Elden Ring is GOTY 2022 - GUI 117

Elden Ring actuates possibilities latent in the soulslike genre & the form of movement it conveys. The circumscriptive melee combat & traversal that characterize the series have been employed to symbolize new modes of engaging with the vast world from has built here (mounted combat and increasing mastery of the expansive map via fast travel and healing refills are our central concerns)And what a world it is: as with the best souls games, a world rendered derelict by the contravention of natural order is the centerpiece here. The metaphysical questions of alterity and sameness prove to be Miyazaki's eternal preoccupations. The Lands Between are were wracked by the Shattering, a revolution of parts against the whole, demigods against the order of their divine parentage. The cosmos falls apart, Elden conveys, when the finite seeks to dictate a new order & universality premised only on its finite subject-position. The subsequent absorption of difference by sameness is explosive & horrific (Godrick).