Elden Ring Deserved Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022. Here’s Why

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Elden Ring — FromSoftware's epic fantasy role-playing game — was crowned Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022 earlier today, warding off serious competition from Santa Monica Studio's action-adventure extravaganza God of War Ragnarök. There were some eye-catching titles like Horizon Forbidden West, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Stray, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in the fray for gaming's top honour this year, but really, it came down to the PlayStation exclusive and, well, Elden Ring. To my delight, the latter won, and deservedly so. The two games, both incredible in their own right, represent the best that modern video games have to offer. But only one of them truly embodies the essence of the medium.

There was a hot minute, where it did feel like God of War Ragnarök — the most nominated title at The Game Awards 2022 — would sweep the awards. Before the proceedings winded down to the main course, Ragnarök had already triumphed in six categories, including Best Narrative and Best Performance. And as is the case with all awards shows, recency bias is always in play. (There's a reason we've a thing called the Oscar season.) Ragnarök released last month, while Elden Ring came out in February. And despite its sustained brilliance, memory can play tricks on you. In the end, FromSoftware took home the night's two biggest awards — Game of the Year, and Best Game Direction, capping a remarkable year for the Japanese developers.

Between Ragnarök and Elden Ring, the latter is the one that pushes games into new territory. The open world genre has been much-maligned in recent years — Elden Ring took it apart, and then remade it in its own image. It rejected the trappings of the genre, and completely did away with objective markers, endless map icons, meaningless map activities and side quests, and really blew open the open world. There are games that have done this before, most notably Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but Elden Ring builds upon it. Where Breath