Team Cherry may not attend The Game Awards even though Silksong is nominated for GOTY, but they're pretty sure a different 'exceptional and broadly palatable' game will win

Hornet clashes with a pin-wielding bug in Hollow Knight: Silksong. — (Image credit: Team Cherry)

Hollow Knight: Silksong is one of the biggest games of the year, finally arriving after years of rarely matched anticipation, but its creators aren't certain it's cinched the GOTY crown in a crowd of critical darlings—at least not from The Game Awards. As Team Cherry developer Ari Gibson told Jason Schreier in a recent Bloomberg interview, Silksong is "on that knife's edge, where it appeals to some and infuriates others."

Gibson said so after the two were asked if they'd be attending The Game Awards, where Silksong is nominated alongside the likes of Death Stranding 2 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for Game of the Year. All big hits, but Team Cherry isn't holding out for the big prize.

Pellen said they may not attend the show as they're "pretty busy," and said he was confident they wouldn't have to record an acceptance speech either. Gibson chimed in: "This year I think we're safe. I think Expedition 33—it's exceptional and broadly palatable."

Expedition 33 has a breezy story mode difficulty and quarantines most of its hardest challenges to purely optional boss fights, which makes it particularly accessible. The hardest bit in that game is nailing your parries, but if that gives you trouble, it'll give you a hell of a lot more trouble in Silksong, which also has parries out the wazoo but no easy mode. Whichever game takes it, the real winner in all this might just be Sekiro.

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Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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