Last night’s ceremony saw Outer Wilds and Disco Elysium clean up, nabbing three prizes each. Despite the record-breaking 11 nominations for Death Stranding, the AAA title didn’t manage to claim any awards.
Outer Wilds won best game, along with best design and original property, while Disco Elysium picked up top prizes in the categories for debut game, music and narrative.
Both titles faced some serious competition, grouped against big-hitters like Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. But the indies’ success shows that BAFTA voters still love a narrative-driven game with strong undercurrents of weird.
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In Outer Wilds, you play an astronaut in a foreign universe, who is forced to live the same 22 minutes over and over again until they figure out what the heck is going on.
And in Disco Elysium, the player takes on the role of an amnesiac detective in a paranormal world, who uses a series of complicated dialogue mechanics to explore and investigate.
The big wins for the above titles meant some other games had to miss out on getting any prizes. Death Stranding, the debut project from Kojima Productions, didn’t net any wins, but Kojima himself was named as a BAFTA fellow.
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Remedy Entertainment’s game Control had also been nominated for 11 prizes, but only came away with an award for Performer in a Supporting Role, which was won by Martti Suosalo.
The award for Best British Game went to sci-fi thriller Observation and Best Family Game went to the ever-popular Untitled Goose Game.
As the BAFTA game ceremony had to be conducted under the current lockdown measures, teams were forced to give acceptance speeches remotely via video conference.
After getting the big win for Outer Wilds, Alex Beachum, creative lead at Mobius Digital, said on video: “We’ve been working on this project for a long time, so this really means a lot to us. Thanks so much for being curious.”
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
