King of hype Geoff Keighly just announced the nominees for the 2020 Game Awards, and as I’m looking through some of these nominations, I realize that none of this makes sense.
First of goddamn all, Paper Mario: The Origami King should be nominated for Game of the Year instead of only being nominated in the “Family Category” (not that there’s anything wrong with family games, but Origami King was the Spec Ops: The Line of Paper Mario games.)
More importantly, though, none of these games came out in 2020. It’s not possible.
Geoff Keighley and his Game Electoral College are trying to tell me not only did Final Fantasy 7 Remake come out this year, but it came out a paltry seven months ago?
Not. Possible.
In the grand scheme of time, seven months is nothing. Even in the grand scheme of a single calendar year, seven months covers a tiny bit more than half. But seven months in 2020’s time dilation feels like a trip from our Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda system.
Some of the nominated games just don’t feel like 2020 releases. Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons feel like they were dropped into ether by the Great Video Game Sage some 2,000 years ago (March). Not every game feels like it popped onto my console fully formed like Athena sprouting from the head of Zeus. Coincidentally, Hades is one of those games, which has been in early access since December 2018, but released in full Jul—wait September?? of this year. Other releases like Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla feel like they came out a few mo-
*taps finger to ear* Last week?!
Covid is the likely culprit for why everything feels approximately 1000% longer ago than what it is. A lot of us stayed at home as much as we were able to and socially distanced. And much like the actual quantum phenomena of time dilation, because our bodies stayed relatively motionless compared to all the observed movement of a never ending news cycle, time seemed to pass more slowly. The result is me staring incredulously at these Game Awards nominees wondering how in the blue hell Half Life: Alyx came out this year.
But it did. March 23rd in fact. Remember March?