- 2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition (TGA and DICE), Dark Souls II (GJA), Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (GDCA), Destiny (BAFTA)
- 2015: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (TGA, GJA and GDCA), Fallout 4 (DICE and BAFTA)
- 2016: Overwatch (TGA, DICE and GDCA), Dark Souls III (GJA), Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (BAFTA)
- 2017: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (TGA, GJA, DICE and GDCA), What Remains of Edith Finch (BAFTA)
- 2018: God of War (TGA, DICE, BAFTA and GDCA), Fortnite (GJA)
- 2019: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (TGA), Resident Evil 4 (GJA), Untitled Goose Game (DICE and GDCA), Outer Wilds (BAFTA)
- 2020: The Last of Us Part II (TGA and GJA), Hades (DICE, BAFTA and GDCA)
- 2021: It Takes Two (TGA and DICE), Inscryption (GDCA), Resident Evil Village (GJA), Returnal (BAFTA)
- 2022: Elden Ring (TGA, GJA, DICE and GDCA), Vampire Survivors (BAFTA)
- 2023: Baldur’s Gate 3 (TGA, DICE, BAFTA, GJA and GDCA)
Legend: TGA - The Game Awards, GJA - Golden Joystick Awards, BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Awards, DICE - DICE Awards, GDCA - Game Developers Choice Awards.
This list doesn’t include awards before 2014, because The Game Awards launched that year.
It’s an unpopular opinion but as I see it, TOTK is wildly overrated, as is BotW. Yes, they are very polished and certainly good games but the 10/10 across the board made me doubt my sanity. The latest Zeldas are basically Ubisoft open worlds with a couple mechanics borrowed from Garry’s mod. It’s fun the first few hours but the lack of variety and absence of any writing really make it dull IMHO. I managed to finish BotW for the novelty and the occasional detail (the lightning hitting you when holding metal is a nice touch) but I’d die if my life depended on me remembering any character interactions. BG3 Otoh, not only is it also very polished, it has sublime combat and absolutely unforgettable characters. Truly a masterpiece.
I loved BOTW and in any year without BG3 as competition, I would totally accept it as GOTY. But BG3 is just totally on another level.
I played FarCry 3 forever ago and to this day I remember the plot and Vaas Montenegro. I remeber Siegmeyer of Catarina, from DS which for all intents and purposes has a not so intelligible story. This just to name a few. I spent the same amount of hours on BotW as FC3 much more recently and can’t for the life of me remember any characters. I found them bland and uninteresting. That’s just me and I completely understand people who love it.
Far cry 3 did have memorable characters but IMHO BOTW is a vastly more enjoyable game to play. The difference in gameplay is massive to me. I never finished Far Cry 3 as it was tedius to play, whereas I happily finished BOTW enjoying every minute.
Different strokes to different folks. Perhaps my longer experience with games makes me more blasé with the mechanics or other features of BotW. I found FC3 and BotW equally tedious in terms of core gameplay loop, except FC3, actually had a plot and occasional sublime moments that made finishing it less of a chore. BotW is an empty sandbox with a handful of enemies (even less if you consider more HP and different colour as not counting as new enemies) and forgettable characters and story. The technical side of it is quite impressive as is the visual design, however everything else is painfully mid.
That said, I disliked the combat in TW3 or the Batman and Spider Man series for being too floaty and unresponsive so, I’m overly picky I guess.
We can at least agree on Spider Man and TW3 ;-).
:)
I didn’t have a very polished experience at all with BG3, maybe because I played too close to the release date?
It was very frustrating to be honest, but at least they are still fixing the game
What type of issues have ya had? I haven’t encountered any game breaking bugs myself.
I played it at release and didn’t have very many bugs. I could see players having issues with the freedom that it gives though. The whole point of the game is it doesn’t tell you how to solve problems, and you need to come up with solutions yourself. I could see people coming from playing only modern AAA games not being used to thinking for themselves and that causing issues, but I don’t know if this is what you meant.
Yes this wasn’t what I meant, the game had a lot of performance issues and bugs when I played. The act 3 was also very unpolished and felt unfinished
Yeah, performance was much worse in act 3. That’s true. It’s a top down turn based game, so 30 FPS was acceptable for me. Still, it wasn’t ideal. I think that’s been improved now if you wanted to give it another go.