The organizers of the 18th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards have announced its slate of nominees for this year's awards. Leading the pack are The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn with six nominations apiece.
The GDCA are an annual awards show hosted at the Games Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California. The organization has awards for categories like Best Audio, Best Debut, Best Design, Best Mobile Game, Innovation Award, Best Narrative, Best Technology, Best Visual Art, Best VR/AR Game, and Game of the Year.
While Zelda and Horizon are nominated for the most awards, including Game of the Year, the two are followed by Nier: Automata, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Cuphead which have three nominations each. However, only Nier and PUBG are nominated for Game of the Year while Cuphead is listed as an honorable mention.
You can see the full list of nominees below.
Best Audio
Cuphead
Nier: Automata
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Horizon Zero Dawn
Honorable Mentions: Super Mario Odyssey, Star Wars: Battlefront II, Destiny 2, Persona 5, Night in the Woods
Best Debut
Team Cherry (Hollow Knight)
Sidebar Games (Golf Story)
StudioMDHR (Cuphead)
Infinite Fall (Night in the Woods)
Jason Roberts/Buried Signal (Gorogoa)
Honorable Mentions: Game Grumps (Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator), Terrible Toybox (Thimbleweed Park), Team Salvato (Doki Doki Literature Club!), Lizardcube (Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap)
Best Design
Super Mario Odyssey
Horizon Zero Dawn
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nier: Automata
Honorable Mention: Cuphead, Gorogoa, What Remains of Edith Finch, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, Prey
Best Mobile Game
Reigns: Her Majesty
Hidden Folks
Monument Valley 2
Gorogoa
Bury Me, My Love
Honorable Mentions: Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Fire Emblem Heroes, Old Man's Journey, Flipflop Solitaire, Gnog
Innovation Award
Gorogoa
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
What Remains of Edith Finch
Everything
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
Honorable Mentions: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Cuphead, Nier: Automata, Horizon Zero Dawn, Super Mario Odyssey, Tacoma, Pyre
Best Narrative
Night in the Woods
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
What Remains of Edith Finch
Horizon Zero Dawn
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Honorable Mentions: Nier: Automata, Tacoma, Persona 5, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Best Technology
Destiny 2
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Assassin's Creed: Origins
Horizon Zero Dawn
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Honorable Mentions: Star Wars Battlefront II, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Nier: Automata, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Best Visual Art
Persona 5
Cuphead
Horizon Zero Dawn
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Night in the Woods
Honorable Mentions: Gorogoa, Star Wars Battlefront II, Assassin's Creed Origins, Destiny 2, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Super Mario Odyssey
Best VR/AR Game
Superhot VR
Star Trek: The Bridge Crew
Lone Echo
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
Honorable Mentions: Farpoint, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, Robo Recall, Gog, Doom VFR
Game of the Year
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
Nier: Automata
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
Horizon Zero Dawn
Super Mario Odyssey
Honorable Mentions: Cuphead, What Remains of Edith Finch, persona 5, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Gorogoa, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Night in the Woods
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Zelda's got a strong chance of sweeping all its categories.
That said, most look like a hard fight: Audio is genuinely a tossup, Design is a brawl between extremely popular action-adventure games plus PUBG, Narrative reads like a choose-your-Oscar-bait, Tech is going to be a duel, and Visual Art seems like a battle between HZD's vistas and enemy design, Persona 5's set pieces/UI and Cuphead's throwback style.
Zelda felt like it was trying to something new. Horizon was being just a really good game that has been done before just with robot dinosaurs and just being really pretty much as Kat wrote doesn't really have much standing anymore for some people. Guess really it's up to how you felt with the changes with Zelda. Have a friend that felt Zelda was one of the worse game he played this year because of things like durability, limited weapon slots, weak enemy variety, and a few others. The only thing he really loved are the shrines which isn't really enough to save it for him.
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That said, most look like a hard fight: Audio is genuinely a tossup, Design is a brawl between extremely popular action-adventure games plus PUBG, Narrative reads like a choose-your-Oscar-bait, Tech is going to be a duel, and Visual Art seems like a battle between HZD's vistas and enemy design, Persona 5's set pieces/UI and Cuphead's throwback style.