Tomb Raider won instead of The Witcher 3? WTH?

[Riven-Twain]

As I observed at the beginning of this thread, Wild Hunt has many fine awards to its name already. One less will not utterly devastate its glory. It is, however, discouraging that the Guild did not feel the story was compelling enough for their commendation, and I'm sure the Writing Team is a bit disappointed; however, awards are mere formal affirmations of audiences' opinions, after all. While many agree that the writing is quite exceptional, there are others -- many on these forums, in fact -- who find it severely deficient. Let us, then, consider this award to represent their opinions.

 

[simonsteele]

Well, I have to say--I don't know about this specific award, but I think some of these people are nuts. I listened to the Giant Bombcast awards a couple of months ago and how they said the best part of the Witcher 3 ended with the Bloody Baron and the game wasn't so good because its story lost steam after that.

I don't have much time to game anymore, so my 200 (!!) gaming hours since release have brought me to almost the end of the game as of tonight. I won't post spoilers here, but those guys either didn't play it or don't understand what a good story with good characters consists of--the search for Dandelion was interesting in and of itself due to Prisciilla and a number of things that happened, but I have to say playing through the Isle of Mists and everything after--I am floored. The scene in the cabin on the Isle transcended video game storytelling. How a game like Tomb Raider could even be in the same category shows the lack of emotional depth of those who choose such awards. The Witcher 3 is a game that cares about its characters and how they feel about each other. Ciri, Vesemir, Geralt, Yen, and Triss-- I felt like they had real relationships. Even Eskel and Lambert in that regard. Great storytelling.

Thusly, I must assume these awards cannot mean anything.

 

[-Hisoka]

i made a thread just like this on steam forums the same day i opened this one.

its a chaos out there...around 120 comments with many trolls trying to bash witcher 3 and cdpr
but im trying my best to protect witcher3/cdpr ^^

anyway i just got mad because TR is a game that you can maybe 40hours max of it and this is if you are milking it.

witcher 3 can get you easly 300hours and still every playthrough makes you emotional all over again

so i gueas that why i got mad about TR.

 

[ShinGnosis]

Pillars of Eternity was also a nominee and lost to Tomb Raider.

In all honesty this brings more shame upon the Writers Guild Award than anything else. To select Tomb Raider for best writing over either Witcher 3 or Pillars of Eternity....I think everyone realizes how silly this is.

I Hope Blood and Wine is coming along well, already have the expansion pass ready to go.

 

[Garrison72]

Pillars of Eternity was also a nominee and lost to Tomb Raider.

In all honesty this brings more shame upon the Writers Guild Award than anything else. To select Tomb Raider for best writing over either Witcher 3 or Pillars of Eternity....I think everyone realizes how silly this is.

I Hope Blood and Wine is coming along well, already have the expansion pass ready to go.

I plan to try that game out someday as I've heard nothing but good things about Avellone's writing. And yeah, it seems Obsidian is just laboring in obscurity.

 

[Paladin-10]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think The Witcher III has collected well over 200 awards and is about to surpass The Last Of Us as the game that received most awards ever?

 

[Grindders]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think The Witcher III has collected well over 200 awards and is about to surpass The Last Of Us as the game that received most awards ever?

The Last of Us is one of the most awarded games of all time, winning over 240 Game of the Year awards.

 

[arkhenon]

According to here (http://gotypicks.blogspot.ca/) Witcher 3 has 245, and TLoU has 249, so it is indeed close. But of course this might not be a fair comparison, as the number of GOTY awards given might differ from year to year. A better comparison would be the percentage of awards won, but I can't bother myself with calculating that

Edit: Actually that might not be a good comparison as well, because it very much correlates to the rival games at the same time. But yeah, acceptable comparisons I guess. (And curiosity got the better of me and I calculated. TW3 won 58.19% of the awards, while TLoU won 47.61%. But it was fighting with GTA 5, instead of FO4, so yeah I guess we can call them at a comparable level of acclaim and success)

 

[Paladin-10]

According to here (http://gotypicks.blogspot.ca/) Witcher 3 has 245, and TLoU has 249, so it is indeed close. But of course this might not be a fair comparison, as the number of GOTY awards given might differ from year to year. A better comparison would be the percentage of awards won, but I can't bother myself with calculating that

Edit: Actually that might not be a good comparison as well, because it very much correlates to the rival games at the same time. But yeah, acceptable comparisons I guess. (And curiosity got the better of me and I calculated. TW3 won 58.19% of the awards, while TLoU won 47.61%. But it was fighting with GTA 5, instead of FO4, so yeah I guess we can call them at a comparable level of acclaim and success)

Those figures might be even closer after the DICE awards where The Witcher III won 3 awards just a couple of days ago.

Also keep in mind The Last of Us has been out longer and had more time to garner awards. The Witcher III will inevitably surpass it as more awards are handed out this year.

 

[arkhenon]

@Paladin-10 No, these figures are only about GOTY awards, and FO4 won that on DICE.

 

[Paladin-10]

@Paladin-10 No, these figures are only about GOTY awards, and FO4 won that on DICE.

I know that FO4 won GOTY at DICE (although I cannot understand how).

But The WItcher III won three awards at DICE for Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, Outstanding Achievement in Story and Outstanding Technical Achievement. Those all count to that figure of 245 (or 248 if they have not been added) as far as I know.

 

[arkhenon]

That's my point, they only add GOTY awards to that number So it's not gonna be added. If they added every award there it would have easily gotten above 1000 at this point.

 

[eskiMoe]

 

[kissybyc]

I finished TW3 and am replaying for HoS, and I just finished Rise of Tomb Raider as well. So here's my personal opinion.

To be honest, I found RoTB massively entertaining. It was fun. Its story is definitely better than average. It's short, concise, with a memorable and believable villain, decent suspense, decent display of personal emotion and drama, and an acceptable ending. If we are only comparing "main quest line," as it is traditionally understood, then IMHO RoTB actually beats TW3. The extremely disappointing main villain alone in TW3 would've lost it.

The problem is, main quests are all there is for RoTB, whereas main quests are but a small and mediocre portion of the gigantic TW3. Other than finding Ciri, the remaining shiny spots in TW3 are all critical side quests: Bloody Baron, Keira Metz, HoS, Yennefer & Triss (and I really liked the Ice Giant) etc. And TW3 tied them altogether in a way no game has done. Adding onto that the choices and consequences, multiple outcomes, a good balance between humor/darkness/emotion and so on, there is no doubt for me that TW3 put far greater effort into story telling than RoTB. I mean, it is really hard to mess up a story like RoTB. Its small size, linear nature, and lack of choice-and-consequence make it practically immune to pacing problems. And it is short and focused enough that it can get away with only having one mood the whole time. Comparing the story of RoTB to TW3 is like comparing a single delicious main course to a seven-course meal with two bad ones and five good ones.

So if I have to guess, those guys at the Writers Guild don't really understand the uniqueness of story-telling in a video game, let alone an open-world video game. They didn't see the freedom, player choices, openness, diversity of mood etc. They saw a good villain, well-structured pacing, and they said "Bam, RoTB got it." But for someone who actually plays the game, TW3 is the king even if uncrowned.

Sorry CDPR didn't get the award. IMO losing this award shows more than anything else the risk undertaken by a true pioneer. CDPR transcended the limit of video game story-telling with TW3. They are the pioneer in creating open-world story-driven game, and they also paid for it. I have no doubt that if TW3 was as linear and confined as RoTB, CDPR would blow RoTB out of the water into oblivion with its story (just look at TW1 and 2!) TW3 story is far from perfect, but I have to give Kudos to CDPR for trying, and trying hard, to be the first in bringing in something new.

 

[Trollgaming]

Paid article maybe

 

[ilayoeli]

Well, I have to say--I don't know about this specific award, but I think some of these people are nuts. I listened to the Giant Bombcast awards a couple of months ago and how they said the best part of the Witcher 3 ended with the Bloody Baron and the game wasn't so good because its story lost steam after that.

I don't have much time to game anymore, so my 200 (!!) gaming hours since release have brought me to almost the end of the game as of tonight. I won't post spoilers here, but those guys either didn't play it or don't understand what a good story with good characters consists of--the search for Dandelion was interesting in and of itself due to Prisciilla and a number of things that happened

Disagree. The search for Dandelion arc's pacing was of a dead snail on reverse gear, the city should really have been named Novidrag (get it guys?), it also had some of the most badly written and flat characters like Junior and Caleb Menge.

---------- Updated at 07:17 PM ----------

Sorry CDPR didn't get the award. IMO losing this award shows more than anything else the risk undertaken by a true pioneer. CDPR transcended the limit of video game story-telling with TW3. They are the pioneer in creating open-world story-driven game, and they also paid for it

Obsidian and Bioware done it first with FNV and DAI

 

[arkhenon]

Obsidian and Bioware did it first with FNV and DAI

F:NV was an open-world sandbox game with an excellent story-telling, but it still was not a "story-driven" game I'd say. And DA:I... Well, I guess we shouldn't include single-player MMOs here? Because that was the definition of "botching the job". Oh the fetch quests... They are still in my nightmares. Also, it was "too" fragmented for me to call it an actual "open-world". It was more like a usual Bioware game (like ME and so on) with larger maps, because increased memory sizes of the consoles. But I digress. I know how much you dislike Witcher 3 (I wish it was more to your liking, I really do. But alas...), and how set in your ways you are. So I don't see how continuing a discussion with you would change anything. Therefore farewell, my friend. I'm out of the thread

 

[simonsteele]

Disagree. The search for Dandelion arc's pacing was of a dead snail on reverse gear, the city should really have been named Novidrag (get it guys?), it also had some of the most badly written and flat characters like Junior and Caleb Menge.

---------- Updated at 07:17 PM ----------



Obsidian and Bioware done it first with FNV and DAI

The outcome of Junior's quest--the decision Geralt has to make, his ties to Ciri, that was good storytelling. Moments with Zoltan, a point where he thought he overstepped his bounds, and Geralt can tell him he isn't angry, the relief in Zoltan's response has particular pathos between the two characters. Geralt's frustrations in not finding Ciri, the moments of tension with Triss, Dikstra's line, all of these were great. I can understand people didn't like being confined to the city, but the culmination of Dandelion and Prisciilla's story is particularly effective too.

The Witcher 3 is fantastically large--that the story is so compelling even in the "slow" parts is further proof to its greatness.

 

[ilayoeli]

F:NV was an open-world sandbox game with an excellent story-telling, but it still was not a "story-driven" game I'd say. And DA:I... Well, I guess we shouldn't include single-player MMOs here? Because that was the definition of "botching the job". Oh the fetch quests... They are still in my nightmares. Also, it was "too" fragmented for me to call it an actual "open-world". It was more like a usual Bioware game (like ME and so on) with larger maps, because increased memory sizes of the consoles. But I digress. I know how much you dislike Witcher 3 (I wish it was more to your liking, I really do. But alas...), and how set in your ways you are. So I don't see how continuing a discussion with you would change anything. Therefore farewell, my friend. I'm out of the thread

You didn't get my point I fear, it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the product (this could always be argued, and I didn't even play DAI), but simply its genre's definition and the developers intent. FNV and DAI are both certaintly Open-World Story-Driven games (maybe DAI is less of an open world than TW3, but so can be said of TW3 compared to FNV), therefore the claim that CDPR pioneered the genre is just inaccurate.

That's all I said.

---------- Updated at 09:56 PM ----------

The outcome of Junior's quest--the decision Geralt has to make, his ties to Ciri, that was good storytelling. Moments with Zoltan, a point where he thought he overstepped his bounds, and Geralt can tell him he isn't angry, the relief in Zoltan's response has particular pathos between the two characters. Geralt's frustrations in not finding Ciri, the moments of tension with Triss, Dikstra's line, all of these were great. I can understand people didn't like being confined to the city, but the culmination of Dandelion and Prisciilla's story is particularly effective too.

The Witcher 3 is fantastically large--that the story is so compelling even in the "slow" parts is further proof to its greatness.

That's fine, you found that arc to be compelling, despite its pacing, absolute lack of focus and narrative drive, shallow major characters and contrivances because it had few effective moments.
It's just as legitimate as the the Giant Bombcast awards and I disliking it.
I really don't think you can argue otherwise in a definitive fashion, it's all subjective - what few moments you found compelling I may have not or didn't think they go as much as to excuse the failings of the chapter.

 

[dragonbird]

This appears to have run its course, and as it seems to be moving into other territory, it's probably time to end it.
There's a discussion on the DICE awards here if anyone wishes to continue discussing awards.
http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/65180-Dice-Awards-Discussion