Results[]
Friday, March 27, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 1 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 1 |
| Match Date | Friday, March 27, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 83.04% 64 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 96.95% |
| User Votes |
Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6925 The Outer Worlds - 1168 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5510 The Outer Worlds - 1073 |
Not to be confused with "Outer Wilds", which did not make the field. We all knew Zelda would smash this entire contest right from the jump, but the difference this year as compared to most is everyone was actually rooting for Zelda to smash this entire contest. It wasn't really the obvious winner catching anti votes until the tail end of the contest, and it started the Zelda Redemption Tour (remember, Zelda got embarrassed by Undertale last games contest) by utterly demolishing The Outer Worlds. There is a sick joy in watching a car crash unfold, and Zelda gave us seven of them this year.
Usually with the first writeup I get to comment on how Nintendo has the #1 overall seed and gets to squish some bug in the first match, but this was actually our first such Nintendo stomping in quite awhile. Dante was the #1 overall seed in the last character battle, 1995 does not count, and Chrono Trigger had this spot in 2015. You have to go all the way back to 2013 to see the last true Nintendo #1 overall seed in a contest (Link was the #1 seed that year, but Draven won the contest), and you have to go back to 2010 to see the last Nintendo #1 overall seed in a 1v1 contest. I could bring up the Rivalry Rumble, but I won't.
I will say that The Outer Worlds deserved better given Obsidian is now doing Bethesda's job better than Bethesda does, but every seeded contest needs their 16s and someone had to get fed to Zelda early. It happens.
Ctes's Analysis[]
For the opening match of the contest, this was actually a pretty interesting one. It was the clear sign of just how beastly Breath of the Wild would be. Of course BotW would win big and of course it would have the biggest prediction percentage of the contest, but breaking 85% is insane. Only three other games failed to break 15% and they all ended up at the bottom of the x-stats too. This also came right after a contest where only a match involving our most hated character, Draven, was such a big blowout. Breath of the Wild is an expected winner, that almost always gives you some number of anti-votes and sure enough, Breath of the Wild did worse in the first 15 minutes, but it’s still incredible.
The craziest thing is it didn’t face some of the worst turbofodder we had in this bracket. The Outer Worlds had just finished right behind Sekiro in a GotY poll, a game that was a popular upset pick to make round 3 and neither was that far away from the overall winner, Resident Evil 2. It was clearly ahead of Devil May Cry 5 in that poll. There is a lot of uncertainty in using Game of the Year polls for anything, but they’re a fine indicator. The Outer Worlds could probably win a fair share of matches, but instead it got to be completely obliterated against the contest favorite. Now, The Outer Worlds probably has a less dedicated fanbase than a bunch of our other weak entries, which might help fuel BotW. The game is often confused with Outer Wilds, that says something about it, but even so, Breath of the Wild opened up looking even better than expected and we expected it to roll over the contest, that’s very impressive.
Safer777's Analysis[]
So first match and we had the strongest game that is expected to win easily this whole thing. And EVERYONE loved this game. I mean once it has 99 on Metacritic! I am surprised that Outer Worlds managed to sneak in in this contest. I know the game is good since it is from the developers that made a good Fallout game(New Vegas)but still I don't think people were blown away and I don't see anyone talking about the game like 1 month after it came out.
Eh whatever. So of course BOTW won easily. Now the funny part is that people expected BOTW to score lower than this so yeah we are talking about a monster contest strength game here. And everyone knows it, I mean look at the correct picks! Almost 96%! Damn! So there you go. What else? Oh yeah in the early concepts Link was supposed to ride a REAL life bike dressed as an astronaut! You can't make these things up!
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Not much to say here since it's the prohibitive favorite destroying some random fodder that I've never heard of, but with arguably the most well-received Zelda game since Ocarina of Time itself making its contest debut...vote totals were still down from the previous contest, where our opening match was Dante vs. Cuphead. Okay, yes, with this four-matches-at-once format, technically we also had Legend of Zelda in an opening match in CBX, too, but here's the scary part: when you take out the registered user bonus, not only did BotW-TOW draw fewer voters than Dante-Cuphead, but Breath of the Wild drew fewer votes than Dante! The registered-unregistered ratio was more lopsided here, though; in Dante-Cuphead, registered voters only outnumbered unregistered voters 8819-8756, whereas here it was 8093-6583. Which, uh, is kind of scary given that BotW's winning margin among the registered voters was 6925-1168. More registered voters voted for BotW than unregistered voters voted period! That's ridiculous. I guess there was a lot to say after all.