LogFAQs > #939388537

Headliner Analysis continued

Wow, this headliner analysis has already taken up more than a page in my Word document, and I havent even talked about good ol Geraldo. Now look, a lot of people did indeed call Witcher winning its half of the bracket; it has a Netflix series behind it, it just got a Switch port, but Skyrim was still the more popular pick. So despite the fact that it would have clobbered this bracket on any other site, Gerry was going into this contest as an underdog.

Im going to try and keep this relatively brief, because if youre reading this, you KNOW the kind of tear Witcher went on during its run. Much like how BBs performance on Blops was more impressive than Dooms despite pulling a much lower percentage, Witchers 84% murdering of the other Odyssey was more impressive than Galaxys 87% on Obra Dinn. Why? Because people actually know what Assassins Creed is. SFF or not, this was only the start of Witcher godstomping its competition.

In the time between me starting this project and me writing this very sentence, Ive played and beaten Mass Effect 3. And you know, I really enjoyed myself, so in retrospect its kinda sad that it got absolutely gutted, to the tune of Witcher getting 78% of the vote in Round TWO. Once again, though, there was some clear SFF at work here AND Witcher is the perfect game to take advantage of antivotes (as its so well-respected), so Galaxy 2 was designated as the first real barometer of Witchers strength.

And at the time, Witcher only getting 60% on Mario was considered a big coming back to Earth moment, ironic when one of these games doesnt have much gravity to speak of. But SOMETHING happened to Galaxy between 2015 and now, because it looks MUCH better in the final x-stats than it did in 2015, to the tune of placing 8th in KPs list, ahead of a lot of games itd have lost to (and this is with him overtweeking Witcher downwards IMO, but hey, theyre not my numbers). So that 60% was actually pretty damn beastly in hindsight.

But, as Mario was Witchers first non-Western opponent, the theory was formed that it was just waiting to crumble to Japanese opposition. So even after it absolutely obliterated God of War (almost 65% in Division Finals!), there were increasingly loud whispers that it might drop to Persona 5. I really, really dont know what some people wanted from this game at this point, because there were times when it seemed like no insane flex was enough to prove that it was on a rocket course to the finals.

But rocket towards the finals it did. Much like the Mario match, the near 57% it scored on P5 was apparently disappointing, despite the fact that P5 had looked absolutely monstrous up until this point. Seeing a WRPG beating down the biggest deal in JRPGs since FFX was kinda surreal, and if you had asked me at the time, this was the definitive point where any shred of doubt I had of Witcher winning semis was forever vanquished.

And, well, yah, I was right. Putting up 55% in a match many thought it was going to lose pre-contest cemented Witcher as a force of nature, and was proof of the fact that much like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, a big chunk of B8 was not ready for what it had served. I spent most of the contest on Witchers dick and was getting tired of people umming and erring whenever it put up yet another insane number, because I KNEW that the winds had blown in its favor since 2015. If Im being honest, the idea of it losing to Skyrim in 2020 seemed ludicrous. Im not going to repost my thoughts from the 2011 analysis, but Ill just say EVERYTHING was going Witchers way in the leadup to this contest, and you would have had to have been absent from the gaming discourse since 2015 to not see it.

While the finals were a foregone conclusion, Geraldo had one last trick up his sleeve: the infamous bath picture, submitted by yours truly, which was THE reason Witcher broke 44% on BotW. 44%. For reference, nothing had gotten more than 32% on Zelda up until this point, and most of us thought that nothing was going past 40%. And here Witcher blows past that supposed threshold, all thanks to me submitting the first picture of a naked man to actually make the front page (unless theres some Raiden pic I dont know about).

Now seriously, there were minor rally threads here and there, and there was some bullshit about a Persona 2 walkthrough that put a lot of extra eyeballs on the finals, but I dont think Witcher would have only gotten 41% if none of this was going on, as KPs stats suggest. If you look at the country-by-country breakdown, it stayed at around 40% for most of the match in the US; much like its match with Skyrim, however, it was significantly overperforming in Europe, and in the semis the difference between its American result and the overall score was about 4%. Everything was pretty consistent with the previous round. I dont really see Witcher dipping below 43% here, but again, theyre not my numbers, and he probably sees something I dont.

This concluded the epic run of the finalist that wasnt guaranteed to make finals just by showing up. Based on the posts Ive read, it seems like most people consider Xenoblade or Persona 4 to be the Star of the Contest based on their insane Division 4 runs, and they are definitely good contenders. For me, though, it HAS to be Witcher. This game didnt have the pedigree BotW did, and yet it never stopped impressing, round after round. How many times did people post something along the lines of, Holy shit Witcher or Jeez Witcher or OK calm down Witcher? The ME3 and God of War numbers were some of the most insane results of the contest, and even its closer matches are massively impressive when kept in context.

So yes, praise Geraldo. Praise Geraldo indeed.

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