If the Video Game Awards are actually an awards show, and not just a keynote for promoting upcoming games, then the big news from last night was The Walking Dead: The Game. Eminently quotable analyst Michael Pachter said before the show that if this title, a downloadable self-published game, took home Game of the Year, he'd eat his hat. To his credit, Pachter later tweeted out a request for one, presumably to consume.

But the surprises don't just stop there. The Walking Dead won Game of the Year coming out of the Best Adapted Game category. Except for 2003, the first year of the VGAs, when things were very different from today, only two adapted games have even been nominated for GOTY: Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, and neither won. This is a different time in games development, with publishers looking for games whose characters and stories they fully own.

Some might look to a licensed or adapted work and consider that the game derives its significance, or at least the attention given to it, because it draws on some other franchise in popular entertainment. So it's strange that a licensed, adapted work reminds us that story, and characters, and choices, and the memorable experiences they create, matters most.

Here's another surprise nugget: The Walking Dead: The Game earned its makers five Video Game Awards. The next big winner? Journey, with three (including a nomination for Game of the Year.) Borderlands 2 also took home three awards, the best haul for a traditional boxed console game.

So if you're thinking this might have been a different Video Game Awards, in its 10th year, you're probably right. Had the show given more attention to that purpose—only a handful of these awards were actually presented in the broadcast—we might be pondering it as a landmark year. The VGAs are often accused of being an industry popularity contest, but maybe this year they acquired recognizable critical heft. We'll have to see what happens next year, and the year after.

So here are the 25 winners of the 2012 Video Game Awards, plus the Game of the Decade. Two fan-voted awards gave Character of the Year to Claptrap from Borderlands 2, and Most Anticipated Game to Grand Theft Auto V.

Game of the Year

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Dishonored, Journey, Mass Effect 3

Studio of the Year

Telltale Games

Also nominated: 343 Industries, Arkane Studios, Gearbox Software

Best Xbox 360 Game

Halo 4

Microsoft Studios/343 Industries

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Borderlands 2, Dishonored

Best PS3 Game

Journey

Sony Computer Entertainment/thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Borderlands 2, Dishonored

Best Wii/Wii U Game

New Super Mario Bros. U

Nintendo

Also nominated: The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, ZombiU

Best PC Game

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

2K Games/Firaxis Games

Also nominated: Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, Torchlight II

Best Shooter

Borderlands 2

2K Games/Gearbox Software

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Max Payne 3

Best Action-Adventure Game

Dishonored

Bethesda Softworks/Arkane Studios

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Darksiders II, Sleeping Dogs

Best Role-Playing Game

Mass Effect 3

Electronic Arts/BioWare

Also nominated: Diablo III, Torchlight II, Xenoblade Chronicles

Best Multiplayer Game

Borderlands 2

2K Games/Gearbox Software

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Guild Wars 2, Halo 4

Best Individual Sports Game

SSX

Electronic Arts/EA Canada

Also nominated: Hot Shots Golf World Invitational, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, WWE '13

Best Team Sports Game

NBA 2K13

2K Sports/Visual Concepts

Also nominated: FIFA 13, Madden NFL 13, NHL 13

Best Driving Game

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

Electronic Arts/Criterion Games

Also nominated: Dirt: Showdown, F1 2012, Forza Horizon

Best Song in a Game

"Cities" (Beck) for Sound Shapes

Also nominated: "Castle of Glass" (Linkin Park for Medal of Honor: Warfighter); "I Was Born for This" (Austin Wintory for Journey); "Tears" (Health for Max Payne 3)

Best Original Score

Journey

Sony Computer Entertainment/thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Max Payne 3.

Best Graphics

Halo 4

Microsoft Studios/343 Industries

Also nominated: Assassin's Creed III, Dishonored, Journey

Best Independent Game

Journey

thatgamecompany

Also nominated: Dust: An Elysian Tail, Fez, Mark of the Ninja

Best Fighting Game

Persona 4 Arena

Atlus/Arc System Works/Atlus

Also nominated: Dead or Alive 5, Street Fighter X Tekken, Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Best Handheld/Mobile Game

Sound Shapes

Sony Computer Entertainment/Queasy Games

Also nominated: Gravity Rush, LittleBigPlanet (PS Vita), New Super Mario Bros 2

Best Performance by a Human Female

Melissa Hutchison for The Walking Dead: The Game

Also nominated: Emma Stone for Sleeping Dogs; Jen Taylor for Halo 4; Jennifer Hale for Mass Effect 3

Best Performance by a Human Male

Dameon Clark for Borderlands 2

Also nominated: Dave Fennoy for The Walking Dead: The Game; James McCaffrey for Max Payne 3; Nolan North for Spec Ops: The Line

Best Adapted Video Game

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

Best Downloadable Content

Dawnguard for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Bethesda Softworks/Bethesda Game Studios

Also nominated: Leviathan for Mass Effect 3; Mechromancer Pack for Borderlands 2; Perpetual Testing Initiative for Portal 2

Best Downloadable Game

The Walking Dead: The Game

Telltale Games

Also nominated: Fez, Journey, Sound Shapes

Best Social Game

You Don't Know Jack

Jellyvision Games

Also nominated: Draw Something, Marvel: Avengers Alliance, SimCity Social

Game of the Decade

Half Life 2

Valve Corporation

Also nominated: Batman: Arkham City, BioShock, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mass Effect 2, Portal, Red Dead Redemption, Shadow of the Colossus, Wii Sports, World of Warcraft

Revenge may solve everything, according to Dishonored's marketing spiel. But it doesn't fill the burning need to teleport, slow down time or possess enemies once you've finished Arkane's masterpiece. Thankfully, DLC that lets you craft more gloriously choreographed kills hits next week. Get your glimpse of the Dunwall City Trials in the video above.

Corvo, the star of Dishonored, is a deft man with a blade. He can leap, and sneak, like a cat. Dude even has magic powers. You'd think, then, he could do anything and everything, but no.

This clip, showing him trying to pour a pint, is heart-breaking. Won't someone just pour it for him?

Corvo wants a nice, cold beer [YouTube]

It warms my disease-ridden, whale-oil tainted heart to hear that the wonderful Dishonored was a financial success for its publisher Bethesda. In this age of sequels and iron-sights, games this original, smart and flat-out good don't come around that often.

As quoted by Destructoid, Bethesda PR boss Pete Hines said of the game's success, "We're very pleased and appreciate all the fans that have supported Dishonored and Arkane. We clearly have a new franchise."

Of course, it's always a bit strange to see a gameworld that could've existed as a one-off be spun out into a series of games. As I played Dishonored, I grew genuinely interested in the islands beyond Dunwall, and the world that Arkane had created. But on the flip side, I also enjoyed the weirdly romantic notion of a world that we get to see once, and never again. A small taste that leaves the rest to our imaginations.

My ambivalence echoes Dishonored designer Harvey Smith, who told Jason earlier this fall, "Part of me would love to see future games leverage this world, and part of me would love it if the vault door was just closed and that's it. This is your one view into the Empire of the Isles and into the city of Dunwall."

But who am I kidding? If a game is amazing and makes a lot of money, it'll get a sequel. As good as Dishonored was, there are certainly things that can be improved in a second game. I can only replay the first one so many times. And judging by how these things tend to go, the series will make it at least until the third or fourth game before they turn the whole thing into a cover-based shooter.

(Just kidding. I hope.)

Bethesda: Dishonored sales 'exceeding expectations' [Destructoid]

You know how you can play Dishonored either violently or stealthily? I tended to opt for stealth, even though I liked how fun the game was when things got action-packed.

But I have never, ever seen someone take on the game with the kind of violent aplomb shown by kekkoSoNicSyNdIcAtE in the video above. Dude takes out 25 enemies without breaking a sweat, often in the sickest, most elaborate ways possible. It's a real stress-test of Dishonored's design that this kind of thing is possible. Amazing.

(Via Tom Francis)

"Regent", a painting by artist Sergey Kolesov, was a winner at this year's Into the Pixel, an annual competition which "brings together experts from the traditional fine art world and the interactive entertainment industry to display and discuss the art of the video game".

It's from Dishonored, and we've featured it here before as part of a larger gallery on the game, but today we're going to be looking just at Kolesov's work. Because it's terrific.

A former freelancer, who recently kicked around a few ideas for a movie project with Half-Life 2 creative director Viktor Antonov, he now works at Vatra Games Studio in the Czech Republic.

You can see more of Sergey's work at his personal site.

To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they're big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".

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I loved Dishonored's dank, diseased city of Dunwall. It felt so fully realized, and had so much character. A lot of that came from the food. Like Bioshock before it, most of Dishonored's characters leave food lying around. As the protagonist Corvo meanders from room to room, he'll often take stabbing-breaks to eat everything that's not nailed down.

Most of the food in the game is pretty gross—jellied eels! ew!—but there was one thing that, every time I found one laying around, I'd eat in a heartbeat: The delicious-sounding apricot tartlet.

The folks over at Gourmet Gaming have, in their inimitable style, posted a recipe for recreating the tartlets from the game. If you've got the culinary chops, you too can make a bunch of these, then leave them lying around your property to nourish any mask-wearing assassins who may sneak by.

Eat? Don't mind if I do.

Dishonored - Apricot Tartlet [Gourmet Gaming]

Playing Tokyo Jungle reminds me of my insomnia, of all things. The reason I often stay up until I can greet sunrise is because there's this serene calm that comes with being awake late at night.

Everyone is asleep. The streets are empty. It's peaceful to not have anyone around. I can focus. It's kind of like a power fantasy, actually. The world is at once both mine to take and yet beyond me—a not tameable entity whose machinations do not care for, and sometimes defy the going-ons of people. The world keeps spinning whether you're awake or not.

The world also keeps going whether you're alive or not. While playing as a Pomeranian that travels post-apocalyptic Tokyo to kill and eat animals in an effort to stay alive isn't as calming as the velvet of the night, there's still an air of peacefulness that comes with it.

The reasons are ones that I think Hayao Miyazaki, who is behind popular films like Spirited Away and Ponyo, would be enthusiastic about. Noted by academics for his disdain of digital things, a New Yorker profile once quoted him saying that he looked "forward to the time when Tokyo is submerged by the ocean and the NTV tower becomes an island, when the human population plummets and there are no more high-rises." Kind of extreme! Unsurprisingly a good deal of his work was in love with the idea of a Japan that was more in-tune with nature and the spiritual world ruled by Shintoism, Yokai and Kami.

World War 2 changed everything according to Miyazaki—with it came the creation of a consumerist society that destroyed the environment. He didn't like that. An article by the Japanese Times quotes him saying, "I was frustrated because nature - the mountains and rivers - was being destroyed in the name of economic progress." The book 'Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke' also quotes him saying that, "People changed their value system from Gods to money." The people of Japan had lost their way, and the only way things could be remedied was if humanity disappeared altogether.

And what we have in Tokyo Jungle is similar to the world that Miyazaki might've envisioned...if it wasn't likely that he hates video games. No spirits in Tokyo Jungle, but definitely a sense that nature rules supreme. Seen in light of the animator's criticisms of society, it's easy to pinpoint why something like Tokyo Jungle feels calming, almost necessary: gone are the pesky, annoying humans who didn't value the right things. In their place exists not a more ruthless reality of kill or be killed—as one might initially think when looking at Tokyo Jungle—but rather an ecosystem whose participants are well aware of their role in nature. Everything in its right place.

Maybe that sounds nihilistic, but in reality I don't see Tokyo Jungle's premise shying too far away from the type of world that most games present us. Where game spaces might feature well-designed architecture, well-written history, or a game might feature well-designed mechanics, people still feel absent fairly regularly.

Recently Simon Parkin similarly criticized Halo 4 in a review over at Eurogamer for its lack of people:

"But while this one-man army has renewed purpose and a new crisis to tackle, that lack of humanity is hidden in plain sight. For a game so focused on saving the universe, the Halo series is curiously devoid of people to save. It's filled with others to destroy, of course...

It's a universe filled with weapons, more weapons than ever before, the Prometheans adding their armoury of esoteric rifles and machine guns to the already enormous array of killing tools. But people to save? You won't find many of those here."

While I've not played Halo 4, I've felt similarly recently while playing Dishonored—which technically does have people, but hear me out. The game takes place in an Victorian setting based off 1800's London, with a plague decimating a city built to be surprisingly accommodating to a sneaky assassin. So much effort was put into building that city, building a world that fascinates with its politics and history, ultimately leaving you wondering about its society.

But where are most of the people to ground all of that? Why are the people so far out of the frame unless someone needs to be killed or avoided, why am I working so hard to save a city that is basically dead? What in the world is everyone fighting over?

There was a moment in one of the missions in Dishonored, where I endeavored to climb to the highest peak of the level. The streets were largely empty and quiet in this part of town, the only audible thing was the beating of the heart I held in my hands. The vibe was right for climbing crazy high, I decided.

As Corvo landed his final blink, all I could feel was a thrill. Not so much of reaching my summit, but instead of conquering the night, of conquering my skills. A sense of control that came with doing whatever I wanted: the city was mine. But as I looked around from above, everything under me looked empty and unpopulated.

I thought about the kingdom under the tyranny of the lord regent, I thought of the great whale beasts that we killed to fuel our everyday conveniences—both things that I never really got to see in the game. I'm more acquainted with the rats of Dunwall, with the books of Dunwall than its actual everyday citizens.

Instead what we have are thugs, the military, the aristocracy, the weepers and a very small surviving population that I barely got to know—possibly due to the plague and because the point of Dishonored isn't the characterization, rather how we go about eliminating our targets. But what is a city without the everyday people? The thrill disappeared, and in its stead came this overwhelming feeling of destitution.

The thing about insomnia is, once I snap out of the dark spell of the night, once I look past the romanticism of having no people around, I don't feel idealistic or empowered about it anymore. I just feel lonely.

Thought of some empty games or cities while you read this? Share some pictures in the comments!

A dance party with corpses?! Corpses that I made?! Sign me up!

The guys are RoosterTeeth have outdone themselves yet again. *slow clap*

Achievement Hunter : Things to do in: Dishonored - Dance Party [YouTube]

Maybe you've already finished Arkane Studios' critically acclaimed stealth/action hybrid. Maybe you yearn for more blinking, possession and sneaky killing through Dunwall's cobblestone streets. This December, you'll get your wish as challenge-based and story-centric DLC starts rolling out for Dishonored.

Dunwall City Trials—which will cost $4.99 or 400 Microsoft points—will offer up ten skill-centered tests where you'll be made to battles waves of enemies in arenas, perform drop assassinations and run through point-to-point races as fast as you can.

The other DLC will hit in 2013, but don't have prices attached yet. They'll focus on story including one that lets you play as a major character from Dishonored: (Mild spoilers for those who haven't finished the game)

Daud, the leader of a group of supernatural assassins known as ‘The Whalers', will be the focus of the second add-on pack, scheduled for release in early Spring 2013. Make your way through new Dunwall locales and discover Daud's own set of weapons, powers and gadgets in this story-driven campaign. How you play and the choices you make will impact the final outcome…