. Even “Best RPG” is a stretch, but there weren’t exactly dozens of high profile RPGs this year, so you’ve got to fill out the list somehow.