Time to try and deal with at least one whole category. Unfortunately, this is going to be a bit of a messy one. As a recap here are the finalists and the extent to which I’ve engaged with them:
- Alan Wake 2, developed by Remedy Entertainment, published by Epic Games – Not played
- Baldur’s Gate 3, produced by Larian Studios – Not played
- Chants of Sennaar, developed by Rundisc, published by Focus Entertainment – Played
- DREDGE, developed by Black Salt Games, published by Team17 – Played
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, produced by Nintendo – Played
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, developed by Respawn Entertainment, published by Electronic Arts – Not played
Alan Wake and Jedi: Survivor I don’t have a platform suitable for playing. Baldur’s Gate 3 in principle I could get a MacOS version for but I’m not going to — at least not before Hugo voting closes because I don’t have the time. I think I would enjoy Baldur’s Gate 3 but I’m not particularly curious about it.
That leaves three games, each of which I’ve played on Nintendo Switch. I enjoyed playing each of them but how to rank them?
Chants and Dredge feel comparable. They are very different games but both are relatively short, both have a core story arc and setting and both integrate that story with the playing of the games. Comparing them is still like comparing novellas in different genres by stylistically very different authors but at least apples & oranges are both fruit.
Tears of the Kingdom is something else altogether. Firstly, I spent as long playing it as at least the other two combined AND didn’t actually finish it. It is a massive game with many gameplay elements and changes in setting. Aspects of the world-building and story relate to a decades-old franchise as well as a recent iteration of the Zelda games. Size, complexity and the level of development behind Tears of the Kingdom are on a different scale to Chants and Dredge.
Put another way: which was the better 2023 science fiction & fantasy? Thornhedge by T.Kingfisher or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2? It is a stupid question but I feel like it is at least close to the sense of mismatched scale that is involved.
One solution would be to further subdivide the category but that way lies madness. A different response would be to throw my hands up, say the whole category was a bad idea and No Award everything. Let us avoid both these options and consider why we should bother with the category at all and in the process let us consider the question I posed in the previous paragraph: which was the better 2023 science fiction & fantasy? Thornhedge by T.Kingfisher or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2?
If I’m trapped in a maze by an evil magician and the only way out is to come up with a rational, defensible argument for which of Thornhedge by T.Kingfisher or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 was “better”, there are a number of elements I can remove. It can’t be just which one I enjoyed more and it can’t be on the basis of which characters I felt more emotionally attached to. It can’t be on the basis of plot (the novellas has one plot, the TV series has several) and it really shouldn’t be on the money spent making the two things. So what can we use to make a fair comparison? Well, I could consider which of the two made better use of science fiction/fantasy ideas and also which of the two dealt with such ideas in more original ways. A whole season of a TV show still has some advantages there but let me offer yet another question.
Which of these is more significant to science fiction & fantasy as a genre across multiple modes of expression and media: Star Trek: The Original Series versus The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula Le Guin? Ah! Sure Star Trek is massive, including how it shaped science fiction fandom or things like fan fiction and yet, Le Guin’s little story has packed a punch through the genre to the extent that the very Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 has its own version of the story. I think, Star Trek: The Original Series wins out but at least there was a contest there.
So let me reconsider the whole category in terms of ideas. I don’t think any of these games amounts to having the punching power of Star Trek: The Original Series or The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas but I can believe video games (or other interactive media) can have the capacity to inspire new ideas and new works in other media. So in those terms what should I be looking for?
- Originality of setting/worldbuilding
- Novel or unusual use of science fiction or fantasy concepts
- Integration of the gameplay with the setting and concepts
- Immersion of the player into all of the above (the virtual sense of wonder)
So on that basis I can rank the three I played and give a kind of ranking on the other three on the basis of what I know about them (I won’t actually vote using the rankings for the three I didn’t play, I’ll just vote for the three I played).
- The Chants of Sennar: In this game, you wander through a huge tower encountering tribes of people at different levels of the tower (devotees, warriors, bards, alchemists and anchorites) who communicate using languages you don’t speak. You have to complete a series of language puzzles to make sense of the world about you. This is beautifully realised and the actual playing of the game is literally the task your character has to complete: make sense of what people are saying. This all ties into a broader theme of how miscommunication maintains social barriers. Game, story and worldbuilding all work together here in a world that feels original and yet familiar. An easy winner.
- Dredge: You run a fishing boat in some early 20th century like archepelago of islands. You take your boat out to sea, fish for sea creatures and sell them at the local port. Yet, the people you meet have dark omens and some of the fish…just aren’t right and at night…best not talk about night…you probably imagined the eyes and lack of sleep clouded your brain and the voices weren’t real. Genuinely enjoyable in a paranoid Lovecraftian fishing simulator sort of way. I’m putting it second becuase the Lovecraftian bit wasn’t as original as my top pick and the gameplay bit (mini-games for catching fish) was less connected to the broader plot.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Link must explore the damaged Kingdom of Hyrule from high above to the ground below and the caverns underneath. The clever implementation of physics/mechanics in the world allows you to build devices and solve complex physical puzzles that connect to the broader plot. While the complexity of the game is to be admired there is a sense of this being a whole bunch of games mashed together in a kind of classic-Zelda meets Minecraft meets Skyrim. Still, managing to mash such games together is impressive.
- Alan Wake 2: According to Wikipedia: “the story follows best-selling novelist Alan Wake, who has been trapped in an alternate dimension for 13 years, as he attempts to escape by writing a horror story involving an FBI special agent named Saga Anderson.” That is certainly an interesting premise and from what I’ve read about the game, you can alter aspects of the story Wake writes to impact events in the “real” world where an FBI agent is investigating the other half of the story. I’d need to play this to rate it higher but it sounds like it has the most interesting set of ideas of the three games I haven’t played.
- Baldur’s Gate 3: a well relaised (by all accounts) modern version of a Dungeons & Dragons video game. I probably will play this sooner or later but as far as I can tell it is an excellent way to experience a D&D setting but there’s nothing fundamentally new here.
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: The title sums up everything I’ve read about the game. It is a survival game in the Star Wars universe where you are a Jedi. Sounds fun but does not sound like it is making a net contributor to the stack of science fiction ideas there are in the world.
So there you go. Am I overvaluing originality above other aspects? Maybe, but we need to pick a common currency between radically different things.