You read the title correctly: Psychonauts 2 deserved to win the Best Art Direction award for The Game Awards of 2021. I don’t mean to undermine the accomplishment of the team at Arkane Lyon, because on top of being a great game, Deathloop is also artistically pleasing in its own right. But Psychonauts 2’s art direction is, in my opinion, far above it or any other game that was on the list.
Of course, I should explain myself. To understand why Psychonauts 2 should’ve won the award for best art direction, it should be made clear what art direction actually means and how a game succeeds in that department, because I feel like the voting jury for The Game Awards missed the mark when it came down to it.
Art Direction is very important
Art direction is one of the many vital parts of a game’s production. While the design portion of a game focuses on the quality of its various artistic aspects, art direction focuses on how all of those aspects of the game blend together to immerse their viewers into the world. As the announcer of this award, Guillermo Del Toro, had said before announcing the winner, games nominated for this award “found their own path to combining visual design, music, and animation into their own distinct expression of intent and purpose.”
To put how well each game did in that department into perspective, look back at the footage
shown for each game in the Best Art Direction category. Deathloop has great attention to detail with each of its architectural structures and the spaces within them; despite knowing it’s not connected to real life, it really makes the player feel like they’re exploring some part of the real world, while thinking about how the influence of the people living in said environments brought them to whatever state they’re in.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits has a breathtaking natural environment, made even more breathtaking by the effects of the player, the various beings that inhabit it, and nature itself, really giving you a sense of contribution and control to the area you’re in. Psychonauts 2 is taken in several directions with the designs of its environments, enemies, characters, and abilities, all working well to contribute to an emotional and thought-provoking experience around its corners.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart uses the scope of the realities and environments the player goes through to give them a real sense of action, adventure and thrill. Last, but not least, The Artful Escape takes bright imagery, visuals and colors of its environments and creatures, and pairs it with creative intractability and music in order to make a world that only feels limited by imagination. Of course, this isn’t the best way to gauge art direction at all, but it at least gives the viewers a sense of what direction the art is being taken in each game.
Deathloop Art Direction
I can recognize the great art direction that Deathloop has, of course. Actually, all of the games that were nominated have great art direction, and I could see any one of them, including Deathloop, winning an award for it. But to say that Deathloop has the best, especially with games like Kena: Bridge of Spirits and Psychonauts 2, the game that should’ve won the award, to compare it to, isn’t a reasonable choice in my opinion.
Several people share the same belief to some degree, with others saying that Kena: Bridge of Spirits or The Artful Escape should’ve won as well. So why is it that the jury voted the way that they did?
Truthfully, nobody really knows for sure. Whatever the reason may be, this decision doesn’t help with the precedent that The Game Awards have been setting for these past few years when it comes to the choices it’s made between nominated games. They seem to tend to make decisions that most of the public fanbase disagrees with, with many of the awards from last year’s Game Awards event going to The Last of Us: Part 2, despite being very controversial and considered a bad game outside of its visuals, and more.
It’s getting to the point where people are tuning in to the game awards just for the announcements and not for..the awards, because they know their voices don’t matter that much. Hopefully that changes soon, but if they retain the voting system they currently have, with only 10% of the public votes being counted and the 103 individuals of the voting jury counting for 90%, it doesn’t seem like that’ll happen.
Conclusion
However anyone feels about the situation, the past can’t be changed. Even if it could, I don’t
think I’d have the heart to do it myself because the Deathloop representatives that accepted the award seem like really sweet guys. So despite my opinion, I have to say congratulations to Deathloop. How do you feel about the results of The Game Awards though? Do you believe that they were right or wrong in their picks? What games do you think should’ve at least been nominated? I’d like to hear your thoughts.