LogFAQs > #947926647

Division 3 Round 1: Balthier, Big Daddy, Gordon Freeman, and Scorpion

Balthier - 29975 [22.45%]
Big Daddy - 25325 [18.97%]
Gordon Freeman - 38017 [28.47%]
Scorpion - 40197 [30.11%]
Total Votes - 133514

If you hop in the wayback machine and only look at the guru picks and such, you'd think this was some predictable match that we could all just talk about for 30 seconds and move on. And on the surface, that's true. Balthier totally crapped the bed in 2007 when everyone expected him to get first place over <i>Ada Wong</i> of all people -- just a total choke job -- and people also knew that Big Daddy would be weak. GameFAQs, by and large, does not care about FPS characters.

Of course I say that with Gordon Freeman of Gordon Freeman Never Wins lore in the same match. Gordon, year after year, managed to keep choking away winnable matches. This dude lost to Tina Armstrong, who most people can't remember without Googling. This dude lost to Max Payne. This dude lost to Sam Fisher. Leon Kennedy was a predictable loss, but still. It took Phoenix Wright for Gordon to finally get off the schneid, and miraculously, Board 8 didn't hate the guy despite getting his first win on our mascot. He then repeated his winning ways in 2007, in a very debatable 4way match against Ike and Duke Nukem. He actually managed to not choke that year!

But then The Orange Box happened in October of 2007, and it gave everything involved a boost. We saw a little bit of a hint of this with GLaDOS doing okay in round one of this contest, but it was Gordon himself who really proved that it mattered. I also maintain that if 2008 was a 1v1 games contest and Portal had a good draw, Portal would have gotten a bandwagon and won the entire thing outright. We've seen new games catch fire and so off in these things over the years.

To the point. Everyone picked Scorpion > Gordon Freeman > the field in this match. We have the template from 2007; Sub-Zero > Gordon. But that was pre-Orange Box. Memes + good games = "uh oh" in the early parts of a contest poll, when the board vote rules.

Gordon caught a bunch of early votes, and had an early lead in the match. Balthier and that thing from Bioshock stunk up the place, as expected, and we all figured Scorpion would handle his business once the board vote died down. And he did. The first place spot was tied 15 minutes in, and we all figured Scorpion would cruise to this contest having yet another predictable result.

<b>"NOT SO FAST, my friend!"</b>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHJSVT8meQ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVAc3q-7qPQ

I'm just saying this while looking at creativename's updater 12 years later. I remember this one very well. When Gordon Freeman won the next update to go by 100 votes, <i>all hell broke loose</i> on Board 8. You wouldn't know it to look at our board or our vote totals now, but people used to live and die by every 15 minute update in crazy matches. This one, despite being a round 1 fun match, had people going <i>wild.</i> GORDON FREEMAN was doing this? The same dude that lost to Tina Armstrong? THAT guy?!

Yeah, that guy. Orange Box love was real, and it's not like Mortal Kombat was sitting here doing much of anything. Those few updates where it looked like Gordon was going to shock the world were a total madhouse, and while I hate to rely on "you had to be there" analysis, it's the truth. For those of us who love these things, Gordon Freeman Never Wins felt like family. To see him go from that to <i>this</i> was amazing.

It didn't stop there, either. This dude actually held his lead overnight. He didn't <i>build</i> a lead or anything, but he held strong at 100-150 all night long. If he managed to catch the morning vote, he was legitimately going to pull off an impossible feat and actually get first place in this match.

You know the rest. Scorpion caught the morning vote, and that was that. It took a little while in the am hours before Scorpion fully controlled things, but fully control things he did. A fun match turned into Scorpion winning by 2200 votes fairly quickly, but no one talks about that part when they bring this match up. They talk about people losing their absolute shit for 7 hours. Conventional wisdom held that this would be Gordon's one and only moment this contest, as Vincent > Scorpion in round 2 looked like the most predictable result ever.

Yeah if you thought people lost their minds in this match, just wait.

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