LogFAQs > #940672737

Final Day 41
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 55.91%
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 44.09%

Prediction Percentage 37.14%

The final match of Game of the Decade II came down to this:

https://imgur.com/a/5EPUjm

Aside from such things, the final match of these contests is very rarely exciting, and this is no different. I dont mind though, as long as the rest of the contest has been good, this is just another match. Breath of the Wild was absolutely never going to drop this match. The result you see is performed by Witcher 3 on steroids. Maybe it couldve pulled something similar off in any losing match today, I dont know, it didnt in 2015, but Im willing to bet making the final match helped. Its easier to rally for the final of a contest than anything else.

Witcher 3 rallied perhaps more than any other game has done in the contest. It could have flipped a lot of matches. Who knows how it would have went if these two were closer on natural strength. Breath of the Wild could probably counter and the match would have been very different. As it was, Breath of the Wild was never in danger.

Lets just try to put things in perspective here. The Witcher 3 had just shown that it would lose the board vote against even Skyrim, but Breath of the Wild is also pretty bad with the board vote. Any obvious winner to the contest is. Link himself does notoriously bad in the opening minutes because were so tired of seeing him in these contests. Its hard to tell what won the board vote today, obviously, but Id honestly bet most of the board wanted Witcher 3 to win despite how bad it looked until now. Its entirely possible it didnt favor any of them in particular.

In any base, Breath of the Wild was close to 60% at first and went well above it a bit after the freeze, which does suggest the typical early vote boost for the non-favorite. Then look at where the match ended. Witcher 3 did everything it could to make a match of this, rallying as hard as it could. There were few cuts and stalls, but the lead never stopped growing on the large scale. Witcher 3 teared percentage apart though, especially in the night hours where Europe matters the most. The game is from Poland and it shows. Its a lot bigger there than in NA where Breath of the Wild won big.

Its difficult to determine if Witcher 3 is the second strongest game in the bracket before rallying but it absolutely is with them. Breath of the Wild got almost 68% on Ultimate with SFF. Breath of the Wild looked to get well above 60% before all the Witcher rallying, but the Europe hours would have obviously still happened. If Witcher 3 also boosted from being in the final, then it looks pretty close to Ultimate. Its a shame we didnt get a third place bonus match, it wouldve taught us a bit. We would need a direct match to figure this out, but its for certain that Witcher 3 wins the match, its probably a lot easier to rally for and even a small one could do the difference.

No one noticed initially because we just click on our favorite game and vote, but when you clicked on one of the games, but didnt finalize your vote yet, the moon from Majoras mask would hover over the picture of the game you didnt pick. Allen had to come into the stats topic and tell us, but it was a really cool little Easter egg which teased the bonus match.

The Witcher 3 did lose today, but it is without a doubt the star of the contest in my eyes. I dont see how it could be anything else really, unless you want to pick Breath of the Wild for being even more dominant than we thought, but everyone knew it would have an easy time. Witcher 3 wasnt even favored to get this far. Not only did it manage to get here, it creamed all competition, completely neglected rallying against it and then blasted a very successful rally out itself. Its almost definitely the strongest Western game on the site, that wasnt exactly a big feature before this decade. Ive seen people suggest it as a top 10 game overall, thats probably a good bit too much, but its high up there for sure, and could possibly rally its way to top 10 given the right circumstances.

Breath of the Wild is a good contender for most predictable contest winner yet, though it has been a lock many times before. In the end it let something get closer to it than Link did in 2018, but he also didnt have this big a rally against him. It has not been in doubt what would win this contest at any point since Breath of the Wild released in 2017 and Im sure people expected it even before it came out. A lot of that has to do with the fact that its a Zelda game of course. Majoras Mask clearly shouldnt have the best game in the field in 2010 but won the contest regardless. Zelda is that dominant here. Its more dominant now than ever through a mix of releasing a game this well received again 19 years after Ocarina and Time and the only things that could rival the Zelda franchise declining due to lack of relevance. We can hope, but I seriously doubt that a well liked remake of the first 10% of Final Fantasy VII is going to come close to closing that gap.

Breath of the Wild did not only win because its a Zelda game though, while it certainly helped its case Im sure. This decade its not just us, its generally accepted as the best of the decade. Take a look here:

https://www.metacritic.com/feature/best-videogames-of-the-decade-2010s

Breath of the Wild did significantly better than anything else on average. Its incredible how well received the game is. The Legend of Zelda is not big here for no reason and Breath of the Wild reminded us all that. Its not universally liked obviously, but nothing really is. The people against it are a vocal minority. Its hard to deny how big a game it is and it absolutely deserves its title. Congratulations!

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Guinness Book of World Records is the name of the diary that belongs to azuarc, the winner of the Game of the Decade II guru contest.