The BAFTA Games Awards happened this week, in which Baldur’s Gate 3 (surprise) took home another Game of the Year award — or Best Game, as BAFTA calls it. In total, Larian took home four awards for their RPG, with a fifth, Performer in a Supporting Role, going to Andrew Wincott, the actor who played the villainous Raphael. If my calculations are correct, this means that Baldur’s Gate 3 has taken home ten Game of the Year Awards, those being:
- BAFTA Games Awards: Best Game of 2024
- The Game Awards: Game of the Year
- Golden Joystick: Ultimate Game of the Year
- The Steam Awards: Game of the Year
- New York Game Awards: Big Apple Award for Game of the Year
- DICE Awards: Game of the Year
- Game Developers Choice Awards: Game of the Year
- GLAAD Media Awards: Outstanding Video Game
- GamesBeat: Rachel Kaser’s No. 1 Game of 2023
I’m sure you’ll all agree that that last accolade is by far the most important. I’ve actually started a new Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough (though I likely won’t get very far with Dragon’s Dogma 2 still on my plate) with one of my TTRPG characters in the role of Tav, as you can see in the picture above. In addition to Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dragon’s Dogma 2, I think I’ll be checking out Botany Manor this week. I’ve had quite enough big feast-like games lately — I think a smaller, comfier bowl of soup sounds like more my speed in my downtime.
In other news, the IGDA has issued a call-to-action imploring studio heads to avoid unnecessary layoffs wherever possible, providing a list of resources to help those same people build better, more sustainable work cultures. In roughly the last 16 months, an estimated 18,000 people in the industry have lost their jobs, so I think it’s a bit past time for said cultural change, but if there’s even a slim chance that it helps another studio avoid layoffs, then it’s worth it.
The highlight of my week (aside from the aforementioned Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough) was the Triple-I Initiative Show, which showed off several indie titles including Slay the Spire 2 and The Rogue Prince of Persia. It’s nice to sometimes just have a moment to celebrate fun games, even as things look bleak for the rest of the industry. Now, if anyone needs me, I’m going to wrap myself in the definitive Game of the Year for a whole weekend.
What to play this week
What’s new:
- Botany Manor
- Europa
- Children of the Sun
- Inkbound
- Infection Free Zone
- Broken Roads
New on subscription services:
- Kona (Xbox Game Pass)
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (Xbox Game Pass)
- Drawn: Trail of Shadows (Prime Gaming)
- Faraway 3: Arctic Escape (Prime Gaming)
- Fallout 76 (Prime Gaming)
- Demon’s Tilt (Prime Gaming)
- Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (Amazon Luna)
- Fallout: New Vegas (Amazon Luna)
- Gigantic: Rampage Edition (GeForce Now)
- Backpack Battles (GeForce Now)
- Fallout 4 (GeForce Now)
- Fallout 76 (GeForce Now)
- Ghostrunner (GeForce Now)
- Terra Invicta (GeForce Now)
- Super R-Type (Nintendo Switch Online)
- Wrecking Crew ‘98 (Nintendo Switch Online)
- Sugoi Hebereke (Nintendo Switch Online)