2017 GOTY Scoreboard: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, What Remains of Edith Finch, and More

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. What more needs to be said about 2017? Honestly, not much.

Not only did Nintendo rebuild one of their marquee franchises into something even bigger than before, but they also launched a brand new console/handheld hybrid, delivered the biggest Mario game in more than a decade, and updated Mario Kart 8 with an actual Battle Mode. Not a bad run for a company that struggled in recent years with the Wii U.

But it was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that took home the most “Game of the Year” accolades in 2017, leaving the rest of the field fighting for scraps. Nintendo’s Super Mario Odyssey was a popular choice for publications that didn’t have Hyrule on their itinerary, as was Atlus’s Persona 5.

You can see more of last year’s “Game of the Year” contenders in the 2017 GOTY Scoreboard after the break.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Major Awards (4)
Reader Polls (5)

What Remains of Edith Finch

Major Awards (1)

BAFTA Games Awards

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Dead Cells

Publication Awards (1)

Rock Paper Shotgun (Best PC Games)

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Nier: Automata

Publication Awards (1)

Slant Magazine

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Persona 5

Publication Awards (2)

DualShockers
GameRevolution

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Reader Polls (1)

DualShockers

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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

Publication Awards (1)

Giant Bomb

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Super Mario Odyssey

Publication Awards (6)

Ars Technica
COGconnected
ComicBook.com
Cubed3
DarkZero
Empire

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Unranked Lists

Publications

Thrillist

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And there were plenty of other great games from 2017 that might not have earned “Game of the Year” honors, but did appear further down at least one list…

  • Arms (#6 at Eurogamer)
  • Assassin’s Creed Origins (#12 at Empire)
  • Cuphead (#2 at EGM)
  • Destiny 2 (#10 at Time)
  • Divinity: Original Sin II (#4 at GameRevolution)
  • Friday the 13th (#14 at Games Radar)
  • Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (#4 at Shacknews)
  • Hollow Knight (#20 at DarkZero)
  • Horizon: Zero Dawn (#2 at EGM)
  • Injustice 2 (#20 at Screen Rant)
  • Little Nightmares (#20 at Games Radar)
  • Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (#5 at Eurogamer)
  • Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (#18 at Gaming Age)
  • Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (#8 at Entertainment Weekly)
  • Night in the Woods (#4 at Paste Magazine)
  • Prey (#7 at Polygon)
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (#5 at Polygon)
  • Sonic Mania (#7 at ComicBook.com)
  • Splatoon 2 (#12 at Maxim)
  • Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (#16 at Slant Magazine)
  • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (#7 at USgamer)
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (#11 at Gaming Bolt)
  • Yakuza 0 (#7 at Ars Technica)

This obviously isn’t every “Game of the Year” list from 2017 (more links will be added as I find them), but it feels like a fairly representative sample of the overall critical reaction from the past year.

Author: VGC | John

John Scalzo has been writing about video games since 2001, and he co-founded Warp Zoned in 2011. Growing out of his interest in game history, the launch of Video Game Canon followed in 2017.