by Josh Thomason
This is one of the first years in a while where the competition for Game of the Year has included two games that I’ve thoroughly and almost equally enjoyed. Elden Ring opened up this year of gaming for me and wowed with its incredible sense of discovery, the customizability of the experience, and the massive sense of scale within its titanic world full of evil beasts and fantastically mangled men and women that needed to be slain by the Tarnished.
Throughout the year everyone I knew had no doubt that this experience could not be topped. All of us were still making the assumption that God of War’s anticipated sequel would be pushed yet again to next year due to some non-specific reason, a painfully common occurrence for any AAA title in the last 5 to 10 years. And even if it did come out, how could a sequel developed within 4 or so years and running in a variation of the same game engine of its predecessor impress us more than that of a world created by two of the top creative minds of our time, Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin?
Yet it exceeded expectations. More than just that, it blew these expectations so far out of the water that God of War: Ragnarok is, in my opinion, 2022’s Game of the Year.
Let’s begin with Elden Ring. From its classic FromSoftware “Start Screen” which is a 2-click entry into the game, with each button sounding an ominous bell toll of sorts as if you can hear the bell of your inevitable demise (let’s be real demises plural) being rung before even beginning the actual game. Next we are introduced to our character creation with each class selection inspiring an entirely different type of protagonist, depending on what story the player wants to tell. I crafted a Samurai to take into the Lands Between. After dying for the first time and subsequently making it out of the first dungeon your experience is almost totally up to you.
Juxtaposing this opening sequence with that of Ragnarok, you are immediately struck by the cinematic nature of what composes most of the God of War experience. The menu itself slowly fades into the beginning of the story as Kratos sits on a rock in a cave, snow falling behind him as he holds the bag that used to contain his wife’s ashes. From there we learn about “Fimbulwinter” and some of the events that have been happening since we last left this father and son duo after the conclusion of the last game. Kratos and Atreus eventually meet Odin and Thor in their home and they’re told the Asgardians are prepared to forgive all the blood that has been spilt, including that of Thor’s own sons, as long as they agree to stop the search for Tyr. Obviously they don’t obey and our dwarf friends from the last game give us the ability to travel the realms again. This is where the freedom in Ragnarok’s open world first shows itself, giving the player the freedom to go to Svartalfheim, the realm of the dwarves where Tyr is rumored to be imprisoned or alternatively go and explore Midgard.
Already there are stark contrasts between these two experiences, Elden Ring is built upon player choice and fully embraces its RPG elements hoping that the player will make their own version of their protagonists’ journey through exploring the world and stumbling upon the path to becoming the next Elden Lord. Whereas Sony Santa Monica is primarily interested in telling its mythological epic and focuses it on several characters who were all fully fleshed out in the previous God of War experience.
I played God of War Ragnarok for around 40-50 hours and not once did a frame stutter or the game crash. The incredible detail, massively beautiful landscapes, and seamless animations that filled the Ragnarok experience were gorgeous throughout my entire playthrough. Each character spoke through a beautifully realized character model that captured each actor’s emotions perfectly and even in combat the player could feel those performances coming through. Discovering each new realm and what it had to offer was such a blast because of how the developers made everything feel distinct and massive in scale without overblowing that scale to something overwhelming.
Elden Ring took me around 80 hours to complete and then a few hours after that in New Game+ before I put it down forever. There were genuine “wow” moments for me, prime examples: first walking in to discover Leyndell while hearing those crazy trumpet enemies playing their instruments, or the introduction of General Radahn sitting atop his tiny horse on a massive battlefield flinging spears at us from his precarious looking perch on the horizon, or the nightmare-inducing (at least for someone whose #1 fear is tornadoes) of the ruined city of Farum Azula.
FromSoftware’s games are known for creating a constant ominous vibe as you traverse through the world and Elden Ring is no exception. Throughout the game there is a purposefully obtuse delivery of the overarching story, which while exciting to some, creates an inherently oblique experience. And it’s one reason I wasn’t as connected to it as I was to a game like God of War: Ragnarok. Holding them side by side, it’s hard not to imagine that this is a choice made out of convenience as a developer. A convenient choice which can be retroactively justified by leaning into it and saturating the experience with a lack of direction because the player has that much freedom in guiding the narrative.
Elden Ring’s story is one full of “lore”. All of Miyazaki’s games are full of “lore”. The cynical interpretation of this means, the world tells its own story and the characters you meet, including yourself, are just small pieces of the larger picture. In the majority of the FromSoftware games, with Sekiro being an exception, some of the most important events to happen to these characters happen before you were introduced to them and the result of those events turned them into the insane, over-the-top, terrifying beasts or mutated versions of themselves that you have to fight.
Your main objective as one of the Tarnished is to collect the Great Runes across the Lands Between, bring those to the Erdtree and use them to repair the Elden Ring. Once you start collecting Great Runes and make your way to the Erdtree for the first time you find that the way is blocked and after you kill Morgott he tells you, “ain’t nobody getting in here”. Now you, at Melina’s behest, go to find the Flame of Ruin (or the Frenzied Flame for those whose characters might fall on the side of the Chaotic) in order to burn the tree. Some other stuff happens but it culminates in you killing an Elden Beast which is the last protector of the tree and the remains of the Elden Ring.
Effectively, based on your choices, you can see any of six different endings. I got the one where I became Elden Lord. Seeing my guy, who started as a lowly samurai, sitting atop the throne and beginning his rule over the Lands Between was pretty cool. But since I was a “basic” player, the context of all of my actions leading up to this was lost on me. This doesn’t make this a bad story, it’s actually pretty compelling looking at it in this context and has all the trappings of high fantasy that I love when dedicating my time to reading the likes of Brandon Sanderson or Mr. George R.R. Martin himself. But the developers did not take the time to create a protagonist for me. They foolishly left it all up to me to create that backstory, maintain it throughout the game, endlessly scour the landscape for people to meet and side quests to obtain, and left me to get lost in the minutiae of exploration and combat forgetting the fact that I am part of some fantastical quest in a land far from our own.
Ragnarok is a totally different story. Literally.
God of War 2018 surprised us all by taking one of the most two-dimensional characters in gaming, Kratos, a spurned Spartan who spent 3 games screaming at and subsequently killing the gods from Greek mythology, and told a heartfelt story about a father navigating what it is to be a parent in the face of losing his partner. In this sequel, I thought they’d lean into the mythology and this would be a standard story, retelling the events of Ragnarok as they’ve unfolded before but Kratos would take the role of some known mythological figure, like Surtr, and we would find out he was always meant to kill Odin…or something like that.
But instead what we got was a nuanced story that covered several things: a person changing themselves for the better by listening to his child. How can Atreus lose himself in his anger as Kratos has many times before but also control it? By the end, it covers a father learning to accept his son as a man and learning how to let him go and follow his own path.
They play with the idea of fate, a theme explored before and something that is very familiar to God of War fans, and assert that “choice” is the number one thing people can do to avoid their supposed fates. Kratos choosing not to kill Thor and Odin in the end was an amazing 180 degree flip for him as a character, but they made it make sense as he was actively choosing to understand his enemies before making a judgment that would inevitably result in their death. It’s a story that makes you believe that people can change, people are not static representations of their current actions but they are a pool of endless possibilities that can shift from moment to moment if they are willing to listen. How does a VIDEO GAME cover this type of material, give us bone-crunching, exciting combat, AND tell a story focusing on Norse mythological figures that doesn’t feel like a simple re-telling?
I have no idea, but they did it.
This is the final straw that makes my Game of the Year 2022 God of War: Ragnarok. The absolute mastery that went into crafting this epic experience of a video game had me hooked from the moment it opened all the way to its exciting conclusion that left me crying into my hands as we saw that Kratos finally trusted and loved Atreus enough to let him go explore the realms to try and save the giants, and then we bore witness to Kratos finally being shown a future for himself where he is no longer seen as a monster.
Elden Ring is a fantastic game and I do believe it takes some of the ideas introduced in games like Breath of the Wild or the rest of the FromSoftware library of titles and combines them into a breathtaking, challenge-filled, and singular experience. However, God of War: Ragnarok is the one that will stick with me longer because it took the time to make me understand why every step I took mattered. The specifics of each moment in the game, even simple moments where I may have stumbled into a dragon pit and had to sacrifice an animal to summon the drake and subsequently kill it, were elevated by the context of the characters and their surrounding stories. This for me signifies a more complete and polished experience and THAT is what needs to be rewarded when discussing GOY contenders. The work that goes into these games is what needs to be highlighted. FromSoftware did a hell of a lot of incredible work to build Elden Ring, but Sony Santa Monica went farther and that is why they have my vote this year.
Josh has been working in theater and…cybersecurity…for the last 10 years. Throughout his whole life video games have been a bright spot. From spending countless hours as a child trying (and failing) to beat the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers game on SNES to screaming expletives as he’s killed for the 100th time fighting Malenia in Elden Ring, video games are the best medicine for any problem in life. He loves playing narrative-driven games like Heavy Rain and the Uncharted series, strategy games like XCOM 2 or Civ 6, or any game he can play with his friends and has recently been smitten by Grounded. Beyond video games, Josh enjoys improv, reading, watching (and detrimentally criticizing) movies, and earning his cat’s affection.
Josh’s gaming hot take is that The Dreamcast was an incredible console that deserves more hype. Remember the Soul Calibur characters popping up on the memory card?!
