A wise man once said, "greatness awaits".

2 or 3 point difference on Metacrtic has little effect on The Game Awards GOTY, because The Game Awards's reception is limited to a smaller number of publications (that are deemed more important), and the shared "10's" Elden Ring and Ragnarok got do not tell the whole story. It's possible that Ragnarok impressed the relevant reviewers more, but this wasn't expressed as a number because "10" was the limit. Furthermore, the reviewer's score doesn't necessarily reflect the opinion of the entire publication/website. Elden Ring may have mostly been reviewed by souls fans, vs Ragnarok possibly resonating better with players outside the main fanbase.

Nevertheless I'm still betting and rooting for Elden Ring to win coz I thought God of War 2018 was overrated, and I consider Miyazaki and FromSoftware to be peak modern gaming. I won't throw a tantrum at Ragnarok winning though!

As for opening sales, as far as I can tell Playstation is still suffering from active PS4 software buyers declining faster than PS5 adoption rate. I'm therefore sceptical it can break TLoU2 Part 2's record. Not sure it will beat GoW 2018's 3.1 million either. But legs/lifetime sales is a different story.

Like, don't get me wrong we all have our biases, but that needs to be factored in. I don't like Racing games or shooters all that much so I'd probably make a poor reviewer of Xbox games since all they have is Halo, Gears, and Forza (Bazinga or something). All jokes aside, though, I've never seen a site as blatantly biased as Stevior. Like I think 9/10 of the last PS exclusives they ranked at least 20 points below the meta, and 9/10 of the last Xbox games they ranked 10-20 above meta. Consistently. That's not 'oh we just like what this company offers', it's 'we don't like sony'

WHICH IS FINE. You're allowed to not like something, but be honest about your biases.

Sounds like the only thing it's missing is those extra 30fps. Seems the Ps4 version is capped at 30. 

I think its singleplayer nature is keeping the game from being reviewed higher, but when it comes time to vote for GOTY the story will help a lot. 

Think about it this way. Elden Ring was a huge RPG with virtually infinite build possibilities, online play, and such a sheer volume of content it could be giving people things to do for a decade. Red Dead Redemption was another huge open world game WITH an online mode tacked on (That didn't get much love but it's still there.) While God of War is a singleplayer game with 'only' 30-50 hours of gameplay while RDR2 and ER are looking at double that just to finish the story without multiplayer or side questing. 

So when people are doing reviews, the sheer volume of content does come into play, which is why ER and RDR2 have higher reviews, but when it comes time to reflect games like God of War Ragnarok will be more fondly remembered. 

Honestly probably the best and most balanced take in the entire thread. 

I might buy it if I get a PS5, or I could wait 4 years for it to come for free on PS Plus like I did with God of War 2018. Depends on my feeling at the time I suppose.

I was a little iffy because they changed the game director, but this was always a no-brainer nevertheless.

Digital Foundry said it holds pretty well, for the most part a PS4 title with stable performance, and on PS5 just bells and whistles.

I can't consider From Software to be the peak of modern gaming mainly because their performance is all over the place, erratic framerate and pacing even on strong PC HW, while the graphics isn't top notch as well. I would say they have to many shortcomings that are overlooked because they are almost the single provider of the experience they go for so not much competition on it (but their product being your favorite is no problem at all).

I think GoWR can achieve this too. It helps that Sony is stockpiling PS5's for a massive holiday push as well lol. 

Lets go 

You simply can't help yourself, can you? Gotta make everything into console wars, even though you apparently hate console wars. If you don't agree with a review, move on. GoW: Ragnarok is phenomenal and the fact you let 1 or 2 negative reviews get you upset instead of focusing the hundreds of positives is sad. Stevivor hasn't even released a review for the game and you're already talking about it like they gave it a bad review. The site gave the last God of War game an 8/10 so I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. 

Btw, I'm very happy for SSM. They delivered an exceptional well-made game.