To close out the year, GQ is revisiting the most fascinating ideas, trends, people, and projects of 2023. For all of our year-end coverage, including GQ's list of the 15 best video games of 2023, click here.
- The final button-press in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
There are a million things to be awe-inspired by in this game but the ending is probably the most emotion I’ve felt in years. I won’t spoil it but I truly think if everyone finished this game we could heal society and correct the wayward souls of man.
2. The number of f-bombs in Final Fantasy XVI
I don’t feel one way or another about the Game-of-Thrones-ification of Final Fantasy, but on the most superficial level it tickled me that every character in the newest game loved saying “Fuck.” It’s like, yeah, you should be cursing. We’ve come a long way from the 90s, when “spoony bard” was the hardest diss in the series.
3. A bastardized Brooklyn in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Queens and Brooklyn inclusion is major, and I was happy to see (most of) the East River bridges beautifully represented in Peter Parker and Miles Morales’s New York. But I can’t not be jarred by the fact that nothing exists east of the Brooklyn Museum and that the south end of Prospect Park goes immediately into Coney Island. Borough erasure that not even Robert Moses would stand for!
4. Everyone wanting to have sex with Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3
The hottest guy of the year was a fictional vampire elf thief with Jeremy Allen White hair named Astarion who is maybe the biggest fuckboi in all of video game history. It didn’t matter your gender or sexuality—everyone’s primary drive for playing the most comprehensive D&D game adaptation ever was to freak and fix this broken man.
5. Diablo IV bringing scariness back
Thank you! I shouldn’t be able to see a damn thing in this cave!
Bowen Yang stars in Dicks: The Musical, Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, and Good Burger 2, and can be seen next year in Wicked.
