When my wife and I played through Split Fiction back in March near release, I remember thinking, 'how is anything this year going to top this? It's my Game of the Year, for sure, wrap it up now.' But then Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 came out and was almost instantly deified in RPGdom, Donkey Kong Bananza launched and redefined the modern platformer, and then I finally got around to playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and realized it might be the ultimate immersive medieval RPG everyone had been saying it was.
There's a jarring dichotomy between the fact that we're living through one of the most turbulent periods of video game history, marked in large part by a corrective post-Covid downsizing and corporate greed, and the realization that we're increasingly inundated with fantastic games. It often feels like the industry's burning down around me, and yet, here we are, juggling handfuls of GOTY contenders seemingly born from the ashes. It's that very paradox that spins at the center of my conversation with Hazelight Studios COO Oskar Wolontis, who reflects on the decisive critical and commercial success of Split Fiction in 2025, and in contrast, the struggle to stand out in such an extraordinarily competitive year.
