You have chosen your ultimate 2025 Game of the Year—and I feel like it needs no explaining

This year, Destructoid is giving out its own awards to various games that have made a significant mark in the industry.

However, we wanted to invite you, our readers, to crown your own king of 2025’s video game realm, and the result is unsurprising.

With an overwhelming majority of 90 percent of the vote, Destructoid’s community, that is you, named Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as its ultimate Game of the Year. That coincides with our own choice, since we also gave Expedition 33 that prestigious title, crowning it as the ultimate game of all games released in 2025.

I can’t say I didn’t expect this to happen. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is already considered by many to be one of the best games of all time, revolutionizing the JRPG genre and making a point about games as an art form. From its music, designs, and sheer artistry, Expedition 33 drives home the idea that yes, video games are a form of art that is worthy of appreciation.

When I first played the game back while I was still at Dot Esports, I immediately knew it would be a hit. I only had four hours to work with at the time, given that it was a limited preview, but I came off it thinking that the game would take the industry by storm. And I was exactly right.

My friends at the time didn’t believe me. They thought no JRPG can ever grasp the industry in such a way, as well as that Clair Obscur doesn’t scratch that “itch” for traditional JRPG fans. It’d be an oddity, a curious title that has many qualities, but one that ultimately fails on the road to greatness. Well, I guess they missed the mark on that one.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an excellent game, and everyone seems to recognize that now. It swept away the entire Golden Joysticks last month, and I have no doubt it’s going to do the same at The Game Awards tonight.

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Last night’s The Game Awards show wasn’t the greatest of all time, but it sure did give us a glimpse of some potentially awesome games. One title in particular, however, stood out for a wrong reason: being similar—too similar—to CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077.

And that would be No Law, developed by Neon Giant of The Ascent fame, and published by the self-proclaimed AI-first pioneers, Krafton. Neon Giant’s track record is genuinely great, with The Ascent being one of the most visually striking games I’ve ever seen and played. It’s also set in a cyberpunk environment, one that delves deep into the realm of science fiction, making its cyberpunk vibes more of an artistic choice than an actual setting.

Even so, the studio has established itself as a proper sci-fi and cyberpunk-oriented team of creatives, which naturally led into a more ambitious, larger-scale game such as No Law is supposed to be. And that’d be all fine if the game didn’t bear so much similarity, eerie similarity, to CDPR’s 2020 title, Cyberpunk 2077.

While watching the TGA show last night, seeing No Law made me think it was something Cyberpunk 2077-related. The first-person perspective, the animations, the way the combat unfolds, all reminded me of CDPR’s game, not to mention the segment that showcases a certain location that is exceptionally difficult to tell apart from Cyberpunk 2077‘s Afterlife.

Now I get a first-person cyberpunk title is bound to bear some semblance to what was already made, but I for the life of me couldn’t tell you this wasn’t Cyberpunk 2077 if you didn’t tell me. That brings me to my biggest fear regarding Neon Giant’s upcoming title: it could fall into the same situation that Tencent has caught itself in with Lights of Motiram.

Sony sued the company for ripping off its assets, ideas, and style, and is currently embroiled in a massive legal battle that saw Light of Motiram grind development to a halt. If No Law doesn’t showcase more unique elements in the near future, I have a feeling CDPR might not like what the studio has done here, and could pursue legal action much in the same way as Sony.

This could eventually result in a potentially good game being bogged down by a lawsuit because it decided to pursue established styles instead of developing a new one, even if derivative of the one CDPR itself had made.

No Law posits an interesting setting and story, such as its Port Desire city that is an anarcho-corporatist hellscape, but how it executes things brings it way too close to an existing game, so much that telling them apart becomes a real headache.

We’ll have to wait and see how the game develops further and how its style evolves and translates into actual gameplay. But so far, its future seems to be hanging by a thread, one that CDPR could decide to slash at any moment.

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