Hero of Hyrule
Frieren the Slayer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is from the newest episode of their podcast, and I found a lot of interesting since it answers a lot of questions about where Nintendo is w.r.t. The Game Awards (please note these are not their own words, and I am paraphrasing, except where I use quote marks, where it's more or less a direct quote):
- Nintendo Japan seems to swerve wildly on TGAs, being all in on them one year, to flat out not caring about them the next
- In 2017, Nintendo absolutely wanted the critical spotlight and spectacle for the core market and that's why they went all out with their participation in 2017
- At the eleventh hour, Nintendo started doubting whether or not BOTW would actually win, because they were concerned that Mario Odyssey would split the vote with it, leading to some other game to take the win. This situation caused what Kit and Krysta refer to as literal "mass panic".
- Nintendo thought Horizon would win.
- Nintendo spent literal months on acceptance speeches, which is a level of taking things seriously that other companies apparently usually don't engage in.
- As the night of the show approached, apparently this was at least partly to try and keep everyone's mind off the "vote split" theory that got "people shook"
- There were multiple categories that BOTW and SMO were nominated in and didn't win in, which made Nintendo's contingent even surer neither game was going to win. By the end of the show that evening, morale was fairly low.
- Once Zelda won Game Direction, confidence was restored.
- Aonuma and Fujibayashi were extremely excited and pumped, and at the very least it is clear the individual developers do care, even if Nintendo as a company may be hot and cold on it. Aonuma was incredibly happy and excited at the game winning, and that victory marked the culmination of the BOTW journey to him.
- Apparently Koizumi had already accepted that Breath of the Wild would beat out Super Mario Odyssey.
- Koizumi is also the producer of the Switch overall, so he counted even BOTW's win as a win of his own.
- Everyone at Nintendo was incredibly happy and celebrated hard at the afterparty.
- After TGAs, BOTW would go on to win hundreds of awards, only adding to the festive mood.
- Geoff Keighley is involved in pretty much every aspect of the show (and is incredibly accommodating of everyone)
- "We were worried about Horizon, we should have been worried about Persona 5. That's a game everyone talks about at almost a Zelda level even five years later."
They talk about a lot of other stuff, including some very personal stuff for Kit, and as always, their show is full of cool anecdotes and some great banter. Definitely give it a watch and go support them!
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