LogFAQs > #938711120

Self-reminder to add in 2004 Link vs. Yoshi to the list in the BotW write-up when I archive it.

Match 105: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs. Super Mario Galaxy 2

Witcher 3 16312
SMG2 10606

Well, what do you know. "It's Freaking Mario" still has some juice after all. After the godstomping that Witcher 3 put up in Round 2, it looked like it was a near lock to make the Finals, but it's clear that Mass Effect 3 was just horribly overrated. Which, granted, was inevitable given that it was Undertale's R1 opponent, but...okay, let's just try to figure this out. Let's assume that Octopath > Undertale wasn't anti-votes due to what Undertale did in 2015, and it's just that weak. I think I kind of like that better, not because I want it to be weak, but because I'd like to think that it'd be treated more like L-Block than Draven. I know I for one am far madder about Draven in 2013 than Undertale in 2015. Undertale's cool; the whole deconstruction of "random encounters are there to level grind on" is pretty awesome. But if you consider Undertale just that weak, it's certainly possible that Mass Effect 3 slaughtering it before the rallies came really wasn't that impressive, especially when you consider that Undertale's natural strength probably would've been even lower in 2015 because of how new it was. Yes, games tend to get weaker as they age, but Undertale's an indie game, which means it relies on word of mouth to get noticed and build a fanbase. For a lot of us, the 2015 contest was our first exposure to Undertale.

Anyway, this was the match that killed my Guru bracket, because hype backlash. I absolutely loathe SMG2, but it seemed to be fairly well-regarded here, at least in comparison with SMG1 and SMS. So it not being as hated as I'd like it to be tricked my brain into thinking it was really well-loved. Also, this is OldFAQs, so a Wii game seemed like a safe bet, the way an N64 game won the first GotD.

Match 106: Fallout: New Vegas vs. God of War

F:NV 12043
GoW 14879

Wait, was this an actual Round 3 match that happened? I honestly barely remember this, and the idea of one of these games making Round 4 on GameFAQs seems strange to me. Still, I'm not really surprised that God of War won, because it's entirely in line with the apparent shift in the site's tastes.

Match 107: Persona 5 vs. Sonic Mania

Persona 5 17040
Sonic Mania 8059

Ah, now this is more like the Sonic we know and love. Horribly outmatched against anything with an ounce of strength. Mania is a return to the series' roots and was actually quite well-received by the fanbase that stuck with the series, but the damage has already been done; I'm pretty sure Sonic is an anti-vote magnet now. Which is not to take anything away from the legitimacy of Persona 5's wins; anti-votes alone don't cause doublings unless you were fairly close to able to do that anyway. But yeah, it's hard to have much faith in Sonic for anything anymore. Even the casuals knew it; Persona 5's 63.69% prediction percentage was fourth among the sixteen winners in Round 3. Its 95.07% prediction percentage with Gurus was, uh...tied for fifth. With Skyrim.

I'm happy about this. I haven't played Persona 5, because I so rarely buy new games these days (and have enough of a backlog that I won't run out of new stuff to play any time soon), but I love the Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole and the Persona sub-series sounds like it'd be even further up my alley.

Match 108: Portal 2 vs. Red Dead Redemption 2

Portal 2 13422
RDR 2 11677

If you ever wonder why the leaderboard always seems to be dominated by Gurus, here's why. Portal 2 wasn't the overwhelming groupthink favorite that a lot of games were (fully half the matches in R3 had the favorite holding over 90% of Guru Brackets), but it was still the clear favorite, with 50% on the dot. Remember, that's as the culmination of an eightpack; 50% is still a pretty good figure. With the casuals, on the other hand, this was an upset. Just 23.57% of brackets got this right, coming off a 50.55% R2 prediction percentage, and the fact that the former figure is less than half the latter is generally the most telling sign that it's an upset. The next factor is to consider what the opponent's prediction percentage was, to see if the true "favorite" had in fact lost earlier. No dice; RDR2 had a 69.82% prediction percentage in R2 (then again, look at the fourpack it was in). That really doesn't leave much room at all for anything else to have been the favorite. So, score one for the Gurus (but not for me because I had KH3 in my bracket and RDR2 in the Oracle. Seriously, where is Portal 2 getting all this strength from all of a sudden?)

Match 109: Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Dark Souls 15439
MGSV 8954

Dark Souls's prediction percentage of 56.17% feels awfully low here, considering this is a rematch of a match it won fairly comfortably in 2015 and MGSV was the favorite to make it this far. Still, I suppose it can't be helped; it was only at 72.23% to win in R2, and MGSV was lower than that.

Still, the Oracle predictions are very telling as to what our expectations of these games' trajectories have been. In 2015, Dark Souls beat Metal Gear Solid V with 55.4% of the vote in a match where Oracles were fairly split on who'd even win, favoring Dark Souls a mere 45-42. In 2020, the lowest prediction anyone made for Dark Souls was 57.24%, and that person avoided last place because three people picked Dark Souls to break 70%. It's clear that Dark Souls was where it was at. But who would win the Dark Souls-Skyrim and Dark Souls/Skyrim-Witcher 3 matches? Only time would tell (oh, and I guess there was probably still some support for The Last of Us > Dark Souls, but it was waning quickly.)

Match 110: Batman: Arkham City vs. The Last of Us

B:AC 10919
TLoU 13475

Obligatory "Allen allow licensed characters into CBXI."

After Arkham City seemingly laid an egg against XBC2 in Round 1, it would've been tough to figure it being able to perform this well here, but then it went out and got a better percentage on BioShock: Infinite than it did on XBC2 and everyone realized that XBC is just kind of legit. The Last of Us had a fairly easy path to this point, so this was not even a lock, but for the most part B8 had this pretty well pegged; the Oracle scores were fairly tightly packed together and they were all pretty good. I guess maybe TLoU never really gained traction on GameFAQs? From what I hear it's a masterpiece. Then again, the whole "video games as art" thing never really took off here. That's