Horizon Zero Dawn Shut Out at Game Awards

2017 has undeniably been one of the best years for video games. With so many incredible games this year, there really weren’t any frontrunners in any particular category. With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild taking home the night’s biggest honor, Game of the Year, all of the other big hitters won at least one award in other categories.

Every game except Horizon Zero Dawn, that is.

Though HZD tied Breath of the Wild with the most nominations at 6, it was the only game that walked away without any hardware. Why was there no love for the game? Even Lance Redick (he played Sylens in HZD) made an appearance on stage and was referenced as an actor in Destiny 2 rather than HZD.

With so many great games to be considered, voters did a great job of honoring nearly every deserving game in some way. Nier Automota was awarded with Best Soundtrack, Mario Odyssey was awarded Best Family Game, Persona 5 won Best RPG and even the great Resident Evil 7 won for Best VR or AR Game. Any of these games could have taken home the granddaddy of them all, Game of the Year, and I don’t think anyone would have batted an eye.

The only missing game from this list is Horizon Zero Dawn.

The question arose last night as we were talking about the awards over some after-show pizza and meatball subs, “If Horizon was snubbed, which category was it a shoe-in to win and it didn’t?” The answer to that is simply… none. There was no single category that the game was expected to win and didn’t, but the same can be said about every other game on the list. It’s just a testimony to how good the games were this year.

Outside of the the big AAA winners at the Game Awards, Cuphead and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice came away as big winners – taking home multiple trophies for each game. I will never be an advocate for giving a game an award just so it receives some recognition, but in a year when Mario Oddysey wins Best Family Game seemingly just so that it gets recognized, how could HZD be completely snubbed? It’s hard to write about this without sounding like you’re trashing the games that won over HZD. This is not at all the case. Every game that won an award this year is deserving of recognition.

One of the big categories that it seems the awards may have picked wrong this year is Best Narrative. It would appear that they wanted to give the award to Hellblade for the Games for Impact category, so they gave this category to What Remains of Edith Finch to honor it in some way. Beating out the far superior narratives in Nier: Automata, Horizon and Wolfenstein II – What Remains of Edith Finch will now be remembered as the game from 2017 that supposedly told the best story.

Why is there no category representing best graphics or presentation? Most of us can agree that Horizon Zero Dawn is the best looking game of 2017. Aside from that, HZD really starts to shine as the narrative unfolds and you find out not only what is happening currently as you play through the game, but what happened to humankind in the past to lead them to this point.

How did we get to this point where Horizon was completely snubbed at the Game Awards?

Alloy’s story may have been forgotten by the 52 voters at this year’s award show, but that doesn’t mean it should be forgotten by you as well. As we close out the year and one of the best chapters in video game history, do yourself a favor and play Horizon Zero Dawn if you haven’t had the privilege to do so yet. You will not be disappointed.