Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards never fails to deliver controversy at the end of each gaming year. 2024 was packed with impressive titles, including Black Myth: Wukong, AstroBot, Space Marine 2, and more. While not every game can win the prestigious ‘Game of the Year’ title, or even be one of the six nominated, some titles have been deprived of a spot among the elite nominees.
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Several games come to mind this year, including Stellar Blade, which is a bigger snub than Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and all of that is done in favor of FromSoftware’s Elden Ring DLC. Stellar Blade came out on April 26, 2024, as a PS5 exclusive with a planned PC port sometime in 2025. Made by a South Korean video game developer, Shift Up, founded by Kim Hyung Tae, it is an action-adventure game combining hack-and-slash combat with RPG elements.
Players take control of Eve, an android sent to the post-apocalyptic Earth on a mission to save humanity following a relentless war against monstrous creatures known as the Naytibas. Played from the third-person perspective, Eve has many skills to learn on her journey, all unlockable through the well-known skill tree mechanic.
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The combat style takes much from Sekiro: Only Shadows Dies Twice, with Blikn/Repulse mechanics similar to Mikiri Counter, but sped up to rely more on attack rather than defense. The steep learning curve on combat made the game more valuable to players as it didn’t shy away from getting into their faces with difficulty and massive enemy variety.
The story has already been seen a thousand times but manages to float as it comes with a few twists and several different endings. Stellar Blade also comes with NG+ and a ton of content outside of gameplay, including the latest NieR Automata DLC collaboration.
When Shift Up’s action-adventure came out, no one expected such a “stellar” debut in the AAA market by a South Korean mobile games developer. The game played great, and looked great, achieving the technical level of games with a much higher budget.
On another note, Stellar Blade is unafraid to turn darker when needed to fully embrace the post-apocalyptic earth, but I digress. On the other end of the spectrum of the potential snubs is the heavily marketed Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Reviewed as BioWare’s return to form and straight-out GOTY winner, instead, it exposed the studio’s struggles to deliver a worthy RPG of the Dragon Age name.
The game fell short in many critical elements including the story and overall writing, which boils down to the same ending despite player choices. The entire game felt made for the modern audience steering away from true Dragon Age fans as everything was washed down, without a sense of moral ambiguity. Another thing is the combat, which is essentially a button mash at repetitive enemies, despite all the skills and companions.
Compared to Stellar Blade, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a lesser RPG, and righteously left out as a GOTY contender. That said, both games have received some form of recognition at this year’s Game Awards. For instance, Veilguard received a nomination in the category Innovation in Accessibility, while Stellar Blade received nominations in two categories, Best Music Score and Best Action Game.
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Amid these two contrasting titles stands Hidetaka Miyazaki’s latest ingenious creation. Elden Ring finally received the long-craved extension entitled Shadow of the Erdtree. While there is no denying that, if a standalone game deserves Game of the Year, there is contention surrounding it for being downloadable content for the original game and not being accessible without the huge chunk of the original story played out.
That said, Shadow of the Erdtree has pushed and set new limits for DLC content. The expansion resets the game with the addition of Scadutree Fragments, among many other additions, but does it deserve a Game of the Year nomination in favor of a full-fledged game built from scratch?
DLCs being nominated for awards is nothing new. Witcher 3’s expansion Blood and Wine won Best RPG back in 2016, while Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty won Best Ongoing Game in 2023. However, the controversy behind the 2024 Game of the Year Awards is that Shadow of the Erdtree is the first DLC ever nominated for the Game of the Year.
Furthermore, a new section was added to the GOTY official FAQ page just before the nominees’ reveal – that caters to DLCs, expansion packs, and other similar renditions of original games.
It reads, “The Game Awards aims to recognize the best creative and technical work each year, irrespective of the format of that content’s release. Expansion packs, new game seasons, DLCs, remakes, and remasters are eligible in all categories, if the jury deems the new creative and technical work to be worthy of a nomination. Factors such as the newness of the content and its price/value should be taken into consideration.”
With the questionable and controversial decision to make DLCs eligible for the ultimate award, everyone hurled to say that it was done so that Shadow Of the Erdtree could scoop up another win for FromSoftware. The predictions turned out true as the Elden Ring DLC was one of the top six games nominated for a GOTY award.
This has left some great titles out of competition, including Stellar Blade. Shift Up’s action-adventure could have stood among the elite rather easily thanks to the overall experience it offers to everyone who steps into the post-apocalyptic world.
It is yet to be seen how everything will play out for Eve and the Tarnished One when the ceremony goes live on December 12th. But one thing is clear, the inclusion of Shadow of the Erdtree DLC has changed The Game Awards and there is no turning back.
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