Perhaps I am wrong.

I still expect TLOU2 to get GOTY just cos there's not really a single opponent that gamners seem to be overwhelmingly rallying to.

I voted Doom Eternal, and I can see Ori and Animal Crossing getting a few votes, but even among Nintendo gamers AC is an acquired taste and both Doom and Ori don't attract the kind of loyalty voting that a big first party exclusive would.

Animal Crossing, while extremely popular to casuals and the most hardcore of Nintendo fans, isn't as appealing to the people would would visit a gaming website and vote in a poll, so I agree it's unlikely it will win this site unless the staff really skew it in that direction. I'm not on the staff this year so they are one Nintendo fanatic down from skewing the votes in Animal Crossing's favor.

I would have voted for it, had it done more than just the same kind of stuff we've already seen before, back in 2013. 

I would say all the ones you named here have a shot, but additionally Hades, Ghost of Tsushima and Final Fantasy VII Remake. That is indeed a lot of option that will split the votes among them. I see no clear picture of any of these games rising above the crowd. I think Machina already hinted that the GOTY is close, but not the closest category, but still I expect multiple games with a big chunk of votes.

Chazore, let us be f(r)iends.

Of course it was going to be TLOU II. I don't think Ori stood a chance in all honesty, as it barely won much here compared to TLOU.

Next year's GA are likely going to be yet another Sony title winning, or Nintendo. Possibly a third party, but I hope to god that it isn't going to be RE8, because that's not even RE at this point.

This “win” was BIG considering all the backlash and the hate the game received in this site, especially for those that haven’t played...yet.

Now the game is really close to pass part I in terms of awards and has some chance to also pass The Witcher 3 and become the most awarded video game ever!!

People outside of this site have given their reasons, some documented and well thought out, some not so much, but either way, some on this site like to dismiss even the well thought out ones as "haterz", because they do not agree with their assessments. Also, it really doesn't help when everyone here ignores just how much of an asshat the game's creator has been on social media, acting like a complete child, and yet he's given special passes because he helped make the game they just so happen to like.

I also don't think New Horizonz should have been included, simply because it's more or less the same game from 2013, not adding much content that gives it more value than other games presented to us last year.

Personally I would have given it to Ori, because it's OST has it's charm, I also love the choice of colours and art direction they went with as well.

As memory serves, Ori won two or three awards, which would at least tie TLOU2's two.

Look, for as much as I've said in support of indie games here, honestly IMO Ori and the Will of the Wisps was the lazy, safe choice among this year's more prominent independently-developed titles in that it's a rare indie sequel, so a familiar franchise rather than an original title like 95% of indie games are. It came in with the advantages of being a sequel, and also more specifically one that has enjoyed first-party backing (Xbox Game Studios). Don't get me wrong, I liked Will of the Wisps! It's a fine game! But it just factually isn't as daring or fully as pertinent to...like life in 2020 as The Last of Us Part II felt to me. It was essentially a cosmetic expansion of what the first game offered. That's what most sequels are, be it in literature, films, or games or whatever, to which end I find few of them to truly be as compelling as the original entry. The Last of Us Part II is a rare exception to this rule that legitimately earned the right to such a lofty comparison.

I like lots of indie games. I like the creative, uncompromising spirit of that kind of games development. I think it's that spirit that made gaming such a compelling medium back in the old days when I first started playing, and it's still that spirit that I'm drawn to today. In fact, the immense majority of my top 50 favorites list for this year was composed of them and I've already got more I plan to add for next year's list in mind. But just because a game comes from a smaller developer doesn't automatically make it the best game there was this year. Many games published by Sony have been favorites of both critics and gamers alike in recent years in no small part because of the kind of creative freedom that Sony has chosen to allow their developers even while supplying them with the sort of budgets necessary to fully realize their grandest visions. That doesn't exactly happen often in this or any medium. The Last of Us Part II is exactly the sort of game that couldn't exist any other way and personally I think that deserves to be rewarded.

In fact, I would defend not only TLOU2's themes, storyline, and (for the most part anyway) characterization, but also its willingness to stick with a traditional approach to action-adventure design in a AAA landscape that really does seem to be gravitating toward making everything one genre known commonly as open world games. Much in contrast to its themes, Naughty Dog opted for a conservative approach to gameplay where you essentially traverse from one end of a given level to the other (sometimes overcoming many challenges along the way and other times instead more strictly for narrative purposes instead) and defeat the occasional boss every so often, with cinema scenes connecting stages rather than an overworld. And you know what, sometimes that's just as bold a thing to do, really: daring to stand still even as the rest of the world around you changes. They chose that approach because it sets the best pace for the game's story arcs, conceding to modernity in offering players more freedom to explore in a way that just makes the game feel more real than the original, but while retaining just the right amount of linearity to keep the plot moving and retain that key sense of tension that it really can't do without. And no, they didn't give you dialogue trees and the accompanying awkward, unnatural pauses that wouldn't occur in real human exchanges and superficial dialogue "choices" just for the sake of doing so even when a clear conversational direction is obviously more effective, natural, and believable. They made the design choices that were right for the story they wanted to tell. (Well, for the most part anyway. Nothing is truly perfect, but overwhelmingly I would say.)

What I'd ideally like to see from you is an actual case for why, in your view, Ori deserved to win over TLOU2 rather than just an endless, directionless trashing of the community choice.