Zelda And Nintendo Win Big At The 2018 D.I.C.E. Awards

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Racing Game of the Year? Poor old Gran Turismo, beaten by a port

Noice.

Also, I'm glad to see Nier Automata and Cuphead get some love.

It's very impressive that 11 of the 24 rewards are Switch titles. Just goes to show what a great launch-year the Switch has had.

Deserved winners, especially BOTW. Except what's a 4 year old Wii U game, MK8, doing winning an award in 2018? Unless it won the award for Port of the Year. Did it get an award from D.I.C.E back then?

Edit: I checked, it got the same award back in 2015.

Racing Game of the Year http://www.interactive.org/games/video_game_details.asp?idAward=2015&idGame=1395

Super Mario Odyssey got practically no love at all, winning just the Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design award, that almost feels like tokenism. You know, Nintendo should rerelease it next year, tack on a better multiplayer mode, call it Super Mario Odyssey Deluxe and it'll get some more awards with BOTW out of the way.

Really cant take an awards ceremony seriously when it's winners so happen to be corporate members. I get that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are all corporate members, but when Rabbids and Injustice 2 get shout outs it kind of soured it a little for me. Don't get me wrong, Rabbids is great; just not strategy GOTY great.

http://www.interactive.org/about/corporate_links.asp

@Bunkerneath Polyphony aren't corporate members unfortunately.

@Shellcore these were based on the votes of more than 30000 people, including developers and people involved in the industry in many different roles. Don't start conspiracy theories just because GT didn't get an award they definitely didn't deserve.

Comment edited for clarity.

@Shellcore Dude, Mario and Rabbids gets deep in its combat then you would think. Just because it has Rabbids in it that doesn't mean the overall game design is impacted by them. The combat system(While obviously being a reskin of a certain other RPG) is just as deep.

Viva, Nintendo !

Hail to the king baby

Okay, BotW getting an award in adventure genre is passable, since the series is often described as action/adventure... But why exactly did NieR: Automata get a Role-Playing Game award? It's a brawler. Custom weapons loadouts and "levels" don't make it an RPG. Then again that silly loot system from Shadow of War supposedly made it "an RPG".

Nintendo is on a roll! Nabbing award after award!

@Mart1ndo peak salty level. Does it have something to do with the water in Eire?

@gortsi No need to be rude. There would be a list of nominees to choose from.

@Shellcore not rude, just pointing out that corporate membership doesn't indicate anything. The full list of nominees is on their website, or you can check the article on PushSquare too.

@gortsi Both being in our 30's, I guarantee the first thing you said to me IRL wouldn't be insulting my reading comprehension. Thank you for directing me to the list.

@Shellcore apologies. Editing the comment for clarity

Never understand why people get so bent out of shape that people who have different likes and dislikes vote for what they thought were better games based on their opinions. I wouldn't give Cuphead a single award because the animation actually unsettles my stomach, but I accept that as a personal problem and understand that the majority of gamers and industry developers actually like that game and that is a fine, wonderful thing.

glad to see Breath of the Wild won game of the year it deserves it its a amazing game

@Mart1ndo I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking... while I agree with you that it shouldn’t have been included as a nominee because it was released three years ago, it’s still very much a racing game, not a “Cartoon racer” whatever that is.

@Mart1ndo Yeah you shouldn't assume people's ethnicity anyway. My argument which others made before is that you don't get to define what is and what's not a racing game. You might be disappointed but for most of us MK8 is the best Mario kart ever, and these people thought the same. And I didn't compare it to GT sport, I just indicated that this version of GT shouldn't even be nominated in a world where Forza Horizon exists. You do know you can't even save offline and up until the end of December it lacked a single player mode, right?

LOL Super Mario Odyssey got the prestigious best sound design.

Nintendo should have made it into a music game like Mario Rhythm Heaven or something. People only like the music in this game. (well, at least SMO got 1 award, it got none at the Gamer's Award. Miyamoto is losing to Aonuma)

@Nincompoop

Whom or what were you referencing in this part of one of the messages here:

"Miyamoto is losing to Aonuma"

@Shellcore

I had noticed some incorrect and invalid information in the profile of Nintendo at the the World Wide Web address mentioned in this message:

"Really cant take an awards ceremony seriously when it's winners so happen to be corporate members. I get that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are all corporate members, but when Rabbids and Injustice 2 get shout outs it kind of soured it a little for me. Don't get me wrong, Rabbids is great; just not strategy GOTY great.

http://www.interactive.org/about/corporate_links.asp"

@Mart1ndo just about everyone would say the opposite, GT sport being the rubbish game, but you're entitled to your opinion.

@Mart1ndo You'd lose. Still play GT 6, with its proper career mode and no need to be online to save. Servers will go offline soon, so that'll be it from me until they make more than half shell of a game again.

@Mario500 Diligent as always : )

Oh christ I knew this would insuce salt.

Interesting. So no Horizon Zero Awards now huh. Anyway not surprised at BotW. It's scooping up too much at this rate XD

@Nincompoop The director of Super Mario Odyssey is Kenta Motokura. The producer of Super Mario Odyssey is Yoshiaki Koizumi.

Nier: Automata should have easily gotten Best Sound Design award. Has anyone here listened to it's OST? Hauntingly beautiful. The voice acting and sound effects were on point, too. Oddysey's sound design is great and all, but Nier's is just out of this world.

That said, I would have thought Persona 5 would win best RPG of 2017. Nier winning is quite an upset, but still very well deserved.

Personally, I think they should limit the awards a single game title can earn to one award in a specific achievement category and one award in either the overall GOTY category or "Best in Genre of the Year" category. Way too much BOTW and Nintendo representation here. It sends the wrong message about 2017, there was a lot of awesome stuff going on outside Nintendo Land.

@Yasaal Keep reading, Horizon won the Outstanding Technical Achievement and Outstanding Achievement in Story awards.

@Shellcore Uh oh. Looks like you somehow took the red pill. Now you're going to be given labels like "conspiracy theorist" by everyone who took the blue pill to smear and discredit anything you say on the matter, to protect the corporate oligarchy.

Don't you worry though, there's a very easy phrase you can say to reverse your compromised reputation. Just repeat after me:

"There's no such thing as a conflict of interest in business. There's no such thing as a conflict of interest in business. There's no such thing as a conflict of interest in business."

@gortsi Doubleplusgood, citizen. You perform duty against crimethink. You help minitrue. But always remember: bb always watching. Always, always.

@PlywoodStick "Personally, I think they should limit the awards a single game title can earn to one award in a specific achievement category and one award in either the overall GOTY category or "Best in Genre of the Year" category."

I don't think there should be this limitation, otherwise some awards will be meaningless. Games that get awards should earn them because they are the best (in opinions of voters), not because better games get other awards and hit the quota, so they can get them even though they are inferior. Also, it would be unfair to the best games in multiple categories to be denied awards they deserved because they had to share some awards to inferior games. I don't think most developers would approve of this limitation.

@PlywoodStick Ya I noticed. The folks must be happy at least they won a few awards then XD

@Shellcore Which game should have won the Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year award, and why do you think it's better than Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle?

The amount of cry babies on this site is over 8000. It's like all complainers created an account here last year.

@NinNin "Inferior" is highly subjective in this case. I think Super Mario Oddysey's sound design is categorically inferior to Nier: Automata's. I also think Divinity: Original Sin II's design is filled with more true breadth than BotW when mods are taken into account- I feel BotW has more illusory breadth than true breadth. And finally, I think Danganronpa V3's direction completely ecplises BotW's rather minimalistic (lackluster) brand of storytelling. That said, I feel BotW deserves either the Adventure GOTY award or Overall GOTY award, but I don't think it's good enough to hog both. I would lean towards just the Adventure GOTY, myself.

Does that make it all true, though? I'd like to think so... But that's not based on any objective criteria. I doubt the votes made here involve any objective criteria, either.

So I suppose this is all to be taken with a mountain of salt, anyways. Yet it nevertheless makes the gaming landscape look quite barren when so many people are only looking in so few directions.

@rennandovale Totally agree on crying dudes here.

@NinNin I know you asked shellcore, but if you ask me, XCOM2: War of the Chosen.

Why? It took a title which was relatively lackluster and made it great, plus the vast availability of free mods further enhance the experience. Mario + Rabbids is great while it lasts, but it's done within 10s of hours, while XCOM 2:WotC can eat 100's of hours. The hallmark of any GOTY-worthy strategy title is that it can be replayed, revisited and revamped for 100s of hours and still have new content and strategies to look forward to.

And yes, expansions can be counted. If a port like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe can be counted, expansions which actually add tons more content and improves the base title significantly can be counted.

@PlywoodStick Thanks for your opinion. I disagree with you regarding the play time and replay value, though. I don't think great strategy turn-based games need to be longer than 100 hours or need to have great replay values. Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the best strategy turn-based games I have played, but you can finish it in much less than 100 hours. The most important thing isn't the amount of time you spent in playing a game, but the experience you got out of playing it.

Apart from the play time and replay value, what's so great about XCOM 2: War of the Chosen? What are the mechanics you like that set it apart from other strategy turn-based games?

Nintendo is probably happy, I guess at least most of these awards are well deserved. I’m not very moved by these awards, but at the same time, I’m not going to complain.

I guess I haven’t really tried any new good games the past year that I would like to see here, that’s all. All the games on the Switch are kind of “meh” to me at the moment.

I’m actually replaying Virtue’s Last Reward for the third time these days. I got it on PS4, but the controls sucked massively and I just ended up playing it on the 3DS again, it’s my favorite console, even after all these years.

I hope Nintendo are going to bring some good Nintendo styled love to the Switch. I haven’t felt that yet on the Switch and I think it’s sad.

@NinNin I understand where you're coming from, FFT was THE game that made me want a PS1 back in the day. (Well, other than FF7, but yeah!) I changed my opinion on the importance of time spent after Warcraft 3, I put some number of thousands of hours into that one... I think that was around the time more people started expecting ridiculous amounts of time to be possibly spent.

What sets XCOM2:WotC apart from others last year was the sheer number of different mission types, the different challenges associated with different enemy types, and team member development. Also mods, mods, and more mods.

Valkyria Chronicles was what got me into the concept of 3rd person controlled micromanaged units, and XCOM2:WotC has several elements which expand upon that concept. It's not just about keeping units close to each other, having bits of dialogue, and maybe adding some supporting abilities or stat boosts. The units develop alongside each other without being put in the backseat by the storyline. They can even be pushed too far psychologically, and leave a lasting impact if killed. The "I want to reset" feeling kicks in if someone dies, but that messes with the flow of the game- each playthrough is going to be a bit different depending on what happens, so the player should keep going.

The mission types aren't all just about "capture this, kill that." One may also need to covertly acquire some information, rescue teammates, or provide an escort without being caught. Or not, if the team can handle it... But probably not on the highest difficulty levels. The overall difficulty is steep but fair, rewarding careful planning, being prepared for enemy types that may counter your group setup, and using enemy positions, weaknesses, and dispositions against them. There's even a set of assassins who hound not just you, but the XCOM organization, and learn from battling you- for example, they may show up with immunities to weaponry/abilities that were used previously, which means doing the same thing over and over won't always work, you have to change up your loadout sometimes to deal with them.

There are some crucial issues, though. The endgame is generally not as interesting as the early and midgame, especially the final mission. Battle actions taken are not always conveyed properly, such as an ailment perhaps wearing off sooner than indicated, or accurately indicating what actions will keep you concealed when using double movement. There are also some glitches, like enemies teleporting to spots they shouldn't be able to get to so quickly, or your unit not having properly increased sight when positioned on high ground.

However, there's fixes available for just about everything, mods to improve and add onto existing gameplay content, add missing indicators and useful commands, change unit and gear appearances, introduce more backstories for team members, and of course, Long War 2 for the vanilla version. Some say the additions in War of the Chosen made XCOM2 too easy, but it's mainly just easy compared to Long War 2. Lots to go through between the two of them.

I think that about covers it... Granted, I still prefer FFT's story and direction, but philosophically constructed stories and characters of that nature are rather rare, and less often executed well.

@PlywoodStick mountain of salt indeed. Tell us more about conflicts of interest in an organization where everyone is a member, and keep fighting the good fight comrade, let's take down the capitalist oligarchy by commenting on websites. That will show them

@gortsi That was all just a tongue-in-cheek response to calling shellcore a conspiracy theorist.

Check out the diversity of the winners even just from last year's awards:
http://www.interactive.org/awards/2017_20th_awards.asp

And one could just keep going down the list. It's absolutely undeniable that the diversity of winners this year has dropped remarkably from all previous years- even though 2017 had no shortage of excellent titles. Nintendo related titles accounted for nearly half of all awards this year. That's never happened before, not even for the 1999 awards, which featured classics like Pokemon, F-Zero X, Banjo-Kazooie, and Ocarina of Time. There's never before been a year where a single title was given four different awards, either.
I was wrong, Ocarina of Time got 6 awards back in 1999... But that didn't stop a lot of other games from getting awards, since there were more to go around back then.

It's a valid remark to bring up corporate membership, since it implies some kind of business relationship going on in the background; especially considering the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences is a nonprofit organization, and thus cannot necessarily fund the event themselves. Some organization(s) must surely be providing funding for them. Who? Mainly their corporate members. So it stands to reason the corporate members (including Nintendo) would be favored. By itself, that doesn't explain why there's almost no diversity this year compared to the past... But it's a fair line of reasoning to begin investigating what's up with that.

(Granted, Cuphead also took a couple too many awards for itself, but StudioMDHR is a small indie studio, with most of the work on Cuphead having been done by two brothers. So it's highly unlikely for them to be involved with whatever happened behind the scenes this time.)

The salt is real.

BotW deserved every award, such an incredible game.

@NinNin So? Aonuma didn't worked on BotW either, but he collects the accolades. If SMO won, Miyamoto will collects the awards with the director and producer too. (You need a recognisable face to represent Nintendo.)

Didn't you noticed Miyamoto didn't attend any of the awards show last year? They knew he's a busy man and didn't want to waste his time knowing SMO didn't win anything, they probably hinted to him not to attend.

I saw a lot of salty Sony fans on N4G flipping out when Zelda won.

@KryptoKrunch the Sony fans were flipping out earlier.

@PlywoodStick so let me get this straight by using an analogy. Did you ever question why in certain years some films sweep the Oscars and win in 8 or more categories? There's no conspiracy, that was what the critics thought. Why is it so hard for you to understand that for many people BOTW is a one in a lifetime kind of game that will be talked about for decades to come? People loved it, the critics loved it, it's pretty much universally praised and one of the highest rated games of all time. It's fine if you didn't like it, but when a game receives 186 GOTY awards (with the second one being at a distant 50) it's hard to advocate for conspiracy theories. And since Sony and Microsoft are also members, why wouldn't they treat their games favourably too? Is it because Nintendo paid more?

As for the diversity argument, that's just boll@@s. Nothing should get an award just for the sake of "diversity."

@PtM All Aonuma did was nodded his head and gave advice. He didn't even attend the GDC conference for BotW, and from what the director and devs said: Aonuma job was to tell them to make a Switch port, to keep schedule and basically admin stuff of a producer. He has no technical or creative input for the game. He is just like Miyamoto, semi-retired... just hanging around as a PR person for the press and media.

@gortsi The real conspiracy is why SMO got 10/10 everywhere and no one gave it any significant award? Did the critics and reviewers woke up from their fanboyism and realised it's not a really good game?

@PlywoodStick What's your favourite Switch game (the one you would say you played the most) just out of interest?

@Nincompoop As @PtM said, Eiji Aonuma is the producer of Breath of the Wild. He worked on it.

@Nincompoop 25 GOTY awards is pretty significant.

@Bunkerneath "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Racing Game of the Year? Poor old Gran Turismo, beaten by a port"

Poor GT? Nah! Poor all the current gen games that were beaten by a 'last-gen game'

Zelda is a Wii U game. It beat them all.

Let that sink in.... a Wii U game is 2017's GOTY.

@gortsi Any websites can give a GOTY award, no one cares about them. The gamer's award and DICE are the biggest together with some major sites like IGN and Gamespot.

@rennandovale It's great isn't it? And a few of the people doing the crying are grown men with families...

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
While that's pretty funny, if the D.I.C.E. were to do anything meaningful in that regard, they should stop giving Nitnendo awards at all. It's not like they need them.

What would it help Odyssey to win more titles? It's already one of the best selling 3D Mario games ever and those legs got no end in sight.