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.
E33 was the surprise of the year for me. It came from nowhere.
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.
Imagine the average gamer. Imagine the average reddit user.
Now combine them.
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.
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)
Gamers make me embarrassed to enjoy video 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.
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.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.
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”.
So a successful crowdfunding campaign could make a game not indie anymore?
“Indie” means “independent”, which means there is no publisher or investor that could influence creative decisions in the service of profits. (As CDPR is publicly traded and does answer to investors, Cyberpunk would not qualify.)
If you want a low budget award, call it low budget award and define a threshold for said budget.
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
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.
This is why I don’t care anymore about what other people think and don’t check the communities of games. I just hope the game, I like the most wins. If it happens, great! If it does not, sad but that’s okay. That’s life.
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.
Because it is the internet and nowadays people only think about themselves. “I like this game, I want and need this game to win”. The internet allows people to be sort of anonymous and that brings the worst out of people (because more often than not, there’s no consequences of the actions when it is written anonymously).
Game awards are ridiculous, but I will never forget Expedition 33. It deserves all the accolades it has earned and achieved.
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 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.
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…
executives who never played a single game in their lives…
Makes me think of Gaben who is a Dota2 nerd.
I am sad now that I’m not into this dark fantasy stuff.
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
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.
One could even say it’s quite the obscure game to win awards like this…?
That’s Clair
yes
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.
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…
A bit overhyped I think. Yes, I haven’t played it through yet. Yes, it is indeed a good game (even though I don’t like JRPGs). The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic. Bit I don’t think it’s better than BG3 and I’m sad, that KCD2 didn’t win anything because in most, if not all, categories it was paired up with COE33.
KCD got absolutely shafted. Not getting best RPG sucks but the leads not even being nominated for best performance is just straight up bullshit.
I agree it’s a wonderful game and it deserves recognition, but I also agree it’s not as good as BG3. The thing is, that doesn’t detract from any of it’s awards this year because it was only competing with the games that came out in 2025, not the ones that came out in 2023.
Had BG3 and Clair Obscura come out at the same time, I think the split in awards would have been very different.
In my honest opinion as someone that had played and enjoyed both games, they both deserved the awards in their own ways. I think Kingdom Come is definitely a better RPG in general, but at the same time E33 is an amazing game that is an RPG. It’s semantics at this point and I think it’s more of a lack of categories. RPG is such a loose term these days that I feel like it should be sub-divided into a few more. Lumping games together and comparing games that are vastly different based solely on a loose term like RPG is disingenuous.
That’s because Clair Obscur is directly influenced by the JRPG genre which is why it feels almost like not a RPG compared to something that is a western RPG like KC:D2.
But I agree, the term RPG is way overloaded and it needs a more stricter set of rules to define what a RPG is. But it’s been that way for almost a decade at this point and I no longer care to split hairs about it, I just laugh when Monster Hunter gets nominated as an RPG because in my mind I would never consider it a RPG.
But it’s been that way for almost a decade at this point and I no longer care to split hairs about it,
Haha, us old farts have been arguing about what constitutes an RPG at least since the days of the first Diablo.
I know It’s just that the term has gotten even more overloaded and vague over time. At least in the 90s you could somewhat draw a really squiggly line where RPG-s had skills and classes and stats-boosting items and xp and all that jazz, and non-rpg games didn’t really have that. But 00s has some games implementing RPG elements into itself and it kicked into full gear in the 10s with AAA non-RPG games adopting xp, levels, skills, stat sticks etc and most AAA RPG-s simplifying by dropping classes and such. Whatever thin line there was in the 90s has been completely eroded in the 10s. If someone wants to call Horizon Forgotten West an RPG I can’t really say it’s not
Couldn’t agree more. E33 isn’t a RPG in the classical sense but has certain RPG elements. Don’t get me wrong, it is, as far is I’ve played, a great game in it’s own right, but imo it didn’t deserve to win in the RPG category and maybe not even storytelling.
Which is funny because it didn’t win best sound track at the biting awards.
Aaaaah this game was amazing, can’t wait to download it again to play the new update
