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BEL2026 Video Game Madness - West Region 2nd Round: 6 God of War vs. 3 Baldur's Gate 3
2026 Video Game Madness - West Region 2nd Round
West Region Round of 32 Matchup Preview: 6 God of War vs. 3 Baldur's Gate 3
The 2018 Game of the Year Against the 2023 Game of the Year
God of War beat Divinity: Original Sin 2 in the Round of 64 by a score of 3-1, and the result was not surprising. What was notable was how cleanly it happened. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a 95-rated computer RPG from Larian Studios, the same studio that made Baldur's Gate 3, the West's 3 seed, which is now on the other side of this matchup. Larian's earlier game, beloved by dedicated RPG players and considered the gold standard of the genre before Baldur's Gate 3 arrived, got beaten 3-1 by the God of War fanbase. That tells you something about how many people God of War 2018 reached and how deeply it reached them.
God of War came out in April 2018 from Santa Monica Studio and won virtually every major Game of the Year award that year. It scored a 94 on Metacritic with 131 reviews. It received over 200 Game of the Year awards total from various publications and ceremonies worldwide. It was named the best game in PlayStation history by IGN. By any measure it is one of the defining games of the PS4 era and one of the most celebrated game releases of the decade.
What made God of War 2018 extraordinary was not any single element but the coherence of the whole. The decision to move Kratos from Greek mythology to Norse mythology. The decision to give him a son named Atreus and make their relationship the emotional center of the game. The decision to tell the entire story in a single continuous camera shot with no cuts, no loading screens that broke the world's continuity, no moment where the game acknowledged it was a game rather than a lived experience. The combat system built around the Leviathan Axe, a weapon that can be thrown and recalled to the hand like a boomerang, is one of the finest in the genre. The world design, spanning multiple realms each with distinct visual identities and inhabitants, rewarded exploration in ways the series' earlier linear structure could not support.
The story of Kratos trying to be better than he was, trying to raise a son while carrying the weight of what he had been, while concealing from Atreus the truth of what he was, is the best narrative the God of War series has ever produced and one of the best in the medium. Cory Barlog directed it. Bear McCreary scored it. The performances across the cast were exceptional. It won everything because it deserved to win everything, and the people who feel that way showed up in the Round of 64 and they are here now.
On the other side of this matchup is the game that swept the 2023 equivalents of those same awards with a comprehensiveness that had not been seen in years.
Baldur's Gate 3 came out in full in August 2023 from Larian Studios, the Belgian developer that had previously made Divinity: Original Sin 2. It scored a 96 on Metacritic and won the Game of the Year at TGA, BAFTA, DICE, GDC, and Metacritic's own award. It is one of the largest games ever made by an independent studio, an RPG of almost incomprehensible scope and freedom built on Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition rules. Three acts spanning dozens of hours. Hundreds of characters with voiced dialogue. Thousands of choices that compound and interact in ways that create genuinely different experiences across different playthroughs. A co-operative multiplayer mode that lets up to four players navigate the story together.
The scale of Baldur's Gate 3 is extraordinary. But what makes it remarkable is not just the size. It is the quality of the writing, the depth of the characterization, the way every choice feels meaningful and every consequence feels earned. The game rewards creative thinking and punishes passive play in a combat system that makes the player feel genuinely clever when they solve an encounter in a way that the game did not explicitly prompt. It is a game that treats its players as intelligent adults capable of engaging with moral complexity, political nuance, and personal relationships of genuine depth.
Baldur's Gate 3 beat Hollow Knight 2-1 in the Round of 64, a result that was tighter than expected for a 3 vs 14 matchup but that the 3 seed survived. Hollow Knight is a game with fifteen million copies sold and one of the most dedicated communities in indie gaming, and Baldur's Gate 3 beat it by one vote. The 3 seed arrived at its win and it is here now in the Round of 32, and its fanbase knows what this matchup represents.
The 2018 Game of the Year against the 2023 Game of the Year. A 94 against a 96. A game about a father and his son against a game about a group of strangers trying to save a world. Both of them are extraordinary. Both of them have enormous fanbases. Both of them deserve to be here. Only one of them advances to the West's Super Sixteen on March 22.
The West bracket continues March 22. 12PM.
