87
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 loses a GOTY award over use of gen AI
(www.polygon.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
87 points (95.8% liked)
Gaming
34374 readers
37 users here now
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
GOTY not going to the only game to break the store or payment processor of steam, Xbox, psn, and Nintendo already made the whole thing seem silly
It's game of the year, not hype of the year
It's a turn based.
So are chess, Magic The Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons. What's your point?
Chess has staying power. D&D might. Magic has less staying power than Pokémon. I wolnt even remember hearing about expedition 33 in 5 years
lol, Magic came out 3 years before Pokémon and is currently more popular than ever. Especially with the Avatar TLAB and Final Fantasy releases.
Just because you don't like a mechanic doesn't mean it won't last. Hell, Civilization is one of the most popular video game franchises of all time
Shifted to a collector-based IP. It's not kids playing anymore, but old guys with sealing pouches.
Not where I am. There are kids and old people playing alike. Sure, there are some collectors, but there always will be. Hell, the ATLA set has really good jump start packs, which are explicitly for playing
Nobody even plays the Pokemon TCG. Well, I guess a couple dozen people might, but that's about it.
The video games are basically the same game repackaged over and over again. No disrespect to people who like Pokemon of course, but the Pokemon Company could do a lot more than they do now. But it has stuck around because people really like the brand for some reason.
MTG, on the other hand, is shitting itself currently, but the core gameplay has evolved over 30+ years into the framework for a very detailed game with countless possible interactions. There are dozens of actively played formats for the game, and despite WOTC's best attempts, will not be dying anytime soon.
E33 is not even in the same category as those games. To begin with, it's a single game, not a whole franchise. It seems a bit unfair to compare it to those games in terms of staying power. Regarding gameplay, E33 is far more interesting than Pokemon. It doesn't have the same depth as MTG or D&D, but MTG's comprehensive rules is a PDF with around 300 pages, and D&D has entire rulebooks. E33 is far easier for people to learn than those two games as a result.
Chess, uh, is not a very popular game. People play it of course, but it stuck around because of its history. Also, the demographic of people playing video games regularly and classic board games regularly doesn't have a huge amount of overlap.
For sure. I mean, they sent the Pinkertons on someone that got shipped product early. That they purchased.
Server load is not a great indicator of how good a game is.
Silksong is an excellent game but it's absolutely not in the same league. COE33 is a much more sophisticated game with deeper story and advanced artwork.
Silksong was 1/3 the price so they could sell many more copies, and COE33 didn't have nearly the same hype on launch. None of that makes Silksong a better game.
IMHO fart sniffing pick and the only person I know who will play it is a persona fan.
The description and trailers don't seem revolutionary or mind blowing. Just a pretty turn based with a story that EA or Ubisoft didn't half ass. BF6 just went on sale for $40 from $70 and is the best selling game of the year.
The whole thing feels very token and fake
So you didn't play it, and yet your opinion is more important that that of those who did. Got it.
And never will. The total selling point is "a deep story" and but I haven't heard single specific that sounds deep or even interesting.
You come off like the kid who insisted I play Persona. It's not that deep, try some more adult media. We have a guy here on Lemmy who highly recommends A Brave New World 🥲
Seems like you really just don’t like Persona.
This isn’t Persona.
As far as I understand it, the comparisons pretty much end at the combat system / gameplay mechanics.
Without giving away too much, you have a world where, every year, everybody of a certain age is erased. Every year, those with one year left to live set out to try and stop that from happening - and for ~77 years, none of them have returned.
This sets the stage for exploration of grief, loss, and associated trauma. In most games, there’s death everywhere but the emotional side is relegated to a 3 minute scene with sad piano music before the characters get back to the action. In this game, they drill a lot deeper and it really makes the characters come alive.
They’ve nailed the blend of sadness, joy, and even comedy.
This is all then set in a backdrop of some of the most visually interesting environments ever presented in a videogame with a completely insane musical score that brings all of those moments to life, the game is effectively a frisson machine.
Sounds like a good TV series. But doing a turn based game with a good story is like a musical movie with a good story.
I'll never play it or Baldurs, spoil away. It's the gameplay I find so boring and immersion breaking.
I’ll add to the other comment for anyone else that’s actually open to new things, because I traditionally don’t like turn based games:
The combat is excellent and the enemies are varied. Party members have fun synergies with both your team and the enemies, and the Pictos system adds a ton of flexibility for each character. You can have some crazy setups, at one point I gave a character the explosive death + instant-death perk which let me skip a lot of the easy battles later on.
Plus there is a parrying mechanic that is challenging and rewarding!
e33 is a fantastic game and is well worth your time
I'll never play it and miss nothing. Just like Persona.
lol
So, from the way you talk about it, it seems you're describing your feelings about the game moreso than an attempt at an objective take. Which is good, because there is no such thing as an objective take, and I definitely understand the perspective of not liking something that you feel is inexplicably ultra-popular. Especially if you feel that there was something you liked more that you'd rather see get the award.
That said, I do wonder how much you've seen of the game? Because I haven't played it either, but everything I've seen strongly suggests that it is a genuine work of art that people put effort and passion into. Which – since you brought it up – is not a description I'd apply to Battlefield 6. So I'm kinda left wondering what specifically about it might put you off enough to want to slag it off like this.
If you're upset at it for winning a billion awards, that's fair. Most awards shows are always very silly and this one game getting practically showered honestly highlights that a lot — even a really good game like this probably didn't deserve quite this many accolades. Still though, it looks to have a clear message, purpose, with good art and gameplay to go along. I think that deserves some awards.
Agreed. As much as I don't care about Silksong either way, having "so many people wanted me, I broke the storefront" on your resume has to count for something.
The fact that Silksong did that is insane to me, there was so much hype
E33 wasn't advertised, it was a slow burn of purchases.
Do we know their sales figures?