Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round Lower Bracket!
Each game in the lower bracket is still seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools! Every game in the lower bracket has already been defeated by another game in a 1-on-1 poll to get to this point. This is their chance to claw their way back into the main event... but the stakes are high. The games that lose in these polls are out of the tournament for good! The games that survive will face the next crop of upper bracket losers in the next round.
Polls are updated weekly, typically on Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!
HOW TO VOTE
This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances, so don't get complacent!
I agree that Path of Radiance is a better (certainly more interesting) game, but Skyrim is a monolith of the game industry - to the point where even non-gamers know about it, and many developers (particularly Japanese developers) list it as a major inspiration to them. It's not THE open-world pioneer, but it's the one people know. I'm sure behind closed doors (if not in the open too) publishers try to push games to be "more like Skyrim" - it's a poster child for success, and even if it's a little on the simpler side it's a gaming comfort food.
The main problem I had with playing Skyrim recently was that finding mods for the original version without all DLC was very difficult - most modders moved on to Legendary Edition. Speaking of legendary, there's the modding community too - it's probably the most vibrant modding scene since Half-Life.
The cynic in me says it's a least common denominator thing that it's very popular, but it's more that it's a very accessible, immersive game. Not mechanically deep, but appealing, fun, and addictive.
