GAMES & TECH

As 2022 comes to a close, we once again find ourselves looking back on what the past year has had to offer us in terms of arts and entertainment. At the same time, the entertainment industries themselves have already begun the annual gauntlet of awards shows. This includes the gaming industry, with December 9th hosting The Game Awards 2022. The Game Awards is a relatively recent phenomenon, having only been established in 2014, but they were preceded by the Spike Video Game Awards, running from 2003 to 2013. Geoff Keighley, the producer of the Spike award shows, went on to found the current day Game Awards, which continues to be hosted by him. The Game Awards has grown in popularity in recent years, as it has become more established within the gaming industry, but the event is still derided by many online as being extremely ‘cringe’. While it is certainly true that there is an abundance of skin-crawlingly awkward moments at each of these shows, they are also packed with entertaining trailers, live music and of course, the awards themselves.

This year’s awards were dominated by two massively anticipated and acclaimed games: Elden Ring and God of War: Ragnarök. For those who don’t know, Elden Ring follows the player as they explore and navigate a massive and aesthetically diverse open-world known as ‘The Lands Between’, fighting tremendous bosses and seeking to uncover the mystery of the titular Elden Ring - an artifact that was destroyed in the past that has led to the declining state of the world that the player arrives in. A collaboration between the game studio FromSoftware and the writer of A Song of Ice and Fire fame George R.R. Martin, Elden Ring plays in the traditional ‘Soulsborne’ RPG and combat style of the studio’s previous games, albeit with a far more sophisticated iteration of the game play formula. Martin’s contribution to the game is limited to the conceptualisation of the in-game world and its storied history, which is mainly revealed to the player through From Software’s habitual cryptic approach, primarily environmental storytelling, and descriptions of ingame items.

By contrast, God of War: Ragnarök plays far more like a traditional action-adventure game. The player controls Kratos, the long-suffering protagonist of the God of War franchise, and his son Atreus. Following God of War (2018), which cleverly gave the series a soft reboot by recharacterising Kratos as an older, remorseful and stoic man who has put his violent past behind him, Ragnarök’s story continues with him and his son becoming further wrapped up in a conflict with the gods of Norse mythology, such as Thor and Heimdall. The story is largely communicated through cutscenes, with excellent voice performances by everyone involved, as well as through smaller moments of dialogue during gameplay, helped by the expanded cast of side characters. The game is very linear and story-focused, but there are minor open-world elements that also allow the player freedom to explore a bit and add to the replayability of the game. The combat system of the game builds upon God of War (2018)’s over-the-shoulder sword and board style, with further upgrades available to Kratos’ arsenal as the player progresses.

As the awards unfolded, Elden Ring and Ragnarök swept across the heavyweight categories they were