#it's still a win wtf

[theographos]

Baldur's Gate 3 deserved to win.

If you're a stranger to the video game community, let me give you the context of this post :

The Game Awards of 2023 happened this thursday. And for the nomines of Best Game of 2023 we had Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Marvel's Spider-man 2, Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder and The Legend of Zelda : Tears of the kingdom. And the winner happened to be Baldur's Gate 3.

And ever since then we can see the salty reactions of fans of Spiderman 2, who were baffled at the results. Some argue that Baldur's Gate 3 has nothing more to offer than Spiderman 2, and there are even people who claim that they never heard of Baldur's Gate 3. A statement that I find odd, because even if I'm only briefly present amongst the video game community, even I was perfectly aware of how successful Baldur's Gate 3 has been since its release in August 2023.

Before I dive into another rant of mine, I would like to say that if you never heard of Baldur's Gate 3, it's a video game based on Dungeons and Dragons (with some minor worldbuilding differences apparently) and who work just like a D&D campaign : you role dices to know if your attack landed or not, it's a turn-based game, roleplay is encouraged. It's playable on PC and on Playstation and it offers a multiplayer gamemode.

Now let's dive into the rant shall we ?

Disclaimer

I do not consider Marvel's Spiderman 2 bad, and i'm no video game expert either. So don't expect some deep dive into both of the game's gameplay or graphism. It's just not what i'm good at. What I'm good at however is to pinpoint the content present in those games, and that's what i'm going to do.

Baldur's Gate or not, Spiderman had no chance to win.

I mean have you seen the nomines ? First of all there is a Zelda. It would be unwise to pretend like Tears of the Kingdom has not been a major hit ever since it came out. It doesn't matter if you like Zelda or not, the facts are here : Tears of the Kingdom is really good. Yes it has its bad sides, just like every game really, but it's still good ! But seeing the results of the different categories they were nominated, I would say that they had equal chances. Because for the Player's Voice Award and the Best-Game Direction they were both nominated, but none of them win. It shows that in 2 of their shared best aspects, there was still better than them, and a 50/50 is not a guaranted win.

Next we have Alan Wake 2, who also won the Best Game Direction Award, the Best Narrative Award and the Best Art Direction Award. Spiderman 2 was nominated for Best Game Direction and Best Game Narrative but didn't win. Again, if we take a look at the facts, Spiderman had no chance to win ! Again it's not because it's not a good game, it's because another game did even better. I mean Alan Wake 2 has a level of storytelling close to Inception, visuals that mix real-life footage and game footage and fans of the Remedy Connected Universe (the sort of game franchise that Alan Wake 2 is part of) have been waiting for this game ever since 2013. (the creator said at that time that because of the lack of success of the first Alan Wake, the studios weren't interested in a sequel at that time.) Meanwhile, Spiderman 2 has been teased ever since 2020. This time Spiderman 2 had a severe disadvantage compared to Alan Wake.

I will not pronounce myself about Resident Evil 4 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, since I don't have enough knowledge about theses games. All I can say is that those two games also come from a successful franchise just like Zelda and just like Spiderman.

But why did Baldur's Gate 3 won then ?

If we look at the results of the award, it was no surprise. They won the Player's Voice award, Best RPG Award, Best Multiplayer Game Award, Best Community Support Award and Best Performance Award (Neil Newborn's performance with the character Astarion. If you never saw it, just go ahead, your ears will thank me. He can go from cocky to sassy to evil to dominant to soft without a difficulty) and were nominated in 4 other categories. Meanwhile Spiderman 2 was nominated in 8 categories and won none of them. So from a factual point of view, it means that Spiderman 2 is good, but not the best.

Now if we look at the game itself, it's absurd to even believe that Spider-man 2 would ever win. Let me list you a bunch of contents that are available in Baldur's Gate 3 :

First of all you have tons of option to customize your character. Not just from an aesthetic point of view, but also a gameplay point of view. First of all you have 11 races available for your character, with 40 sub-races, all giving you different stats and different ways to play and/or build your character. Then you have the classes, with 12 main classes and 46 sub-classes, and again they all give different stats and different ways to play your character. So with that you can play the game 5 times and will not have the same combat experience each time.

Oh you don't want to spend too much time on character creation ? It's fine because they give you 7 pre-defined characters with their own identity and their own stories, that you can even personnalize on top of it. So again, you can play this game entirely 7 times and you will have a different experience each time.

Like D&D you will have a party accompany you, a group of people with whom you travel. These characters are romanceable and also have their own quest on the side, quest that have at least two different outcomes with major changes for the character in question. So here you have at least two reasons to replay the game, like that you can experience both ends of your favorite character's quest.

Baldur's gate 3 is a game based on choices. I am a big fan of visual novels, in which your choices matters a lot, so i'm fully aware of what it means to have choices with almost every dialogue of the game. But if you're not, just you know that you cannot experience the entire game in a row. You have to do at least twice each dialogue to fully experience it.

Baldur's Gate is also a game based on a roll of dice. You can look at a painting, roll a perception check, fail and find nothing, but if you replay the game or retry, you could win it and discover that actually that painting is a map towards a treasure. So you could have missed a ton of hidden quest without even knowing it, just because you didn't talk to the right pnj or won a particular roll of dice.

Last but not least, there is three different difficulties for the game. So three reasons to replay the game if you want to enjoy it to its fullest.

And like I said, Spiderman 2 is really good, I mean it wasn't nominated as Game of the Year for nothing, but it is not able to keep up with a game like Baldur's Gate 3, which proposes hundreds of hours of new content.

Conclusion

I think I have talked enough about how much Baldur's Gate 3 deserved to win, and why it's so popular. But Spiderman 2 isn't a total failure you know ?

Even if it didn't win, it was still nominated in 8 different categories, which is really good ! Out of all the games who were out in 2023, Spiderman 2 has been nominated for the award, he's still in the top 5 of the bestest games of the year for The Game Awards !

A nomination is not something to overlook, because it still means that you won in some kind. Sure it's not as great as an award, but it's still something to brag about !

If we look at last year's numbers, there was around 10 000 games who released in 2022, and we can only guess that we got to 11 000 games in 2023. Again, in 11 000 games, Marvel's Spider-man 2 was chosen in the top 5 of the best games for this year, 5 out of 11 000 is roughly 0.45%, so really it's a great victory !

Spider-man 2 still won something, it's still considered as a good game if we follow the Award's opinion. Not the bestest, but still good enough to be part of the 0.45% of games chosen for the award of the Best Game of 2023.

[hex800020]

Alright, so Batman’s rule is ‘no killing’ but let’s say that after Jason’s death, he takes that rule to an extreme, and the breaking point is the Joker.

He probably said something like, ‘there are things worse than death,’ right before leaving him in a vegetative state with phantom pain for the rest of his life. Technically, he didn’t cross the line, and while he doesn’t feel good about what he did… he doesn’t feel bad either.

Neither Alfred nor Dick judge him. They don’t even bring it up, probably hoping he’ll pull himself back from the edge or something. But Bruce promises himself it won’t happen again. This was a one-time thing. Just for his son. And it’ll be the last time revenge blinds him.

Even so, he’s way more violent during arrests than usual. Tim Drake steps in, trying to talk Dick into helping him stop Bruce, but Dick… well, he agrees with Bruce, even if he won’t admit it out loud. He’s hurt too.

Tim does everything he can to pull Bruce back from this path, and eventually, he puts on the Robin suit himself. Bruce is not happy. His first instinct when he saw Tim was anger—yelling about ‘everything he doesn’t understand and shouldn’t get involved in’ but the rage didn’t last long. It melted away when he really looked at him—standing there, worried and small, like a little wounded bird.

He was smaller than Dick had been when Bruce took him in, but bigger than Jason. Still, Tim was definitely small… and brave.

‘Robin gives people hope. That’s his role in Gotham’s war on crime.’

Robin brings hope to those who need it, even when the situation is so dark it feels like the light has been swallowed whole. Even when there are people who don’t deserve it. Even when that person is him.

Bruce couldn’t help himself. He hugged Tim, wrapping him in his cape like he’d done with his other Robins. Tim froze—physical contact wasn’t something he was used to. It felt out of place.

The best way to describe it was: uncomfortable. But that feeling didn’t last long. Soon, the warmth started seeping in, and it felt more like being a little kid wrapped in a bear hug.

Neither of them remembers how long Bruce stayed there, hugging the kid, murmuring over and over that it was going to be okay, while attempting to rub his back.

[ganondoodle]

master koga propaganda

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

He really said “I am aggressively gay what the fuck are you talking about”

[kakooshi]

My Hero Academia is ending in 5 chapters so that there will be a sequel where Bakudeku are married and they start a hero agency with Shouto as their sexy secretary. And they all fall in love while trying to navigate post-war society and make it a better one for both heroes and villains. It's true, HORI TOLD ME.

[lilith-is-off]

Tf you mean morrow's back? Forbidden five Jay? Live action Ninjago movie? Spin off series with new characters in 2025? Season 3 episodes titles tomorrow?

[lezalla]

I just read Phantom of the Opera today (By Gaston Leroux) and I feel really weird trying to engage with the online content because the book is my only reference for the story but I know the phantom is changed to be a proper romantic option in the musical/movie while in the book he is literally the toxic asshole to say he is going to kill himself if you break up with him. Except he is also gonna blow up an opera house and kill everyone else too.

So keep being taken aback by seeing so many people be like "Christine should have chosen the Phantom" "The Phantom was so romantic" because i am just here like "YOU MEAN THE DERANGED ABUSIVE MURDERER MAN?!?!" "WHAT ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT?!?!?"

[serpentae]

thinking about how I went on eurovision tumblr in 2018, saw a lot of people outraged about israel not only winning and hosting the next one but also about being allowed to participate in the first place, went "wait what did they do" and proceeded to find out and start learning. meanwhile people now will watch footage and read news of actual genocide that no one committing it is denying and will still repeat israeli propaganda how it's all about defending from hamas and absolutely refuse to make any effort to learn anything. horrible

[yujeong]

I can't believe we almost saw cock like, 5 times this ep. BOC please I'm not strong enough.

[camellcat]

CAMPBELL BAIN U MEAN EVERYTHING TO ME I LOVE YOU!!!!!!

fun extras since this took me FOREVER!!

anddd finally, here's a playlist of the music I listened to while working on this! it's definitely not my usual tunes but I swear I was just so much more productive and better at drawing him when I switched to these hahaha

[lesbiangiratina]

Oh waow duh i kinda just realized the crazy testament eddie chapter in the 2007 testament anthology i scanned is happening in their shared isuka stage. Isuka mentioned

[grave-st0ned]

spectra my beloved💜👻✨

[gay-jesus-probably]

I just realized the opening cutscene of TOTK is absolutely hilarious once you know the whole story of the Imprisoning War. Like, they had this big, epic battle, ending with Rauru sacrificing his life to seal Ganondorf away, locking him in place for ten thousand years, all based on the hope that Link would be able to strike him down with the Master Sword in the future. Ganondorf waited there for ten thousand years, expecting an absolutely epic final battle against an incredibly skilled warrior wielding a blade more powerful than Rauru and the other sages combined.

...And when Link shows up, it takes Ganondorf about five seconds to fatally wound him and snap the Master Sword like a fucking toothpick. If Rauru hadn't somehow intervened, that would've been it, Link would have been dead right then and there, battle over, the end.

Can you imagine how fucking disappointed Ganon must've been after that? He was looking forwards to an epic battle, not a five second curbstomp. No wonder his reaction to that whole thing was basically just him going "Wait are you serious, was that it? That was the whole fight? I WAITED TEN THOUSAND YEARS FOR THAT!?"

Ganondorf might've kicked our ass without even trying in the opening, but at least he didn't get to enjoy it.

[c6jpg]

i should have paid more attention to the first part of the little saurian world quest bc i am now fully invested

[mangora]

Why the fuck did he make this noise

[magnusmodig]

ovo whispers menacingly abt his grandstanding .