Originally Posted by
Jester Joe
It's not "putting words in your mouth". It's common sense derived from your own statements.
So to you, a nominee for GotY has to be "ground breaking", or a "huge award winning game". Which is a fair view to have, except....
The only games here you voiced distaste for are Zelda, Mario, and PUBG. Literally the only other way to interpret that would be that since you don't seem to have an issue with either Persona 5 or Horizon, you consider them "groundbreaking".
Except....neither of them are either. They take popular elements and polish them to high heaven yes. They're also great games I find worthy of being GotY. But they're also on the same level of "groundbreaking" as SMO is. If you came in here saying "None of those games deserve GotY", well, I'd scratch my head confused, but it's still a fair view to have. The issue here is that you're claiming neither Mario nor Zelda deserve it because they're not "groundbreaking", while ignoring that the other nominees are on the same level.
Also, because I see you make this false claim with absolutely no proof so many times- No, Nostalgia alone does not make a game wildly successful. Look at Duke Nukem. Look at Sonic. Those are series that people loved from the earlier era of consoles, yet...one flopped so heavily despite having years of hype behind it, and the other one is like a fish that can only remember how to swim half the time. Nostalgia will get the first wave of sales, yes. From there, what pushes it is the game actually being enjoyable. No one is going to give a new Mario game a 10 because "I really really liked Super Mario 64 guys". And it's not even a reasonable position to take if you're trying to honestly debate this, it's just something that highlights how much you have your own bias against Nintendo and refuse to accept literally anything good about them.
Also, just as a fun tidbit, this is only the 5th Mario game in this style (Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy 1&2, and now Super Mario Odyssey). So yet again, inaccurate of a statement to say "Mario is Mario, no matter what flavor he comes in", especially when Mario is probably the most diverse IP in gaming history.