The Game Awards aren’t known for much in the way of shock and surprise, and so it proved with the 2024 nominees — a fairly well-rounded list in which most of the year’s best-reviewed and best-loved games got some love.
But there was one title very striking for its (almost) complete absence: Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
The Game Awards’ voting jury snubbed BioWare’s latest game in a series of key categories where it would have been expected to compete. It secured just one nomination, for Innovation in Accessibility, which is decided by a specialist jury.
This is a surprise; as a narrative-led blockbuster in a famous series with slick production values, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is exactly the kind of game that tends to do well at The Game Awards. Its predecessor, Dragon Age: Inquisition, won Game of the Year in TGA’s inaugural year, 2014.
Granted, the reception to The Veilguard has been mixed — and with its Metacritic rating settling at 82, a nomination for Game of the Year seemed beyond its reach (even though that is one point higher than Black Myth: Wukong, which did make the cut).
More tellingly, though, The Veilguard did not score nominations for Best Narrative or Best Performance, two areas where BioWare games tend to excel, and which are less review-dependent. It also missed out in Best Role-Playing Game. This was an exceptionally strong category this year: Three of the five nominees (Metaphor: ReFantazio, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree) also secured nominations for Game of the Year, and the other two (Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth) are unconventionally excellent. Even so, failing to join this company is surely not the result that BioWare or publisher EA wanted after a decade of development.
Were there any other snubs? Perhaps a few minor ones. It was a surprise not to see the much-loved EA Sports College Football 25 score a nomination in the Sports/Racing Game category, although this might be down to the broad international makeup of the jury. The Sim/Strategy Game category is missing two games with passionate fan bases and high review scores — Satisfactory and Tactical Breach Wizards — either of which might have taken the slot of the Age of Mythology remake, for example. But this was a strong category this year. Personally, I would have loved to see The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom nominated for its fabulous music.
As ever, the intensely competitive indie categories cannot please everyone. But with 15 games nominated across Independent Game, Debut Indie Game, and Games for Impact, you have to dig down to some pretty deep cuts like Arco or 1000xResist before you find something to get upset about.
Other surprises? I don’t think anybody saw four nominations coming for Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, a game that has all but disappeared from the discourse since its release in May. Four nominations — including Game of the Year — for DLC, in the form of Shadow of the Erdtree, is without precedent. Black Myth: Wukong breaking through in Game of the Year despite its comparatively weak critical reputation is definitely noteworthy, as are the five nominations for one-man-band card game Balatro.
In the end, though, there’s not much in this set of nominees to ruffle any feathers — outside of BioWare’s offices, that is.
