Shadows of the Erdtree: An Expansion to the 2022 Elden Ring, and Game of the Year for PS5 and PS4
The Game Awards is a very naked showcase, even though award shows exist to promote their respective industries. It debuts exclusive trailers and sells advertisement slots for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hollywood celebrities are brought out in LA to announce partnerships with game companies. And host Geoff Keighley rattles off some categories so fast that winners don’t have the chance to give acceptance speeches, and even when they do, they often have only about a minute to do so. There are many examples of speeches cut off before they get to the point. I’m wondering if the awards will be slower this year.
But the awards have also sparked controversy. Some have objected to Elden Ring: The night’s top honor was overshadowed by the Erdtree’s consideration. Unlike the other five “Game of the Year” nominees, Shadow of the Erdtree isn’t a standalone game — it’s an expansion to the acclaimed 2022 game Elden Ring. As the first expansion ever nominated in this category, its inclusion has raised concerns that it might eclipse newer titles.
More than 100 outlets contributed to the ballot that was used to pick winners at the game awards, and NPR is one of them.
It’s been a mixed year commercially for PlayStation, but a strong one critically. The two PS5 exclusives have seven nominations each, including Game of the Year.
Balatro, Grand Theft Auto VI, Borderlands, It Takes Two: What’s Cooking Up for the New Game?
You can see it as a single player poker game with no risk, just the pleasure of gambling. And compared to these other games, Balatro had an incredibly small budget, but has really been blowing up and has been playing all of its cards, right, and may actually take home the big prize this year.”
“I’m expecting a new trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI, which is slated to come out next year. We’re also expecting new information about the new Borderlands game, which is a massive gaming franchise, even as the Hollywood adaptation of it flopped this year. We also know we’re getting the reveal of the new game from the 2021, Game of the Year winner, It Takes Two. They’ll show off what they’ve been cooking up. There are always surprises. Tomorrow we will have a completely different set of topics to discuss.
The Game Awards in Los Angeles: Where the Muppets Meet The Final Fantasy and When the Super Mario Brothers Meets the Stars at the Super Nintendo Center
The Game Awards wouldn’t happen without the Muppets. Statler and Waldorf co-opted the criticisms of awards in a series of gags. After one rapid-fire battery of announcements, they jabbed that “it was like the game commercials with award interruptions!”. But as the broadcast stretched toward its fourth hour, they also expressed the exhaustion many in the audience seemed to be feeling, “my Final Fantasy is for this show to be over.”
Big-budget games otherwise stole the spotlight. The ceremony began with a surprise announcement trailer for Elden Ring: Nightreign, a co-op spinoff to the 2022 hit. The studio head behind 2021 Game of the Year winner It Takes Two also revealed the two-player adventure Split Fiction, out next March. The next game the two of them did was a tongue-in-cheek superhero story called Dispatch. The trailer for The Heretic Prophet was released a little while before the show seemed fresh out of revelations.
During a night of sweeps, surprise reveals, fourth-wall breaks and celebrity appearances, Nintendo was left empty-handed.
In 1989 he got a gray box, and there was a game called Super Mario Brothers in it. “I want to pay tribute to the company who really showed us innovation and quality consistently, and inspired us to make the game that we made.”
Players run, jump, and rocket-bomb their way to the stars to collect stranded robots in the game. While the game celebrates three decades of Sony’s console history, Studio Director Nicolas Doucet credited Nintendo in a misty-eyed acceptance speech (though he avoided mentioning the competitor by name):