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BEL2026 Video Game Madness - West Regional Final (Excellent Eight): 1 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs. 3 Baldur's Gate 3
2026 Video Game Madness - West Regional Final (Excellent Eight)
The Standard Holds: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Defeats Baldur's Gate 3 to Reach the Four Finalists
The Overall 1 Seed Survives Its Toughest Test and Advances to Face NieR: Automata
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild defeated Baldur's Gate 3 by a score of 3-2, and the overall 1 seed of VGM 2026 is going to the Four Finalists.
Two votes. The margin between the highest-scored game of the era and the 2023 Game of the Year, between a 97 Metacritic and a 96, between the game that defined open-world design and the game that redefined what a role-playing game could be. Two votes in the West Regional Final, and Breath of the Wild found them. It has now won five rounds in this tournament without a single comfortable result, and the word uncomfortable does not fully capture what this 1 seed has experienced in a bracket that has thrown everything at it and watched it survive each time by the minimum necessary margin.
Consider the run. It beat Hi-Fi Rush 2-1 in the Round of 64, a Four First survivor whose community showed up fully for a matchup nobody expected to be close. It survived overtime against Disco Elysium in the Round of 32, a game that scored a 97 on Metacritic matching Breath of the Wild exactly, decided in extra time by the narrowest of margins. It beat Celeste 3-1 in the Super Sixteen, and Celeste was a game that had beaten Elden Ring 4-1 and Hades 3-1 to get there, a game whose community carries it with one of the most personal and specific intensities of any fanbase in this tournament. And now it has beaten Baldur's Gate 3 by two votes in the West Regional Final. The overall 1 seed has never dominated anything. It has survived everything.
Baldur's Gate 3 made this as difficult as it possibly could have been. Larian Studios' Belgian RPG scored a 96 on Metacritic and swept the 2023 GOTY awards with a comprehensiveness that had not been seen in years. It beat Hollow Knight by one vote in the Round of 64. It beat God of War by one vote in the Round of 32. It beat Last of Us Part II 3-2 in the Super Sixteen, after Last of Us Part II had beaten Red Dead Redemption 2 in overtime to get there. Every result in the West bracket has been decided by the smallest possible margins, and the West Regional Final between the two highest-seeded remaining games in the bracket produced a result that reflected the character of the entire region. Two votes. That is all that separated these games, and Breath of the Wild found them.
What Breath of the Wild is, at this stage of the tournament, is the last thing standing between Square Enix and a complete domination of the Four Finalists. Three of the four semifinalists are published or developed by Square Enix. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Final Fantasy VII Remake, the defending champion. NieR: Automata, the 13 seed that has beaten five games to get here. Nintendo's game, with its 97 Metacritic and its 33 million copies sold and its physics system that generated stories unique to every player who experienced it, is the only representative of a different tradition still standing in a tournament that has become, in its semifinal stage, a referendum on one of the most dominant publishers in VGM history.
The game that awaits in the Four Finalists is NieR: Automata. A 13 seed. A game that beat Astro Bot, Smash Bros Ultimate, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to get there. A game whose community arrives at every matchup with the specific and personal intensity of people who feel it was made for them and that the world never fully understood what it accomplished. Breath of the Wild has survived five rounds of opponents that should have been enough to stop it. The sixth is a 13 seed that has been making the impossible look routine since the Round of 64.
Baldur's Gate 3 goes home as the 2023 GOTY beaten by two votes in the Regional Final by the most celebrated game of the entire VGM era. That is not a result to be ashamed of. That is a result that reflects exactly how good Baldur's Gate 3 is and exactly how good this tournament is at producing moments that remind you why it matters.
