I imagine the series cap might apply for Game of the Century (so only MM and BotW, as absurd as it might sound), because otherwise Zelda might s*** over the entire contest barring a Melee rally.
Eh, I don't like that idea. It was one thing with GotD 2, where the snubbed games weren't really that strong, with none of them being serious top 10 contenders. It's a whole other ballgame when WW, TP, and BotW 2 will all almost certainly be in the top 10 of this hypothetical contest. I'd prefer just sticking all the Zeldas and Melee together in the first half of the bracket (assuming BotW gets the overall 1-seed), while the lower half can have the likes of FF7R, FFX, Witcher 3, SSBU, Mario Odyssey, and Metroid Prime.
Anyways, I've decided to split my concluding thoughts into two posts, one tonight and one tomorrow, as I have quite a bit to say about the last ~30 minutes. Now for the first set:
Honestly, neither Witcher 3/Persona 5 nor Skyrim/Souls was very interesting to me, thanks to all four games' established match trends. It was anticlimactically obvious that both Witcher 3 and Skyrim would start rising to heaven once the Euro vote set in, and heck, Witcher 3 began its climb even before that. Dark Souls holding serve with the early night vote was novel, but it inevitably started collapsing as soon as North Americans went to bed. Of course, both matches were far more interesting from a spread betting perspective.
Witcher 3 failing to shoot for 60 on Skyrim does seem surprising on the surface, with the WRPG hierarchy and especially the two games' specific relationship in mind. However, I think Skyrim's previous match against Dark Souls already confirmed that the aforementioned hierarchy breaks down on GameFAQs when voters are tasked with choosing between two similarly well-liked games. Indeed, both the Souls/Skyrim and Witcher/Skyrim margins looked pretty much exactly like what should have happened based on the three games' previous performances.
I have to agree with Witcher 3 as the star of the contest, for reasons that have all pretty much been covered. I also like the Portal 2 shoutout, as it exceeded reasonable expectations time in and time out as the only game in this field to show strength despite having no intrinsic genre-based reason to do so. While we're on the subject of games I love, Dragon Quest XI was actually the first game to make BotW look mortal, and it had a great run beforehand, once again exceeding all reasonable expectations for a niche series. Perhaps those two would round out my top five, alongside BotW and Xenoblade.
My turd award for this contest as a whole goes to the entire Fire Emblem series. Awakening dropped a match we favored it in 55-45 pre-rallies, in the process reversing the 2015 stats even though it arguably had as much reason to improve since then as Bloodborne. As for Three Houses, no matter how strong Xenoblade is, it's supremely embarrassing to not just drop a match you were strongly favored in, but outright get SFF'd by a barely accessible fellow Nintendo JRPG. I'm personally inclined to agree with KP that the Smash fanbase played the biggest role in these results - damn near everyone who had been following Smash Ultimate's hype cycle disliked Byleth's impressively ill-timed announcement, not just the tourneycrabs and hardcore nuts.
I don't really have an opinion on the whole COVlD-19 prank; for me, it was pretty much just a thing that happened. However, I don't think said user violating the unspoken bond of honor by entering two of their accounts into the Guru should be allowed to stand unpunished. I feel denying them the chance to compete at all next contest would be a fitting punishment.
---
"I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people who do." azuarc won the 2020 Guru Contest because he avoided picking rashly.