The saddest thing for me is that I feel like Super Mario Wonder has a better chance of getting nominated than Ori even if it gets worse reviews.

I agree, certain genres like racing or fighting have difficulties to earn a GOTY (not only in TGA but most GOTYs), even if the game is really great as these genres are sometimes seen as inferior. City Skylines or simulators like that might fall in the same category, pretty hard for them to get a general award. Generally speaking, if a game has narrative elements it might fare better at general awards than a game without it.

Indies might struggle too, although that became better in recent years.

I agree, it seems games with a strong narrative focus are more of a chance which is probably why we also see games with strong narratives in the GOTY categories more often than not. Even games like "It Takes Two" has a strong Disney narrative focus behind it. Games like Alyx and Horizon or any form of Simulator, RTS or Fighter type game which are more gameplay focused get snubbed into subcategories. Smash Brothers should have won a GOTY and it won Fighting GOTY but not overall. Again the narrative example.

Don't forget TGA is mostly an advertisement show. They have to act accordingly. Action-Adventures and Action RPGs are what they like to nominate and award. But even if it would be a serous show that really wants to nominate and reward the actual best games of the year, somewhere you have to draw the line with indies. Indies made by a single homebrewer that nobody ever heard of but scored very high, simply don't make sense to award or nominate (maybe make a new category: the best games nobody heard of). That was the most exterme example but Indies need some weight (i.e. be known, tested by several known reviewing media) to be considered, I agree with that. Also, what's logical to me is that a PC-only game will never win the GOTY. Consoles is where the music plays!

That was all but obvious when the show kept getting longer and longer over the recent years but it wasn't the content that developed, it was the advertisement time.

Truly my number one reason why I don't watch that show, I mean if they can't care enough to present some of the important awards in fast forward just to get to ad time faster, its quite obvious they don't care about the art in good honesty.

Tetris Effect released in 2018, Tetris Effect Connected released in 2020. Why would anyone even think about nominating this game? The PS5 version isn't a new game.

Game of the Year awards are a dime a dozen. Tears of the Kingdom is likely to win one to three hundred of them.

Meh.  I don't really agree with this.  There are tons of GOTY awards.  Just look at this:

https://www.gameawards.net/

Yeah I don't really care to watch the TGAs personally; there's the fact that I find its picks to excessively favour certain types of games while ignoring others, but also just the sheer amount of obnoxious ads makes it a chore to sit through.

Also, speaking of snubs, Hollow Knight, Wolfenstein The New Order, Alien Isolation, Dusk, and Resident Evil 7 all deserved more.

Baldurs Gate 3 needs to take out the GOTY, to show the industry how it's done.

Tears of the Kingdom is solid, but it's re-using assets from the first game, for that it needs to sit below BG3 IMHO.