Expedition 33, Ghost of Yotei Have Started Scooping Up GOTY Awards

Nice to Jennifer English and Ben Starr will their much deserved awards. Also nice to see Blue Prince win best indie as its fantastic.

I like how some of these categories are broken up, makes more sense than some of the other award shows.

Nice to see Schedule 1 winning something, GTA6 shouldn't be winning anything in my honest opinion...

Edit: the only one I really disagree with is PEAK winning multiplayer when that should clearly go to Arc raiders / BF6

If Oblivion got Remaster of the year then the bar is low.

They're all winners in my book.

Oblivion getting that award over Trails in the Sky? 😂, I see being a mess at launch means nothing these days.

Yotei out of the two for my money. If expedition was designed as a 3rd person action game and not turn based, then maybe I would have a different outlook, hard to say. But the turn based design takes away from the traditional sense of immersion into the world you get with other games. Combat is just too unnatural in turn based form. Expeditions narrative, story and art direction are fantastic though.

Giving three different games Game of the year is lame.

Shame not to see DS2 pick anything up, incredible game.

@Elfuggingjefe For what it’s worth, Expedition 33 is a game I liked but didn’t love until I completed it in its entirety. Only then did it really hit me how special it is.

That's pretty nutty that ES4 got best remake over Trails in the Sky. I get that Trails never gets respect at these things but that is a damn tragedy!

I'll just be tuning in to hopefully see Intergalactic trailer #2 and maybe some more great surprises. But I gotta say, when you are playing Battlefield 6 and a RPG flies by your head, into a building behind you which then crumbles, the audio design and sound of it all is truly amazing. haha. Arc sadly gonna win best online game, so throw a bone to BF6 and award the sound design

The more beloved game won GOTY, nice!

@somnambulance Nintendo fan here. I don’t get the love DKB is getting. I rage quit from the skewonky controls in the snow/zebra level and hadn’t turned it back on since. Is it just me? Maybe. I just beat Silksong so I know how to figure out control schemes and difficult games. I went into DKB excited and then it just fizzled until I just kept dying because I kept falling through the ice even though the zebra was supposed to stay on top of it. I don’t know. To each their own, I suppose.

E33 is my 2025 GOTY. Silksong a close second.

The fact nobody is talking about kcd2 is really annoying , it outshines e33 in everyway, its ridiculous , its a proper rpg , e33 is a great game but it rpg lite , kcd 2 is the best game of the year without a doubt , followed by death stranding 2 , e33 has 3rd place with its melancholic music, probably picking up best soundtrack over ds2 which is also ridiculous.

Posted over on PureXbox, might as well post here too. Expedition 33 is a great game in many ways, but no way on earth does it deserve to win ‘Best Visual Design’. It’s ugly as sin. Not just the underlying tech mind you, I’m referring specifically to the visual aesthetic they went for—it’s absolutely hideous.

This seems more like a ‘placate the crowd’ maneuver than a legitimate award. Too many people foaming at the mouth for what was simply a very well made, well written game with solid turn based excellence that happens to look like doody and which is being lofted on high an paraded around like the greatest game of the century.

@Balaam_ That's interesting, I've not really heard that take on the visual style. What do you dislike about it?

Best indie game is shinobi 🥷 art of vengeance. Such a incredible game Word up son

@lazarus11 sometimes less is more. That would be the case for E33.

33 winning best visual design over Yotei is a joke and shows the gamers who vote for these things shouldn’t because expeditions stock UE5 looking assets placed haphazardly everywhere is nowhere near as beautiful or put together has Yotei

@Balaam_ I really liked expedition but it’s fans are starting to sour me on it because they are so over the top annoying about it

@Metonymy I’m the opposite the ending is completely horrible and lowered it from like a 9 to 8

@kcarnes9051 nope less is more, is just less

@Balaam_ agreed , side quests are crap , it was a great indie game but nothing more , good music , excellent voice acting, but its story was convoluted and it had more plot holes than a sponge ,also the baked green screen
backgrounds ,reminded me of games from the late 90s , most overrated game of 2025 in my opinion, ds2 and kcd2 completely obliterate it

@dark_knightmare2 yup they're so annoying , its like they haven't played anything else in the last 10 years

@dark_knightmare2 Fair enough. It’s not the ending specifically that elevates it for me but more so looking at the game holistically.

@lazarus11 The "more" in the saying "Less is more" refers to the preference for a less complicated, refined core experience, which is the game philosophy in E33 compared to KCD2. "Less is less" is redundant and self-evident, and bringing it up on your part, as some kind of clap back, is an intellectually dishonest diversion made in bad faith from the meaning of the original saying. Some people don't want a complicated RPG. They just want a refined core experience. E33 does that well, and it won in part because of that, not in spite of it.

E33 is a strong political symbol:

• Turn-based, what people missed in the last FF games
• Handmade by an indie studio, the opposite of a big company producing only sequels with AI

I haven’t played it, because I don’t like turn-based RPGs. My impression from the articles and videos I consumed is: It‘s a very good, classical RPG with a new visual style in a fresh setting.

Is it better than it competitors as a game? Or is it also it’s role of a political symbol?

I really hope that Troy Baker starts scooping up some best performance awards. His Harrison Ford was impeccable. I also hope that KCD2 wins many well deserved awards too.

@DennisReynolds yeah Ben Starr and Jennifer English have become gaming treasures in the last 2 years. And it's great to see Blue prince get its flowers. I generally don't like puzzle games, but I got addicted to Blue prince, such a fantastic game

@dark_knightmare2 I agree with you. I love Expedition 33, it deserves to win best soundtrack three times over, but it's visual design is essentially "store bought asset flip" - random props scattered everywhere, with little attention paid to their meaning.

For a while I tried to make sense out of the environmental storytelling, why is this here, what does this corpse mean - and then I realised the environmental storytelling doesn't exist.

I think they made some smart choices in setting their game in a world where things didn't have to make sense, and they do some fun tricks with the tools they have (the sequence of lamps lighting themselves). They also make smart use of cranking up the lighting effects to 11 in interesting ways.

But it's not the best visual design. It's far from being the best visual design in an indie game from this year even.

@lazarus11 that’s why I don’t take to much notice to awards as they always pick the games that people are talking about the most. regardless if they deserve it or not.E33 is a great game but no way GOTY. Everyone has different opinions though

Both are fantastic together with Silent Hill f, all well deserving of GOTY and Death stranding 2 as runner up. Despite the world going downhill, 2025 was just a phenomenal year in gaming.

The e33 love in is getting tiresome. It is good, but not the second coming of the Messiah.
I mean suikoden remasters came out this year and the story of suikoden 2 is so much better then e33.
And yes i am aware it is all subjective.

I'm shocked that Yotei didn't win more here, for me this game was perfect and looked absolutely beautiful.

E33 is a great game which I haven't completed yet but I don't see how that won over yotei for visuals.

Oblivion was the best remaster remake are you serious there were no other contenders that can be the only reason or people are so stupid its baffling.

Console goty? Shouldn't even be an award, no such thing anymore, yotei is coming to pc

Honestly what an awful list, the only decent game on there besides oblivion is clair obscur, it's criminal that streamer slop like repo and peak even won anything

I haven't played alllllll the nominated games but would like to see Cronos and Silent Hill f get some love. Great year for horror.

@Elfuggingjefe same. It was fine. Painfully earnest. Stopped bothering with it apparently right near the end and sold it 😂

@somnambulance I'm shocked DS2 doesn't get a mention alongside KC2D let alone Cronos come to that matter. I liked E33 for the story and soundtrack but gameplay for the above 3 was far more enjoyable than E33 which grated at times. I get the feeling people voted for it more as the underdog as it kinda came out of nowhere.

I didn't know there was a console GOTY category. Expedition 33 did a great Job in allot of the gaming categories. Well deserved! I am also Glad Ghost of Yotei won console GOTY. These were my top two with Where winds meet and Assassin's Creed Shadows round out my top 4