The 2024 Events Thread – La Li Lu Le Lo and Behold, E3 is Dead

[Cube]

Will they be getting a real host this time, or will Geoff be using his money to carry on pretending that he's suitable for the role?

[Hero-of-Time]

17 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

I don’t have the slightest interest in Geoff’s Doritos Awards, but the fact that 1000xResist didn't even get a single nomination (let alone be a complete shoe-in for Best Narrative) perfectly highlights how much of a complete failure the event is at what it purports to be.

The damn thing is nothing more than a big advertisement for Geoff’s cronies.  Truly an insult to the industry as a whole, it deserves better.

As much as I dislike the show, not to mention how it's gotten progressively worse of the years, it wouldn't exist without him or the sponsors. Nobody else seems interested in doing a proper awards show or at least footing the bill for one. 

[Cube]

2 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Nobody else seems interested in doing a proper awards show or at least footing the bill for one. 

You don't need the "else" there. There are no proper awards shows for gaming. The closest are the BAFTAs, but they don't air the ceremony. Proper awards shows happen after the year is finished.

[Hero-of-Time]

2 minutes ago, Cube said:

You don't need the "else" there. There are no proper awards shows for gaming. The closest are the BAFTAs, but they don't air the ceremony. Proper awards shows happen after the year is finished.

Honestly, I'd love an Oscar style show that really highlights the people behind the games but I doubt it would pull in the viewers as it would probably lack mainstream appeal, which is what Geoff's show is really aiming at. I doubt most mainstream gamers don't really care about who makes their games, let alone whether or not they should be awarded for doing so.

[Jonnas]

47 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

it's gotten progressively worse of the years

I hate that I read this and immediately agreed

[Hero-of-Time]

2 minutes ago, Jonnas said:

I hate that I read this and immediately agreed

Despite me typing "of" instead of "over"?  

[Jonnas]

17 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Despite me typing "of" instead of "over"?  

It bypassed my inner proofreader/grammar nazi. That's how much I agree

[Hero-of-Time]

I'm sitting watching the Golden Joystick Awards and it's a far better show that what Keighley puts out. Sure, it's not as extravagant, but it actually feels like an award show rather than a massive advertisement.

[Julius]

Haven't commented on the TGA GOTY nominees given my short break, so I'll do so now: 

I've played three of these nominated games and all were brilliant and are in the running for my personal GOTY, those three games of course being Astro Bot, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. 

Shadow of the Erdtree being here is weird, though, just because it's DLC. I'm glad to have it considered for people's personal GOTY, such as my own, but having it potentially recognised as GOTY in a year as great as 2024 has been for games just feels odd, and that's as someone who absolutely loved their time with it – it's a saturated, 20-30 hour deep dive into everything made Elden Ring freaking brilliant back in 2022. 

Elden Ring arguably defined gaming in 2022, and felt like a leap forward in a lot of ways. Has Shadow of the Erdtree defined gaming in 2024 in that same way? I wouldn't say so. 

Balatro makes sense to me, it's the biggest indie game of the year and there's been a lot of noise from it since it launched, especially with the consistent stream of updates. Seems very deserved. 

Metaphor also seems to deserve it's spot here, which is awesome. I won't get to it this year, but to have a turn-based RPG front and centre and just nominated like this feels like a big moment that not enough people have been talking about. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about JRPG community infighting, mind you (be it splitting votes for awards or some NieR/Genshin/etc. level of toxicity online elsewhere). 

Black Myth: Wukong being here really surprises me. Negative press ahead of launch, yes it was massive (similar vibes to Lies of P last year I'd say) but it sounds and seems to me to be more style than substance, especially given its performance struggles on some platforms and straight up not making it to some. Another one I've been wanting for ages but just wrong time and place I guess, and with DLC seemingly landing next year, I'll gladly hold out a bit longer. 

As someone who probably watches and listens to as much gaming news and reactions as I do actually play games (much to my own chagrin), if not more, I think Shadow of the Erdtree shouldn't be on this list - again, not for a lack of quality, but I think a DLC on an award-presented list just feels gross, and will feel worse if/when From have a trailer drop here for something else - and nor should Black Myth: Wukong. 

Based on feeling out the year and their reception, I think there are a few games which could take those 2 slots in their stead, be it for quality or helping to define the year in gaming, and those games would be: Helldivers 2, UFO 50, Animal Well, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Silent Hill 2. 

@Dcubed even as someone who hasn't played 1000xResist myself, I'm shocked it didn't get any nominations either, there has been so much damn buzz around it! Given how much noise there was around Minishoot Adventures' earlier this year, another game I've really wanted to check out, it's another one I'm shocked to not see turn up anywhere here.

Quite frankly, that indie category needs more nominations (I'd make it 10) if a game can be nominated for GOTY, Best Indie, and Best Indie Debut like Balatro was – not salty at all about it getting on those lists, but 'Best Indie' is logically spoken for in a practical sense if it's on a GOTY nominee shortlist when other games on Best Indie/Best Indie Debut nominee shortlists aren't? And also because obviously if it makes a GOTY nominee shortlist it has to be on those other two lists. 1000xResist, Tactical Breach Wizards, Kill Knight, Shogun Showdown, Arco, Minishoot Adventures'...there are your other 5 indie games which should be on the 10-game nominee list imo. 

Re: a potential winner?

I would like Astro Bot to win it – 30th anniversary of PlayStation, would feel like a much-needed statement on the closure of Japan Studio and PlayStation drifting from their Japanese routes and oh by the way LEAVING ASTRO BOT OFF OF OFFICIAL PRESENTATION SLIDES ABOUT RELEASES THIS YEAR WHEN EVEN CONCORD WAS INCLUDED LIKE IT WAS NOTHING....ahem. It's also just brilliant and a love letter to fun in a way which feels very Nintendo-like, hell despite being a PlayStation game with as many callbacks as it does to long forgotten PlayStation titles, it's clearly a love letter to Mario (Galaxy, specifically) too. You can tell how much Asobi respect that team, and it's so obviously in a way which feels separate from the rest of PlayStation if you ever listen to Doucet talk about the game. 

I'd gladly take Rebirth because for all of its flaws - and it has MANY of them - no other game has made me feel the things I felt playing that game this year. I mean I was straight up choked up and dewey-eyed, if not just outright crying at one point. Metaphor would be a statement of intent for JRPGs too, but I think it not winning sets Atlus up with Persona 6 to win everything in 20-...26? 29? 45? 87? - whenever that comes out. 

Balatro would be the good kind of shock win, it has been a game which has done a really good job of staying on top of the conversation when so many get swept away and it would be a bit of a statement win. I don't think it has great odds, but it'd be neat to see! 

Black Myth: Wukong I don't think has a realistic chance. 

I'm a bit scared it'll end up being Shadow of the Erdtree to be honest. For the third and final time - absolutely freaking adore it, and based on quality alone it is GOTY worthy, but it simply shouldn't be in the conversation for me. But this is games media we're talking about...I could see it winning here. 

Re: the existence of the TGAs, as someone who has consistently tuned in to watch it live? It's not a great show standalone and I often need to watch it reacted to live on Twitch to not fall asleep.

I think the unfortunate truth is that despite there being no "legitimate" Game of the Year and other awards, be it at TGAs or elsewhere, which is of the level of the "legitimacy" of the Oscars - which, uh, aren't slightly legitimate but whatever - the TGAs are freaking huge and TGAs GOTY is inarguably the most known about and it does put eyes on games and helps boost sales, so Geoff is right to pull the strings he does to make as big a show as he wants. It takes the sponsors to match his crazy vision of what a show like this should be, and publishers/developers he has no involvement with to come up with the goods, and year after year it feels like there is at least one big worthwhile announcement. 

I mean, what's the alternative, just straight up no major showcases between a potential September Nintendo Direct/Tokyo Game Show and, what, mid-January at the earliest? As someone who loves the excitement around announcements and releases and the conversation GOTY talks at the end of the year bring about, I'm sorry, but that sounds lame as hell. The TGAs are so big now in terms of viewership that, again, we get some legitimately huge things here, and a potential December shadow drop of a quality game or DLC is just awesome. 

Not to say that it couldn't improve, because the flow can be very messy, and there's normally a slump where we end up in ads without telling us we're in ads. They could do with dropping the eSports/personalities and maybe having some other awards for technical aspects, obviously last year was an overcorrection from Christopher Judge's Best Performance speech in 2022 and people were getting played off stage which was unfortunate if not outright nasty and certainly shouldn't have applied to the GOTY recipient, and for the love of everything food: stop with the damn movie tie-in for presenting GOTY and go back to having previous winners present the award! Josef Fares accepting GOTY from Neil Druckmann felt fantastic and encapsulated what I feel these awards ought to be, I love the small window into the industry that it gave us: Fares is so obviously a fan of Neil and Naughty Dog, and it felt great to have people in the industry actually getting to recognise each other's work. Maybe it's just me, but I love that sort of thing, like when the PS Blog interviews people from PlayStation Studios and you're like "oh, duh, of course people who worked on God of War 2018 are big Ico fans!" 

Hell, to get something somewhat legitimate, I say use some of the money from TGAs to have a Developer's Awards perhaps, where developers - not journalists - vote for these things and also have a greater focus on those other roles in the industry which TGAs doesn't deliver on. 

Anyways, I'm much more interested in the end-of-year personal favourites thread we have here on N-E, so 

Edited December 4 by Julius

[Dcubed]

Black Myth Wukong will probably win, but Balatro should be GOTY.  It’s certainly my personal GOTY, that’s for sure!

[Cube]

54 minutes ago, Julius said:

Hell, to get something somewhat legitimate, I say use some of the money from TGAs to have a Developer's Awards perhaps, where developers - not journalists - vote for these things and also have a greater focus on those other roles in the industry which TGAs doesn't deliver on. 

There are already developer awards, such as the D.I.C.E. Awards. GoldenEye won the first Game of the Year award.

[Julius]

15 minutes ago, Cube said:

There are already developer awards, such as the D.I.C.E. Awards. GoldenEye won the first Game of the Year award.

Oh yeah, sure, there's D.I.C.E. - I was more responding to the idea that TGAs doesn't highlight devs enough (which obviously they don't) and so they could use some of those TGA funds to advertise, stream/co-stream and further push a dev-focused awards show. I think the real problem is lack of visibility for these awards rather than a lack of actual audience interest I guess is what I'm saying. 

Or they could just partner up with D.I.C.E. to do that very same thing I suppose 

[Glen-i]

Having DLC be in the running is quite icky to me.

I'd be more believing that it's not just to have Elden Ring win again if there was other DLC there.

In short, what I'm really trying to say, is that Ode to Castlevania was robbed.

[Julius]

48 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Having DLC be in the running is quite icky to me.

I'd be more believing that it's not just to have Elden Ring win again if there was other DLC there.

Yeah, I think what probably makes it potentially a good bit more icky to me is that From Software have arguably been the most generous developer to Geoff in terms of what they've given to the TGAs and SGF in terms of marketing material over the years; off the top of my head, you've got the 'Shadows Die Twice' announcements teaser for Sekiro at TGAs 2017, the first trailer with gameplay for Elden Ring during SGF 2021 (which was absolutely massive as the "We're back!" show-closer and is still arguably the best trailer we've ever seen at SGF), and the Armored Core VI announcement trailer at TGAs 2022.Hell, Geoff was visibly shaken/hyped/emotional when introducing the two latter trailers.

Now, as far as I'm aware, the decision to include Shadow of the Erdtree wasn't based on Geoff's decision but on the votes submitted by gaming journalists – but when he clearly has such a strong relationship with the studio, it does call it into question just a a little bit. A similar thing happened last year when Dave the Diver was nominated for Best Indie - because the gaming press at large are, well look I'm just going to say it: they're pretty stupid at times - but Geoff didn't step in to correct them, and so you end up with a game which absolutely wasn't indie as a nominee. Like, you can vote for Mario Kart 9 as Best RPG by the same logic I guess and it wouldn't get removed? So stupid. 

Anyways, yeah, again, not a question of quality, but I do think it's just such a bad look when people are frustrated that people behind the scenes aren't getting their flowers, and it feels like the show is just compounding that by potentially giving From their flowers a second time for the same game. It feels especially wrong in a year with such excellent games all over. Now, if this were 2021, which I'd argue is the weakest year for games in the last 5 years? Then I'd potentially be willing to hear this out. But it feels like something which deserves to be on the list got axed in favour of Elden Ring, which, well 

Edited December 5 by Julius

[Julius]

Completely missed that the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted is on tonight. 

Looks like they're on Citizen Sleeper 2: Jump Over The Edge (release date: 31st January 2025) now, some other big hitters so far are the announcement of a TMNT SRPG called TMNT: Tactical Takedown (release date: TBA), and Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault (release date: 2025). Oh, and a new trailer for Henry Halfhead (release date: 2025), too! 

I imagine these are coming to other platforms but I can't see any details on that yet, so just going to leave them here 

Edited December 5 by Julius

[Julius]

Andy Robinson of VGC and Tom Warren of The Verge are both hyping up next week's TGAs...

Tom Warren (Bluesky posts don't embed I guess?): https://bsky.app/profile/tomwarren.co.uk/post/3lcmxtvtois23

Quote

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Andy Robinson - Expecting a VERY big Game Awards next week. Fire up the hype train.

same

Let the Armored Core VII hype commence

[Glen-i]

7 minutes ago, Julius said:

(Bluesky posts don't embed I guess?)

They do not. It's the one thing keeping me on Twitter.
If this forum ever implements it, I am so out of there.

[Julius]

Just seen that Schreier has been on Kinda Funny and is also piling on the coal for the TGAs hype train, saying:

Quote

There are at least two things at TGA that will make you say "holy shit I can't believe these things are here". 

Okay, with Jason onboard – now I'm going to start to let the possibilities grow a bit wild. 

I think the most extreme balance of realistic and wild would be GTA VI and the Switch 2.

Rockstar are known to steer well clear of turning up to events and generally do things on their own terms, but with TGAs having over 118m viewers last year and continuously showing year-on-year viewer growth, a GTA VI trailer dropping here makes sense to me purely from the perspective of marketing – "the most viewed video in 24 hours" (as they could just fold it being streamed to 120m+ people into whatever figures they get on their official channel and elsewhere). I could even see them sharing a release date (even if it's the first of, like, three, considering we all think it'll inevitably get delayed once or twice) – I was just reading earlier today that, unsurprisingly, a good number of publishers with games planned for the end of next year are reportedly waiting on GTA VI to drop a release date before they figure out where they're putting their own games. 

As for Switch 2, this was something I guessed earlier in the year and still don't think is impossible, and I think it's because just 2 weeks away from Christmas, a little video either teasing or showing the console likely wouldn't have a major impact on their quarterly sales. At this point, it would also get ahead of the growing number of purported leaks, and in this financial climate, give more people a chance to have it on their radar and start saving. Again, the TGAs are the biggest annual gaming showcase, and I think you'd be silly not to take advantage of that stage. 

In terms of what else I would consider to be along the lines of what Jason is describing, but not at that GTA VI or Switch 2 level, would be things like Silksong, The Last of Us Part III or Naughty Dog's new IP, Persona 6, something related to Bloodborne (a sequel or remaster -- personally, I don't think a From Software announcement makes it onto this list I'm making otherwise, because I expect them to be there anyways), Final Fantasy IX Remake or Tactics Remake, I'm sure some people will be saying Half-Life 3 or Mother 3...

But GTA VI and Switch 2 are the two which would blow me away the most and yet still make perfect sense. So those will be my guesses, very curious what they turn out to be! 

 

Anywho, elsewhere, Josef Fares has teased that Hazelight's next game will be getting an announcement and gameplay reveal at the TGAs:

Exciting stuff. 

 

So, anyone planning on staying up for the TGAs this year? 

[Julius]

Just watched the actual clip and it's two games, specifically, scheduled to release 2026 or later. 

Alright, we'll scratch GTA VI and Switch 2 and just start hoping for specifically two of your dreams to come true, I guess 

[Hero-of-Time]

Nah, I'll not be watching it live. Those days are gone. I'll just watch the trailers that interest me in the morning.

[Julius]

13 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Nah, I'll not be watching it live. Those days are gone. I'll just watch the trailers that interest me in the morning.

Yeah, that's totally fair. 

I'm undecided at the moment. I had too many days off not booked in a few months ago so booked off this Friday in case I wanted to tune in live – it doesn't come close to matching E3s of yore, but outside of Nintendo Directs, it's the only show which consistently gets me excited (States of Play vary way too much) at the possible new game announcements. That and From Software's next announcement being pretty likely here makes it a hard one to turn away from. 

So I guess we'll see. It is late, but I guess I could take a nap beforehand...

[drahkon]

Even if I stayed up this late these days, I'd much rather play video games than watch that prick on stage

[Dcubed]

Dude Formally Known As Pyoro is hinting at a Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed remaster; probably due to be revealed during the TGAs tonight.

Hope it's true, SAASRT is an amazing game that deserves to be revisited.  Would also make perfect sense as the follow up to the Sonic Generations Remaster, considering that it was itself the game that followed up directly from Sonic Generations.

[Cube]

As long as they keep all characters, especially massive names like Danica Patrick and Football Manager. 

Although, on a more serious note, I would love if all characters from both games returned (especially Banjo-Kazooie, although that probably won't happen), along with a few new tracks. I quite liked the variety that the extra PC characters gave. If they do have to replace characters due to licensing (such as Wreck-It Ralph), I do hope they keep the car and find another suitable person for it. It's a wrecking ball, so Sega's Angry Birds would work. 

[Julius]

There's going to be a vertical stream? 

This is a sign that Keighley is getting too powerful and must be stopped (I have no idea whether or not this has been around before and that scares me) 

Edited December 12 by Julius