TGO Daily | March 26, 2021 | 2021 BAFTA Awards
March 26, 2021
2021 BAFTA Awards
The BAFTAs have officially given out their annual awards, which is definitely one of the more respected game awards in the industry right now. I’ll outline everything, but here’s the list of winners if you just want to skip to it.
The big winner is Supergiant Games with Hades, which picked up the top award of “Best Game.” They also won more awards than anybody else at the event, also winning “Artistic Achievement” for Jen Zee, “Game Design,” “Narrative” for Greg Kasavin, and “Performer in a Supporting Role” for Logan Cunningham.
There were only three other games which got more than one award. Animal Crossing: New Horizons won “Game Beyond Entertainment” and “[Best] Multiplayer.” Sackboy: A Big Adventure won “[Best] British Game,” and “[Best] Family.” The Last of Us Part II won “[Best] Animation,” and “Performer in a Leading Role” for Laura Bailey as Abby. The game also picked up the only fan voted “Game of the Year” award.
Here are some other interesting wins. “Debut Game” went to Carrion (which I was surprised by, I was expecting Factorio). “Evolving Game” was won by Sea of Thieves over games like Destiny 2 and Fortnite. “Audio Achievement” went to Ghost of Tsushima while “Music” went to Miles Morales.
Kentucky Route Zero picked up a win in the “Original Property” category, which I was happy to see. Finally, Dreams was awarded the “Technical Achievement” award.
Do you agree or disagree with any of these? I actually think it was a really solid year of games, where multiple titles could have won each category.
Dota 2
A new anime based on the game Dota 2 has just released on Netflix. The season is eight episodes long and is officially titled Dota: Dragon’s Blood.
In preparation for an influx of new interested players in the game, Valve has updated the onboarding process for new players. The tutorial has been overhauled to be far more comprehensive and covering the basic techniques. They’ve also added a “New Player Mode” which is meant to be a place to learn the game with other new players. There’s a bunch of other stuff too, including better tooltips, improved bots, and a streamlined shop system. They detail it all in this blog post (there’s a lot).
Another large change they are making is banning smurf accounts, which are new accounts from experienced players. They used to deal with these accounts by placing them in higher ranks as soon as possible — now it’s outright bannable. They’ve got a bunch of systems in place to determine who is smurfing.
Rome: Total War remaster
For the first time in the franchise’s history, Total War is getting a remastered game. The treatment will be going to Rome: Total War, which is to celebrate the franchise’s 20th anniversary. Rome is the third game in the series, and originally released in 2004.
It will feature new gameplay content, with 16 new playable factions. It will also have improved graphics, better help resources (tutorial, in-game wiki, etc.) and a ton of quality of life features.
The game will released on PC on April 29th along with cross-platform multiplayer (Windows/Mac/Linux), which is also a series first. Both expansions will be lumped in for a total of $30 USD, or 50% off if you own the original.
The Grab-Bag
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