I went over to Reddit so I could keep track if the game awards because I didn’t have time to actually watch it. Holy shit the hate E33 is getting is completely ridiculous, as Reddit does. Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead. As someone that has enjoyed all of these games, the salt is absolutely bonkers. Most of the ones complaining are basically saying “I never played it but I heard they did [blank] so they don’t deserve [blank] award.”
I just don’t get why they need to shit on other people and the games they like just because their game didn’t win. Shit on TGA all you want, but the fans and the devs literally had nothing to do with winning. They were all great games and all deserve praise in their own ways. In two weeks none of us will give a shit anymore anyway and will probably be complaining that “RV There Yet” wins the “Most Innovative Gameplay” award on Steam. I mean, a flippin’ gacha game won the “Players Voice” Award and people are spending their time shitting on objectively good games.
For what it’s worth most people are more mad that E33 won best indie and best debut indie. It’s not an indie game, many people have said as much and it’s completely unfair that they won in categories meant for small budget games by small teams.
Totally deserved in other categories, but that does leave a bad taste in my mouth.
That’s pretty much where I’m at too. Though the “Indie Award” has always had similar problems before, such as the Dave the Diver debacle. But even though you could technically argue E33 is an indie it felt really wrong to have it up against something like Blue Prince in the indie categories. E33 had a huge budget with A-list actors ffs.
The category is misnamed. It should be best single A game from an independent studio.
Technically Sandfall is an independant studio. A very well privately funded independant studio founded by industry veterans supported by a great publisher. But no-one is arguing that other games published by Kepler Interactive aren’t independant. And with 30-ish full-time employees Sandfall’s scale is that of an SME, not an Ubisoft/EA/Sony.
The award doesn’t feel right because this middleweight AA category was completely abdandoned the previous decade (which legacy studios are now paying a heavy price for), and “indie” came to mean “single A” because if the material conditions of being an independant company.
At the same time though technological advancements enabled small teams to take on larger and larger projects. “Indie” does not mean what it used to, and Clair Obscur is trailblazing this AA renewal. Award shows simply need to adapt and start restricting entry based on team size or something.I guess I’m confused because I didn’t know that “low budget” was now synonymous with “indie.” They are an indie dev that made their first game yet their game doesn’t count as “indie” because they had a budget? What about a game like No Man’s Sky? They were an indie dev that got promoted by Sony and everyone shat on it when it came out and said they bit off more than they could chew. In my opinion, that seems even less fair.
I’m not saying they deserved the award more than any other game, I enjoyed all the games nominated, I’m just saying that if E33 flopped I highly doubt anyone would call them more than an indie dev that tried to punch above their weight just like No Man’s Sky.
I guess I’m confused because I didn’t know that “low budget” was now synonymous with “indie.”
There aren’t any hard rules of what an indie game is, and TGA don’t set any because they don’t take their jobs seriously, but it’s usually accepted that indie = small teams, small budget. Otherwise, technically games like Cyberpunk 2077 are “indie” because they’re self-published, while games published by Devolver Digital are technically not indie because they have a publisher despite the games being made on a tiny budget and occasionally created by only one person.
Expedition 33 had a huge budget compared to other games in its category, and much more developers. They had mo-cap, they had popular voice actors, and they had tons of contract workers overseas. It’s not fair to put it up against games that didn’t have any of that.
E33 is what the industry refers to as a AA game. Mid-sized budget, mid-sized team. As opposed to AAA, massive budgets with massive teams.
What about No Man’s Sky
No Man’s Sky (on release) is way smaller in scope than E33. It was made by around a dozen developers only, and they actually self-published it which makes it much more “indie”.
and TGA don’t set any because they don’t take their jobs seriously
Jesus fucking Christ people, we are talking about video games. Get a grip.
What a benign comment to respond so strongly to lmao
That one is dumb. I love E33 so much but you can tell this had a budget behind it.
They need a “small team” game award or something like that or enforce requirements on indie categories.
Game awards are ridiculous, but I will never forget Expedition 33. It deserves all the accolades it has earned and achieved.
Yeah the game is just straight up amazing. I laughed because I saw an article about the streamer, Shroud, complaining about how Expedition 33 shouldn’t have won because Arc Raiders was so great - but then admitted he hasn’t played Expedition 33.
The problem with the Internet is that it amplifies minority negative voices. Hundreds of thousands of people played that game and 100 pieces of shit get on reddit and be assholes and it gives all of their players bases a bad name. It’s the same across anything. On the Internet a loud minority is going to piss in everyone’s lemonade because they are trash humans.
What makes it worse is algorithm based social media prioritize rage bait since it creates engagement. It’s breaking all of our brains.
Gamers make me embarrassed to enjoy video games
Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead.
Nine awards is a lot. And this is after they swept Golden Joystick. It’s a fine game. It’s just not the only game.
I think a lot of it was just getting sick of E33 discussion. I remember when Hundred Line released this year some time after E33 and on Steam forums (which, to be fair, is as bad as most gaming forums), while people were, er, “discussing” the game, plenty of valid complaints were topped off with “just play E33 instead, it’s cheaper and much better” Like, I don’t even disagree, HL was disappointing, but why are you bringing it up, it’s apples and oranges.
It was also the first I heard of E33 personally so it wasn’t a good first impression, even if the devs are sweet and actually gave a shout out to HL.
(As someone who prefers Silksong that game’s community sucks too though, no, I don’t care a game is as expensive as 3 Silksongs)
I’ve only seen bitching about it not being an indie and taking those awards.
They hired out a small army.
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If we could just keep this trend of having the game awards completely snuff the big studios, that’d be great.
does seem weird to me to just give all the awards to one game, but then critic-awards shows always have been kind of a joke
“We’ve picked one game and we’re giving every award to that game because it’s the best game at everything and have you played the game yet? You should it’s so good it’s just the best at everything.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_Interactive
Kepler Interactive was founded in September 2021 at the initiative of former Ubisoft employee and French entrepreneur Alexis Garavayan, who had previously co-founded the video game investment fund Kowloon Nights. Self-described as a “super developer” publishing group, Kepler was born out of an alliance between seven independent studios to “pool their resources and knowledge”:
Hedge Fund ass publisher. Come on, guys. The Gaming Awards have always just been sponsored content and you’re getting hoodwinked because you don’t recognize the sponsor this time around.
Are you trying to say that any game that gets funding of any kind is automatically not worthy of winning?
I’m perfectly fine with people making money in exchange for an excellent product, and Expedition 33 is a fucking masterpiece.
I won’t say E33 didn’t deserve to win an award, it definitely did. But I will absolutely say with certainty it did not deserve to be nominated in so many categories and proceed to win basically every category.
Having an award show give awards to only one nominee feels bad for everyone except the show runners, that one nominee, and their fans. Lots of games deserved to be there that simply weren’t, and lots of nominees deserved to win but didn’t simply because E33 won this year’s popularity contest.
For example, Best Performance should not have been allowed to have 50% of the nominees be from the same game (E33, in this case).
I get where you’re coming from, but awards shows shouldn’t be participation trophies. The panels should give the awards for each category to the games they think were the best in that category.
And games aren’t made by a single person. If they decided that E33 shouldn’t win Best Music because it also won Best Art Direction, that’s unfair to the composers and musicians who worked on E33.
Are you trying to say that any game that gets funding of any kind is automatically not worthy of winning?
??? How did you get here?
Hopefully their next game continues with that quality. The old RPG giants are mostly floundering are mere shells of what they used to be. Most of the old talent already sold out or retired.
The industry needs new talent to take over.
And get rid of its predators… I’m always so sad to see my friends working in the game industry so exploited, fired without a thought, all to benefit greedy executives who never played a single game in their lives…
Which is weird, since that game wasn’t even marketed. I literally hadn’t even heard of it till it started winning shit left and right
One could even say it’s quite the obscure game to win awards like this…?
That’s Clair
yes
That’s one area where you can see it is indie despite the large development cost.
They were published by Kepler Interactive and for some markets Bandai Namco. Neither of which have Ubisoft or EA’s marketing budget which normally makes up something like half of the development budget of a game.
They did have some marketing. I know a lot of French streamers were paid to play the game on launch. But yeah not “in your face for 6 months in front of every YouTube video and inside every happy meal box” like a new assassin’s creed or something.
Like I had heard whispers of it, but that’s abojt it.
It wasn’t the only game to have that problem. I was barely aware Death Stranding 2 existed let alone that it was out.
I had heard of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (because the fans wouldn’t shut up about how right leaning and “non-woke” the game was) but did not think it deserved a mention.
To be honest the only game even nominated I had played was Donkey Kong Banaza… (I was obviously VERY aware Hades 2 and Silksong existed. I just haven’t had time to play them. Though I would have been offended if they weren’t nominated. Especially Silksong)
I don’t think it had a big marketing strategy, but it definitely marketed itself through word of mouth because it definitely deserved all the praise (and now awards) it got.
That’s impressive, to be honest. Expedition 33 even had complete normies talking about it.
If you had ever seen the Game Awards before, this isn’t exactly surprising.
It was not only good, but weird and unique. It was always going to sweep the show because that’s exactly the kind of game the judges of it have favored every single year.
That’s why the good, but ultimately derivative games didn’t win as much.
The only award I think it didn’t deserve was Best RPG.
But, on the other hand, it should have gotten Best Sound Design over BF6; so it still would have gotten 9 awards.
Truly a masterpiece of a game. To those haters saying “But not even BG3 got that many awards!” it’s not a fair comparison. BG3 is a slightly better game IMO, but Expedition 33 is a work of art on top of being an amazing game and appeals to a much wider audience. Which isn’t to say games like BG3 aren’t beautiful, but I think anyone would agree that E33 is on a whole other level.
I’ll see you Best RPG and raise you a Best Independent and Best Debut Indie.
They have a publisher that funded them with hedge fund money and outsourced aspects of the production to entirely different companies. I’m not making a comment on the quality of the game, but how is that indie?
In your opinion what game deserved the best rpg of 2025?
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
I love E33 but the RPG mechanics are pretty barebones.
The parry mechanic completely ruined the combat for me, I still can’t motivate myself to finish the game because of it.
Most of the attacks are easy to parry, but about 1/4 of them are complete bullshit with unreadable animations and broken timing. I finished the game but didn’t bother beating Simon. Apparently being level 95 with 20k health isn’t enough. Completely unbalanced game.
I’m so happy for them, the emotions this game brought to me were absolutely unique, its approach on grief was so beautiful. And can’t forget the music that I keep humming for the last months…
Renoir’s battle theme is the best song I have ever heard in a video game before. For a while, my YouTube algorithm was taken over by streamer reactions to hearing that song for the first time in game, because universally people were just stunned like “holy shit this is amazing”.
E33 was the surprise of the year for me. It came from nowhere.
Why do they look like stereotypes?
Because it was a joke.
Cool, just curious.
Baguette supremacy.
I just started playing expedition 33 and I can see why it won so many awards absolutely amazing game!
Aaaaah this game was amazing, can’t wait to download it again to play the new update
I’m not saying E33 didn’t deserve to win anything, but I don’t believe it deserved to dominate like that. No single game should be allowed to do this, ever.
I mean, of the 6 nominees for Best Performance, 3 of them (50%) were from E33. That shouldn’t be allowed, IMO. Pick the single best performance from one game, then you can have more variety to pick from. Also, the winner of Best Indie Game should automatically be disqualified from also winning Best Indie Debut game.
In my opinion: KCD2 snubbed for Best RPG, Silksong snubbed for best Action Adventure, and Half-Life 3 snubbed for Most Anticipated Game (is it disqualified – no professionals allowed?).
This is why some award shows have an award for being so outstanding you’re in danger of ruining the show by taking all the awards. They give the award to them at the beginning and remove them from all categories, basically letting everyone play for second place.
I think more than specifically any game being better at X than E33, I think a lot of people are mostly just upset there were so many great games that just didn’t win anything because E33 was there.
I have the most issue with the performance win, that the nominations are for the English voice acting and this is not even an English game. The original acting is French, I played it with French voice + English subtitle. To me the English voice acting is just part of the localization. This is such an English-centric award and snub for non-English performances.
If anything the motion capture actors are more “worthy”.
Original language is always better in my opinion. Filtering it into English has to leave out or change something.
I think for other people though they see the English voice actors as more professional or higher paid or more famous, whatever it is.
To me, it’s an indicator that the rest of the industry bankrupted its talent and innovation. There’s been some great indie games, but nothing overwhelmingly amazing, certainly not in the AAA space.
Why shouldnt the best actor be for the best performance regardless of which game it appears in?
I don’t see the point of limiting the nominees to just one-per-game, for best performance. There’s still only one winner, and if that game legitimately had that many fantastic performances, more power to 'em.
I’ll second the idea of keeping Best Indie and Best Debut Indie separate. I’ll go further and say E33 just isn’t an Indie game, it’s pretty solidly AA.
Absolutely deserved. Good on em!
I am sad now that I’m not into this dark fantasy stuff.
