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Comment by iEchoic | Hacker News Reader

The Witcher 3 was a solid game, but it's the kind of game that doesn't really have a lasting impact beyond rounding out a platform's lineup. Typically you have a few of those on each platform every year. This is like Tier III on an imaginary scale that I just created.

The general consensus on Breath of the Wild so far is that it's at least a tier above that - the tier that defines a console generation. Games like Mario 64, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, stuff like that. That's Tier II.

In Tier I are the games that are in consideration for the greatest games of all time: Ocarina of Time, Link to the Past, Final Fantasy VII, etc. Some people think it'll end up here, but we won't know that until we look back on it in a few years.

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If we follow your system, I would rank The Witcher 3 as Tier 0. It's simply the best game I've ever played in my 37 years of existence bar none.

OOT, LttP, FF VII ar all decent games but not even close to "greatest games of all time". I'd classify them as Tier 3 at best.

> Typically you have a few of those on each platform every year. This is like Tier III on an imaginary scale that I just created.

Really? I don't think there is ANY game of the quality of Witcher 3 coming on a yearly basis...

I'd say Witcher 3 was a little below or on par with Mass Effect, Fable, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Fallout or a Final Fantasy offering and combined you likely see at least one of those a year on average.

I've played all of the mentioned games except modern Final Fantasy titles and I think it's a big disservice to the TW3 to say it's at best on par with those games.

The only way I could imagine saying that is if you focus only on the mechanics of the RPG game loop and ignore world design, dialog quality, voice acting, characters, breadth of content, quests, etc.

Quite frankly, I feel Skyrim and the Mass Effect series blows Witcher 3 out of the water in regards to the criteria you just listed. I found the game rather boring given the limited character customization and rather linear skill progression. I couldn't bring myself to complete it and it sits on my shelf gathering dust.

Wait, what? "Regards to criteria you just listed"? His criteria was "dialog quality, voice acting, characters, breadth of content, quests, etc.". And you cite something completely different (skill progression, character customization)?!

The first sentence is its own statement, the rest was my personal experience with Witcher 3.

In 2015, Fallout 4, MGS, The Witcher 3 and Bloodbourne split the GotY awards, so game critics think there were a couple others that year.

Had The Witcher 3 come out in 2016, it would have certainly been behind Overwatch. Had it come out in 2014, it would have certainly been behind Dark Souls II. In 2017, it would be behind Breath of the Wild, and it's only March. There are equal or better games every year.

Fallout is certainly nothing like w3 quality and mgs 5 was flawed in many ways and unfinished. Next?

> Fallout is certainly nothing like w3 quality and mgs 5 was flawed in many ways and unfinished. Next?

Well, a lot of game critics disagree with that. Many of them gave GotY to MGS or Fallout instead, and MGS has a higher metacritic score than W3. I'm not going to debate beyond that because it'll devolve into complete subjectivity, but it's pretty clear W3 isn't a once-a-generation game.

GOTY awards and game ratings in general are such a corrupted payola system that they can't even be taken with a grain of salt. And even mediocre games in established IPs will be lauded to high heaven, out of all proportion to their quality or enjoyment value.

Luckily, there are people who aggregate this kind of stuff. I don't think the data supports your claims at all. Witcher 3 won an extremely high proportion of the awards in its year. Almost double what the three other 2015 games you list got combined if you look at awards from critics, and even more lopsided if you looked at fan awards.

https://gotypicks.blogspot.com/2015/09/2015-game-of-year.htm...

(And really, a suggestion of Dark Souls II as some kind of awards powerhouse is totally detached from any reality).

> I don't think the data supports your claims at all.

I'm going off of Wikipedia's GotY list, which includes only more notable publications. That lists adds in a ton of small gaming blogs and regional user's choice awards, which I don't think gives you better data. In Wikipedia's list, TW3 is winning, but a little less drastically.

I think you're attacking a claim I'm not making, and we're not even disagreeing, though. I didn't claim TW3 was worse than other contenders in 2015, I said it's one of a few solid games that come out every year. Everything you're saying and everything I'm saying supports that.

Edit: GotY is a decent signal, but discussions about which videogames are better are always going to be highly subjective. The Walking Dead won in 2012 and most people don't consider TWD to be on the same level as a lot of the other GotY games.

In the open-world RPG space, you are probably right. But across all genres you'll find at least one title.

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