Results[]
Wednesday, August 7th, 2013
Ulti's Analysis[]
I know we all knew Dragonborn was destined to do nothing more than get his ass whipped by Tifa in round 2, but there was some hype surrounding him anyway since Elder Scrolls games always do well in game contests and Skyrim was a huge success on this site. And maybe if he was big enough, and if Tifa and Yuna overlapped...
That all went out the window about an hour into this match, when everyone realized Dragonborn was a total flop. Tom Nook and Pyramid Head are not strong competition, and he managed to make them both look like high-end fodder instead of the trash they are. You could even make the case that if his face and the iconic helmet wasn't on every single Skyrim advertisement in existence, he may have actually lost this match. It makes some sense since Skyrim was not really about the main character, but the world itself.
There was also a decent match for second here, even though it was never really close. I'm not sure if I should be impressed by Tom Nook getting second place here or not, but Pyramid Head turning a 650 vote loss into a 500 vote loss has to mean something, right? Dragonborn probably overlaps with Pyramid Head a tiny bit, too, so it's not like a 1v1 between those two losers would be predictable. We can only hope to never actually see a 1v1 match between freaking Tom Nook and Pyramid Head, though.
There was a good bit of hype for the 3DS Animal Crossing game for some reason, which probably helped push Nook over Head. -Wylvane
Zen's (Late) Analysis[]
Picture this: Nominations for 2018 are over, we wait patiently for over a month, spam Allen's inbox with tickets asking where the "damn bracket" is, Allen finally posts a new sticky, says that the contest is taking on a new and exciting format, asks us to click a link.
Our browsers go dark, then fade into a horse-drawn wagon on a dirt road. Slowly the title of the contest appears: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Now on GameFAQs.
There was some serious DOVAHFEAR going into this contest, everyone assumed Dragonborn was going to be a powerhouse, although that was debatable. The guy was a blank slate, and the "mascot" version of him was pretty boring to look at despite being in all the CG trailers and promo art. We didn't know how people would respond to seeing a generic version of "their" character on the front page.
As far as Skyrim goes, yeah, everyone on this site loves it, and I think it won the GotY poll, but "characters who represent big western franchises" usually don't do shit in a contest setting. See: Vaas, Booker, Handsome Jack, etc.
But nobody was dumb enough to put Dragonborn behind Nook and Pyramid Head. Pyramid Head, who went from being sextupled by Bowser to beating pre-RE5 Chris to a close loss to Tom Nook. Tom Nook went from losing to Crono to beating Zelos to barely beating Pyramid Head.
You know, neither are impressive contest histories, but they are at least histories. Animal Crossing and Silent Hill have polar opposite fanbases, but at least their characters consistently make appearances.
Pyramid Head has two movies and a dead franchise whose last installment was a pachinko machine, and while Animal Crossing has had a "mainline" game in a while, it's still getting nods here and there, as well as a terrible amiibo-based Wii U game that nobody played which put a full-stop to the amiibo momentum.
I'd say at this point it's time to retire K.K., Nook and Resetti in favor of Isabelle and Villager. Everyone is nuts for Isabelle, she got to be a costume in Smash and is a racer in Mario Kart. She's basically the new mascot for the series, and people are speculating she'll be Villager's Echo in Smash 5.
So, these results weren't too surprising, people just used this match to gauge Dragonborn's strength, and he disappointed here. He definitely wouldn't be able to take down Tifa, even with Yuna in the match.
In the end, Dragonborn wasn't a complete embarrassment, and he was overhyped to heck, but several years of concentrated meme-ing might end with a small Dragonborn comeback in 2018 if he's given a good bracket spot.