Is it really that time again? (Game Awards thoughts!)

     Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, December is now upon us, and while we reflect on the past year, we have quite a few things to look forward to in the coming days! While there is indeed a new Spider-Man movie that is coming out on the 17th that broke all kinds of movie theater websites when the tickets went live this past Monday, there is something else that I'm focusing on today. What could it be? Is there a dashing wannabe journalist/Self-Proclaimed Dreamer that's having a birthday soon? Yes, and thank you for all thinking that I'm dashing, but I'm not talking about myself today. Next Thursday, December 9, The Game Awards will come about once again. Geoff Keighley's wonderful night of video game appreciation and confusing bits of spectacle (looking at you, Green Day) is back again this year. These award shows should never be taken too incredibly seriously, as you can make up your own mind on what the game of the year is, but I still think it's a fun time to watch and speculate on what you think should win, what will be shown, and various other surprises that will be in store. I hope you'll join me today as I put my tux on and get ready for the awards show by talking about it a bit.

The Winners!

    This is why I could never host an award show, I'm just itching to get to the results, no time to bring in random people to present (though I would kill to have any of The Muppets in the same room as me)! I'll run through a few categories here that I think could be interesting, I certainly won't cover everything, because if I did, it would take an eternity to read. I have to say, out of a lot of these categories, I haven't played most of the nominees, for example, in Game of the Year, I've only played Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Resident Evil 8, but I'm sure all of the games that were nominated are great. Out of those two, I have to vote for Ratchet and Clank, though I did also love RE8 quite a lot. Ratchet and Clank was just really fun and genuinely enjoyable to play the entire way through. I'm really looking forward to playing Metroid Dread and Psychonauts 2 especially, though this is honestly a year where all of the GOTY nominees look pretty interesting to me! That's good, especially because the same games are nominated for a lot of awards. Best Narrative is difficult to call, as all of the games nominated seem pretty interesting, though I haven't played any of them. Honestly seeing Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy nominated next to Deathloop and Life Is Strange: True Colors is pretty incredible, and I'm hearing lots of good things about that game, so I'm certainly interested. Again, I'm interested in almost all of these games except for Life is Strange, as I've just never really gotten into that series due to various awkward writing choices and other things like that. There are lots of strong indie titles this year being nominated for Best Indie Game, I've heard great things about Enscryption, Death's Door, and Kena: Bridge of Spirits as well as Loop Hero, and while I haven't played any of them, I have to go for Kena, as that game just looks really impressive, and seems like a game that I would enjoy a lot. The fact that it's EmberLab's first game is really amazing, though it makes sense as they were an animation studio that has since transitioned into games development, which explains the gorgeous visuals of the world that Kena inhabits. I'm definitely looking forward to playing that along with many other indie titles like that in the near future!

    I don't know what will win the Best Ongoing Game, but I know that I've played a ton of Genshin Impact in the past few months. It's very grind-heavy, and it relies on Gacha mechanics (though I've played it without putting any money in so far), but it is a fairly good game, especially to be free to play. I feel like this is a better take on Breath of the Wild's "climb anywhere" mechanic of an adventure game than something like Immortals Fenix Rising, which I felt was just not fun (probably due to Ubisoft's design philosophies) even though that game stole even more from Zelda than Genshin did. Again, these are just my picks, I've also heard incredible things about Final Fantasy XIV, and I honestly feel like they're pretty likely to win this category, but we'll have to wait and see. For best RPG, I'm hoping that Shin Megami Tensei 5 will take it, if for no other reason than having beaten Persona 5 twice over the past year, as well as Tokyo Mirage Sessions, which are both similar in scope, though I've heard it is much harder than those two games. Tales of Arise and Monster Hunter Rise are also very popular picks, so there's a good chance that they'll win this category. I think Mario Party Superstars has a great chance of winning Best Family Game, though It Takes Two is also a very strong contender, and is nominated for Game of the Year, so it may win that, even though I feel like Mario Party would make more sense. To wrap my little shortened discussion here with myself, I have to say that I'm actually equally excited about God of War Ragnarok and the sequel to Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Both of those games are going to be absolutely incredible, and I absolutely cannot wait for them to arrive (though also please take all the time you need, Nintendo and Sony Santa Monica, you're amazing and it's going to be worth waiting for if they need to be delayed)!

The Surprises!

    One of the biggest draws of the Game Awards is the big announcements, or rather, (Imagine that I'm clearing my throat and then say in a deep voice) World Premieres! We've seen a lot of big stuff being announced at the Game Awards over the past few years, Joker from Persona 5 was announced to be the first DLC character for Smash Bros. Ultimate, which shocked and drove hype levels to even higher levels, last year Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII was announced for Smash DLC as well. In addition to game announcements, we've even seen Xbox Series X and S get announced at the Game Awards the year before last, along with many other announcements, so there's really no telling what announcements we'll be getting this year! I'm not getting my hopes up too much, chances don't seem great that we'll get a big new trailer for Breath of the Wild 2, or a first look at Metroid Prime 4, we finally saw Bayonetta 3 in the most recent Nintendo Direct after it was first revealed at the Game Awards back in 2017, so I don't think that will be here either. It's entirely possible that we'll see some footage of Final Fantasy XVI I think, it has certainly been a while since we've seen anything from that, though that could be too much to ask for. Keighley showed off the first official trailer for Elden Ring and revealed the release date as part of his Summer Games Fest, so maybe we'll be seeing another trailer like that, though it seems unlikely as the game is only two months away or so now. It's entirely possible that Hideo Kojima could make a surprise appearance with whatever his next game is going to be, though that may be a little premature as the Director's Cut of Death Stranding just came out a few months ago. The relationship between Keighley and Kojima is definitely there, and strong enough to at least put this in the realm of possibility. Honestly, I could go on all day speculating what will or won't be shown, but for my money, I would really just like to be surprised. Just a crazy announcement that no one sees coming would be really exciting. Something like a sequel to Kid Icarus Uprising or a new Wario Land would be incredible, though I very seriously doubt anything that exciting will be a part of this show. I hope there will be a lot of fun announcements regardless, even if they don't necessarily interest me specifically.

    It was just announced today that Laura Bailey, the winner of best performance at last year's awards for The Last of Us Part II, along with Reggie Fils-Aime and Imagine Dragons will all be attending and participating in the awards show. I don't know about you, but I get really happy any time Reggie steps onto the stage. Even since stepping down as President of Nintendo of America, Reggie has been an extremely positive voice in the games industry, and genuinely a delight to hear him talk. Laura Bailey is an extremely talented voice actress who is part of the massively popular Dungeons and Dragons campaign show, Critical Roll, in addition to being in tons and tons of games. It's always nice to see her as well, since she seems to bring a lot of positivity to the games industry, even though many people were honestly pretty terrible to her because of her role as Abby in The Last of Us Part II. I don't know much about Imagine Dragons, honestly, I know they have been pretty popular for a while, but I'm just not familiar with much of their music other than "Radioactive." Apparently they performed at the first Game Awards back in 2014, so it's certainly nice to see them come back again to this year's ceremony. Geoff teased that they have a "fun and unexpected" video game performance, so I'm certainly interested to see what they've come up with.

    The Game Awards are always fun to watch. Even when there aren't many games that I've played to be nominated, it's somewhat interesting to see what the community thinks about a game that came out in the past year. I'm sure this year will be no different, I don't really have a horse in this race, I would be pretty happy if any of these games win, it doesn't really matter much in the long run, all of these games were nominated for a good reason... except maybe Fifa 22, that looked about as uninspired as the last several that EA has churned out year after year.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I was in the middle of writing something else when I realized that the Game Awards were right around the corner, so I stopped that (though it is basically finished) and immediately started working on this one. The Game Awards are always fun, and even if you don't agree with the overall results, the nominees are pretty good at reminding you exactly what came out this year. That especially comes in handy in years like this one and 2020, when everything is sort of blurred together. Are you planning on watching? Do you have any opinions on a game that came out this year that you feel like people should play? Let me know down in the comments! Until next time, friends, this is Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Award Show Virtual Attendee, signing off!