{"id":233166,"date":"2025-12-15T00:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T00:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/233166\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T00:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T00:13:09","slug":"expedition-33-dominates-at-the-game-awards-annenberg-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/233166\/","title":{"rendered":"Expedition 33\u201d dominates at The Game Awards \u2013 Annenberg Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year, video games all bowed to one king at The Game Awards: \u201cClair Obscur: Expedition 33.\u201d Sandfall\u2019s underdog RPG success \u2014 hailed for its gorgeous worldbuilding, artful combat system and gripping soundtrack<\/a>, won a record-breaking nine awards out of 12 nominations<\/a> \u2014 including the top prize, Game of the Year. <\/p>\n

The achievement wowed video game developers like Dineth Meegoda, a technical artist at Respawn Entertainment. <\/p>\n

\u201c[What] inspires me is the fact that they are not afraid to remix things,\u201d Meegoda said. \u201cThey have obvious influences from a lot of existing games, like \u2018Persona,\u2019 but taking that and remixing it in their own style, especially taking parts of their own culture and their own influences, and putting that into the world is really inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cClair Obscur,\u201d a narrative role-playing game centered around fighting enemies in turn-based combat, was adored by a crowd who roared upon each trophy it notched. Gaming producer Su Dural, who decorated her nails in support of \u201cClair Obscur,\u201d raved about hearing the Best Score and Music winner\u2019s soundtrack, which was performed live by an orchestra during the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy ears turned blessed today just listening to that live, I was so happy,\u201d Dural said.<\/p>\n

Besides \u201cClair Obscur\u201d publisher Kepler Interactive, only one other publisher won multiple awards: Nintendo, which won two awards for \u201cMario Kart World\u201d and \u201cDonkey Kong Bananza.\u201d<\/p>\n

The awards show also played host to a number of new game announcements. New entries in beloved series like \u201cControl,\u201d \u201cMega Man\u201d and \u201cTomb Raider\u201d were unveiled at Thursday\u2019s show. <\/p>\n

Alex C, an aspiring voice actor, didn\u2019t hesitate to highlight what his favorite announcement of the night was.<\/p>\n

\u201cMega Man, for sure. I\u2019m just a huge Capcom fan, so it\u2019s like [seeing], Mega Man and Monster Hunter. I was excited to see all that,\u201d Alex said.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just games that were announced \u2014 the upcoming \u201cStreet Fighter\u201d film adaptation also made an appearance with a trailer. Its star-studded cast, including Cody Rhodes, Noah Centineo and Jason Momoa, later took to the stage to award Best Ongoing Game to \u201cNo Man\u2019s Sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new entry in the \u201cDivinity\u201d franchise, simply titled \u201cDivinity,\u201d came as another surprise. \u201d It will be developed by Larian Studios, who previously won Game of the Year in 2023 for \u201cBaldur\u2019s Gate 3.\u201d That announcement was previously teased by a mysterious statue sitting outside the Peacock Theater, a payoff that Dural was waiting for. <\/p>\n

\"FigureMysterious statue sitting outside the Peacock Theater, teasing divinity (Sourced from “The Gaming Bible”). <\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018Divinity\u2019 announcement was crazy,\u201d Dural said. \u201cI\u2019ve been watching all these theories about that statue they revealed for days now, and everyone was speculating something else about it. And oh my god \u2014 of course, it\u2019s Larian.\u201d<\/p>\n

The honorary Game Changer award was given to gaming education company Girls Make Games. The award was presented to two alumni of the program \u2014 including USC computer science junior Monica Paredes, who was among the first recipients of the Girls Make Games scholarship in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among the biggest announcements was the unveiling of a release date for Phantom Blade Zero \u2014 a game centered around Chinese mythology, and one of the most anticipated PlayStation 5 releases in 2026. <\/p>\n

Tyler \u201cSarthe\u201d Robinson, a content creator boasting over 400,000 followers on both TikTok and Instagram, was invited to China to try out the game early. He says the game is going to \u201ctake over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single movement in the entire game has been motion captured by the best kung fu artists in the world,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re watching gameplay of the game, it looks like a cinematic the whole time\u2026 You\u2019re like a fucking action hero, okay? It\u2019s super hype.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final announcement of the night was the reveal of \u201cHighguard,\u201d an original player-vs-player first-person shooter game made by developers behind \u201cTitanfall\u201d and \u201cApex Legends.\u201d It\u2019s an announcement that was surreal for Meegoda, who worked on \u201cApex Legends\u201d with many of \u201cHighguard\u2019s\u201d staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like \u2014 \u2018Wow, this is crazy.\u2019 Like, these are people that used to work on the same project that I work on now. I\u2019m really excited to check it out, although I have no clue what\u2019s in store,\u201d Meegoda said. <\/p>\n

The celebration left many of the fans, actors, developers and streamers inspired. However, for Dural and other attendees, it was the success story of Sandfall\u2019s indie development team at \u201cClair Obscur\u201d that stuck with them the most. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was mainly supporting that game this year,\u201d Dural said. \u201cJust the journey that the team went through, how much of a passion project that was and what kind of incredible things that you can make when there\u2019s collaboration and passion involved \u2013I think that\u2019s, like, really inspiring, and that\u2019s the kind of environment I would love to work in one day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year, video games all bowed to one king at The Game Awards: \u201cClair Obscur: Expedition 33.\u201d Sandfall\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[102768,124181,18,124180,7894,19,17,1370,124183,3904,124182,82],"class_list":["post-233166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-clair-obscur","tag-clair-obscur-expedition-33","tag-eire","tag-game-awards","tag-gaming","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-los-angeles","tag-mega-man","tag-nintendo","tag-sandfall","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115720697273970443","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}