The nominees in various categories for the 17th annual D.I.C.E Awards have been announced by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, and Naughty Dog's The Last of US leads the pack with 13 different nominations across a wide variety of categories.

Gamespot has the full list of categories and nominees, ranging from genre specific awards (Adventure, Sports, Racing, Casual, Mobile, and Downloadable Game of the Year) along with more specific categories such as Game of the Year. Five games are nominated for the biggest award at the show: Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Bioshock Infinite, Grand Theft Auto 5, The Last of Us, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. While all five games are highly ranted, A link Between Worlds may be rejected because it is exclusive to the handheld Nintendo 3DS, and Assassin's Creed 4 did not receive the same amount of praise as all the other games on the list. That means that the D.I.C.E Game of the Year Award will most likely fall to Grand Theft Auto 5, Bioshock Infinite, or The Last of Us, with the last game being a favorite due to the amount of awards the game is nominated for.

Another interesting award is Outstanding Character Performance. Joel and Ellie, the main characters from The Last of Us, are both nominated for the award along with Trevor from Grand Theft Auto 5, The Narrator from The Stanley Parable, and the somewhat baffling nominee of Marius Titus from Ryse. This category (with the exception of Marius Titus) is stacked, and any of the four remaining character could get the award.

Outstanding Achievement in Story will be another hotly debated category with all five games deserving the nod. Beyond: Two Souls, Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, The Novelist, and Tomb Raider are all worthy nominees, and this may be the category where Bioshock Infinite beats out all others due to the game's masterful plot that is both deeply personal while also incredibly thematic.

Finally, Outstanding Innovation in Gaming highlights some of the blockbuster and indie games that helped push video games into new directions in 2013. Grand Theft Auto V, Papers, Please, Tearaway, The Last of Us, and The Stanley Parable are the nominees, and Grand Theft Auto 5 may sneak away with this category due to the massive open world that Rockstar made for the game that helped raise the bar for dynamic worlds in video games.