Results[]

Saturday, April 4, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
Division | Division 5 |
---|---|
Match # | 33 |
Match Date | Saturday, April 04, 2020 |
Oracle Expectations |
The Witcher 3 - 76.65% 60 for - 0 against |
GameFAQs Prediction |
The Witcher 3 - 92.23% |
User Votes |
The Witcher 3 - 7184 Assassin's Creed Odyssey - 1340 |
Anonymous Votes |
The Witcher 3 - 5714 Assassin's Creed Odyssey - 1130 |
Well this was certainly an eye-opener. In these contests, it's all fun and cute to debate early round matches. They make things fun and I certainly wouldn't take that away from anyone.
What actually matters are getting the late rounds right. We all knew Breath of the Wild was winning this contest, but there was a huge issue to solve in the bottom half of the bracket. Witcher 3, Skyrim, Pokemon HGSS, Mario Galaxy 2, Persona 5, Dark Souls, and even The Last of Us all had fair cases for making the final, though the prevailing opinion was that the second semifinal would be between Witcher 3 and Skyrim, with Skyrim as the favorite.
Skyrim was the favorite because we have metadata on both games from 2015, and not only did Skyrim look like a shit-kicking badass that year, Witcher 3 lost to Metal Gear Solid 2. I know what eventually happened in this contest, but that is a real result. It actually happened. It led to Skyrim having a 60-40 advantage in those stats, and for Witcher to flip that around it needed all of the following to go right:
-Netflix show boost
-Switch port boost
-"Respect" boost
-Skyrim deboost because of people hating Bethesda
-Skyrim having an overrated value due to being locked behind Undertale's value
For those reasons, I picked Skyrim to beat Witcher 3 in the semis and make the final. I regretted that decision about 10 seconds into this match, because Witcher 3 was clearly a different animal in this contest as compared to 2015. It had over 85% early on and held steady for the entire match. Binding of Isaac Rebirth got 26% on Witcher 3 five years ago, just FYI.
People make fun of the stats topic for making wild projections 5-10 minutes into a match, but we're usually right with those projections. Based on this match, the entire half of this bracket was done for. Holding Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which is arguably the most popular and well respected game in that series, to below 16% is just an absurd level of strength. The one hope the bottom half of this bracket had was the possibility of this being an SFF match.
To that, I say it doesn't matter if this was an SFF match. The bottom half of the bracket was on notice either way.
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Ctes's Analysis[]
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was one of the most hyped returning contestants from the 2015 contest. The game has become a huge phenomenon, widely regarding as being one of the best games of the decade anywhere, which has only increased since release. In 2015 it did not look all that great, being a bit behind GTAV. You had to bank on it increasing from there to keep it far, and some did! Taking it as far as the finals. The Witcher 3 is also being remembered for the comment on the contest CD Projekt Red made when being contacted in a rally attempt. They didn’t notice it in time because of thanksgiving and would’ve liked to have been noticed further in advance so they could do something. That stuck with us. The Witcher 3 had some serious rally potential.
Not that it would be needed today. Assassin’s Creed is way past its peak and Odyssey is easily the weakest of them to make the bracket. It was clear in 2015 that the franchise had fallen from grace by being trash in 2015. Ezio also looked way better in his debut than he did last time. They pumped out too many half-assed games too quickly and not even fans could keep up. I’ve never played past the Ezio trilogy personally and it wasn’t just because of lack of interest. One of the games would have to be seriously well received if I were to give it another go.
I expected Assassin’s Creed to look absolutely terrible here. I remember when predicting percentage that I just kept going lower and lower on it and it just didn’t seem right. The serious doesn’t have many people caring about it any longer and I could see almost no one vote for it above The Witcher 3, one of the games that are always brought up anywhere when discussing Game of the Decade. Furthermore, Odyssey actually drew some inspiration from Witcher, causing them to be similar in some ways. The SFF hammer was in the hands of Geralt, and man, did it hit. Even if you expected anything Assassin’s Creed to be complete trash these days, this was a good performance. You could certainly be happy if you picked Witcher 3 to go far at this point. Though we still needed to see the other top finalist contenders in the bottom half.
Safer777's Analysis[]
The W3 is one of 2 games that can reach the finals, with the other beeing Skyrim. At least that is what we thought before the contest started. As for AC series you all know the series. This series had a game coming out every year but each game getting lower and lower sales so Ubisoft decided to stop making them for a while. So they decide to soft reboot the series with Origins and make them MUCH more combat oriented AND heavy loot based. Bassically they became action rpg's. With levels and all. I mean the previous games had combat and loot too but they never really matter. I mean you could just sneak around and kill everyone with 1 hit anyways. You can't really do that now though. As for the W3...Okay it is a game that basically every other open world action RPG compares it to see how it stands out to it. Yeah it is that good. It made the Witcher series REALLY popular and now everyone and their Magician Grandma knows it. I mean we even got a Witcher Netflix series and it was ACTUALLY good! And damn popular too! So yeah the Witcher series is everywhere now.
So for the match. Well we have 2 action rpg open world games and of course the much popular one won. But it didn't simply won, it scored way too high. I didn't even expected to score above 77% myself and it scored more than 84%! Also the W3 is one of my favorite games of all time. BUT in this match I voted for ACO. Why? It takes place in Greece which is my country and barely any game take place there so I had to support it. I mean it was amazing to visit cities and landmarks that I recognize and have visited. For Americans that doesn't mean much since a lot of games take place in USA but it is different for me. So anyways W3 is DAMN popular now. I do believe thought that ACO could beat some indie games here. Which isn't saying much but hey.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Way back when Assassin's Creed was a new series, it was a legitimate contender for being the rare new property that GameFAQs actually embraced. In 2008, Altair rode the Guru nomination to a highly advantageous bracket placement (the fourways didn't have proper seeds, but we're assuming he was like a 2-seed or something) and won his opening fourpack outright and advanced in second place out of Round 2. Come 2010, Assassin's Creed already had one sequel, and both Altair and Ezio got 2-seeds and made Round 2, where they ran into some very strong characters. Both those games made it into Game of the Decade, though the original needed to make it through a vote-in and got knocked out by MGS4 in Round 1; II got a 6-seed and reached R2 before losing to Wind Waker. Ezio also managed to have enough strength to get into Rivalry Rumble in 2011, somehow. He and Rodrigo Borgia were a 6-seed, which was the lowest seed possible without going through vote-ins; I have a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn't have fared so well in vote-ins. Come 2013, with the sequels piling up...Ezio still had enough popularity to get a 2-seed and had no trouble dispatching the 17 and 26 to reach R2, where he finished last behind L-Block and Auron. Altair, meanwhile, fell all the way to a 25-seed...which was not a bad place to be given that the 3-seed was reserved for "hyped newcomers who will inevitably flop". He took care of Shulk, the 3-seed in question, and Ratchet, then finished ahead of Lara Croft, former 1-seed, for second place behind, uh, Kefka. Yeah no one expected Kefka to be there but we all expected the winner of his R1 match to win in R2. Only in 2018, when Altair missed the field entirely and Ezio got fed to Zelda in Round 1, did either of the first two Assassin's Creed protagonists miss Round 2 of a Character Battle since their games' release! And yet, the interminable parade of sequels killed all buzz. This was a unanimous pick by the Gurus, and it was pretty close to unanimous with the casuals too--almost 91% got this right.
Still, the degree to which ACO got owned was perhaps a bit concerning, even if a few Oracles did actually put in predictions that lopsided. After all, Assassin's Creed IV was favored in a match just two days after this!