r/gaming spent the day oscillating between award-season spectacle and the quieter religion of mechanics and nostalgia. If there’s a unifying thread, it’s the community’s preference for familiar worlds—so long as the craft still surprises. The hype machine hums, but the comments keep dragging attention back to what actually makes play memorable.
The Game Awards hype machine loves familiar faces
The Mojave statue tease has taken shape, with the community pointing to Larian’s return via a Divinity signal that feels all but confirmed, while Crystal Dynamics has primed a reveal of the next Tomb Raider at The Game Awards. It’s awards-season theater: promise “the future,” deliver the familiar, and rely on players’ muscle memory to do the rest.
"Oh nice, JUST started Divinity 1 and loving it" - u/MrWoodenSheep (1194 points)
Publishers know the nostalgia furnace is hot, stoking it with CAPCOM’s refreshed Resident Evil: Requiem art featuring an older Leon and the community’s predictable grin at a Switch 2 meme that politely instructs us to buy Skyrim again. The hype lands because predictability is comfort—even when the marketing line pretends surprise.
"They've announced the announcement....so it's already announced. Bonus points for writing that it's somehow going to be a surprise. Fucking clown show." - u/Protolictor (56 points)
When “just a guy” is the boss—and design is the point
Amid the IP carousel, a design thread asked for the best fights where the boss is simply human-scale, not a god or kaiju—cue examples from The Last of Us to MGS in a lively “just a guy” debate. The subtext is a reminder that tension and stakes come from clarity and constraints, not particle effects.
"Liquid snake from MGS. Throwing hands with your dumbass brother on top of giant robot. 11 year old me believed this to be the height of cinematic perfection." - u/noneofyouaresafe (712 points)
That respect for readable systems carries into FromSoftware fandom, where a clip of Sekiro’s Owl turning the Mikiri counter back on the player prompted praise for a fight that weaponizes what you’ve mastered. It’s the antithesis of cinematic bloat: design literacy as the boss’s real power.
"I love that he uses a lot of the same moves that you do (but modified). Really drives home the motif of him being your father." - u/Bdole0 (88 points)
The nostalgia engine: craft projects, pixel love, and comfort installs vs platform borders
Nostalgia isn’t passive here; it’s hands-on. A tinkerer rebuilt the Underground-era HUD with a real-life Need for Speed mini-map on a $20 microcontroller, while another thread praised the pixel art of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories—a reminder that style ages better than spectacle.
Players also admitted to personal anchors, like the never-uninstall comfort game you keep alongside everything else, even if you rarely boot it. But cozy habits meet hard borders when regional rules kick in, as one traveler asked what happens after buying Steam-banned games abroad and returning home—a practical, unglamorous reality check on our global, yet fragmented, digital libraries.