With the exploding popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3 which is likely to sweep game awards this year it seems we are seeing a renewed love for the tactical rather than the action RPG, the latter which has dominated gaming over the past decade. However, this puts Soulslike games in a difficult position. Should Elden Ring or Lies of P compete with a game like BG3 for RPG of the year? Seems ridiculous as these are entirely different types of games. Soulslike games are fundamentally action games with RPG elements but literally everything most people like about them and what made them revolutionary are their action elements, not their RPG elements. That said, the relatively small number of Soulslike games means that having a separate category for them would perhaps be too much, in the same way there aren’t enough Roguelikes or Metroidvanias. So perhaps something the lines of Challenge Game of the Year? Which would reward what makes Soulslikes memorable and also include other games inspired by their difficulty like Hollow Knight or Cuphead. It would also clear the RPG category for more typical games of that genre.
Just thinking out loud here…
What if there aren’t enough games to nominate in this category?
People have been mocking TGA for putting Sifu as a fighting game for Best Fighting Game in 2022, but that’s actually because there weren’t other fighting games worth adding. That’s also why Jump Force was nominated, as well as special editions of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, despite Keightly that ports wouldn’t be nominated.
Keightly’s latest interview also noted how there isn’t a Best Remaster/Remake category, because the definition is too vague. What’s odd is that TGA used to have such a category in 2014 and it encapsulated both remasters like TLOU1 and remakes like Pokémon Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire. On top of that, here are 2023’s “potential nominees”
- Resident Evil 4 Remake
- Metroid Prime Remaster
- Advance Wars 1+2
- Dead Space Remake
- Star Ocean 2 R
- Super Mario RPG
Another topic that was discussed is splitting the Best Performance category by genders and adding Best Supporting Performance like the Academy Awards, but Keightly perfers to keep it gender-neutral and not bloating it. This is a bit strange considering that we have 5 eSports categories and the general audience for TGA aren’t the same as eSport competitions.
Finally, there used to be Best XBOX / Playstation / Nintendo Game, until only Nintendo can fill its own category. In the past, several 3rd-party multiplatform games were nominated, raising a few eyebrows.
All in all, it comes down to the numbers of available games. On that note, I wished this year they add 10 GOTY nominees, like how the Academy Awards have 10 nominees for Best Picture.