LogFAQs > #939143178

Headliner Analysis continued:

Opinions were in flux at this point. Dark Souls was looking dominant in the lead up to the Quarterfinals until that weird TLOU match that no one could make heads or tails of, while Skyrim spent most of the contest sputtering until kicking it into high gear in the Division Finals. And personally, their match lived up to the hype. If you looked at the final percentages, youd think it was the same sort of boring 52-48 match Ive described before. While it certainly ended that way, both games spent the first half of the match locked in mortal combat; the first couple of hours saw lead shifts, attempts at escape that were quickly thwarted, and best of all, Dark Souls is a game with such wacky trends that no one knew if it was going to fold or end up running away with it. Unfortunately for it, Skyrims trends arent wacky; it had always struggled with the early vote before rising to heaven overnight and throughout the day. Dark Souls had a good enough Euro vote to keep things in reasonable doubt overnight, but the day vote carried Skyrim to a clean 52-48 win. Despite the initial struggle, Skyrim made it look like the match was never in doubt; the fire was ultimately smothered. Still, if you look at the 2015 x-stats, this used to be a 65-35 match. Darks Souls more than legitimized itself here, and is sure to be a bracket threat in the contests to come. Believe it or not, this wasnt even the greatest late-game intra-year duel; you wont have to wait long to hear about the best.

Skyrim would end up stumbling into its WRPG duel staggering from the wounds Dark Souls had inflicted, while Witcher was swaggering in after putting Persona 5 down in grand fashion. My thoughts are best summarized by this portion of my guest Crew write-up for the match:

Witcher vs Skyrim is a match I'm glad happened. Skyrim was once the unambiguous standard bearer for this sort of game, the ideal they were all held to. But just as popular sentiment was turning against Bethesda due to Fallout 4 (only the beginning of that turn, natch!), CDPR challenged them for the throne with Witcher 3, an open-world WRPG with a ridiculous density of quality writing and vaguely better combat, graphics, and performance than Bethesda's games. And as of 2020, I feel CDPR has pretty decisively won that battle. Not only have they, as a company, ingratiated themselves with the gaming community in a way most others can only dream of, but more and more people are using Witcher 3 as the standard bearer of open-world RPGs, of quality writing, of substantive sidequests (ESPECIALLY this one). None of this is to diss Skyrim; it was bound to be surpassed in mind share eventually, and Witcher arguably doesn't exist without it anyway.

Skyrim should be congratulated for resisting Witchers touch of death that was exhibited in all its Western game matches, but the final 55-45 result tells the tale of a match that should never have been in doubt by the time it actually took place.

Other Thoughts:

God, even outside the Headliners, this year did extraordinarily well. Arkham City had a good run, one that probably would have made it a headliner in weaker years. The 55-45 match with Xenoblade 2 foreshadowed the originals amazing contest, and the following Bioshock match was initially in doubt until Batman laid a 60-40 smackdown before bowing out gracefully to the Last of Us (though if the leaks had hit slightly sooner, who knows who might have happened there?)

What about Hollow Knights partner in crime, the co-progenitor of the Indie Fear that would pervade the contest for the entire first Round and well into the second? Bastions 33.76% prediction rate was the second lowest of Round 1, behind only Octopaths upset of Undertale. The Walking Dead was the overwhelming favorite to make it out of the match, and Bastion made the consensus Game of the Year of 2012 (according to GOTYblogs) look like a massive joke.

Shit, even this years weaker games looked alright. Deus Exs performance on Fire Emblem Awakening would clue us in on how poorly that series would undershoot expectations (so yes, Deus Ex did not LOSE by enough), and Dead Space 2 and Terraria didnt look like turbofodder on their way out.

Maybe this years low entrant count meant that there were less opportunities to embarrass itself, but come on. SIX of these games made it out of Round 1, and FOUR would make it past Round 2. In some of the weaker fourpacks Minecraft might have even made it to Round 3. These are amazing ratios, and taking preliminary looks at the next few years, 2011 was undoubtedly one of the powerhouses of the contest.

Final Rating:

A - The star of the first half of the decade.

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